I Have Observed Cardiac Surgery in the OR

It was 1996, and this was a co-op position that I won.

So I was originally planning on graduating a semester early and getting a full time job in order to help pay for university.

I was approached by a co-op teacher about a competition that is Ontario wide, where only something like 12 students from across the province planning to go into sciences at university, would get to participate in a Biomaterials co-op placement, and then present a poster about the research done during the placement at the 5th World Biomaterials Congress.

So I agreed to apply for the contest.
I got one of the 12 spots, and I got to work for a company called Corvita Canada.

The office was at U of T downtown in the Dentistry building. I work with PH.D. Chemical Engineers and we were looking at acellularizing the structure or matrix of veins. This would allow us to harvest veins from others, for things like bypass surgery. And if the matrix contained no cells, we wouldn't have to worry about rejection. And then surgery would be easier on by-pass patients because it would be a single point of entry as opposed to two.

So as part of this team, I had 2 jobs.
#1 - I did a study on using SDS as a re-uptake or drug delivery device within the acellularized matrices (I still have my poster from the presentation).
#2 - I observed open heart surgery twice a day, almost every day in order to collect sutcher samples which we could use to identify the average length of a bypass.

It was a really cutting edge job, and it was cool. I had a hard time with how solitary the work is - same exact experiment every day, no one else around.

So when I was offered a permanent job with them - through the summer then part-time after that, I declined (which I am kicking myself for now).

but hey, it's a cool thing I got to do in my life, and before I hit 30 to boot!