Proyecto

In between those two resorts, I spent lots of time on my project. A lot of the time was passed in the internet cafes, since I didn't have a laptop. This was a little sad, since I felt like I never saw my family. One Saturday night, I realized I'd spent neary 30 of the last 48 hours in the internet cafe, and when we went out that night I went pretty overboard--bad idea!

For the project, I used some of my data from the campo, and also collected data from an oncologist in Santiago. At first the ENTRENA people were supposed to set me up an interview with an oncologist, but when after a few weeks they still didn't have anything for me, I set it up on my own. The oncologist was remarkably cheerful about talking with me and provided me with patient data easily. He even gave me the names and phone numbers for a couple of them, but I didn't end up talking with those people because it didn't fit with the study. After all the HIPAA training I've had to do in the states, this was pretty strange!

I liked my project a lot--it was on pancreatic cancer--and I was able to incorporate different types of interviews, data, and analyses, and I got to talk with a wide range of people. The thing that made me sad was it's pretty useless scientifically, because it was a very small sample and the literature available for the DR was a little sketchy. But learning how to do with type of research was invaluable, and at this point I'm thinking I really like research with human subjects. I guess I'll see what I think this fall!