Professional accomplishment

This doesn't have a lot to do with writing, but I am pretty pleased.  When I went to my professional conference in Minneapolis back in July, one of the things that caught my attention was the use of MRI for prostate patients.

 

See, usually we do all our radiation treatment planning on CT scans.  But on a CT scan, the prostate, bladder, seminal vesicles, etc. are all just one big gray blob.  If we want to do a highly specialized treatment called IMRT it is important to be able to distinguish the prostate from everything else.

 

So when I got back, I talked to our head physicist about it.  He was ambivalent, as they had tried MRI once before with lackluster results.  But technology is always improving, and our clinic has a new MR scanner.  I also talked to our oncologist, and she was very interested since not being able to see well on the CT is frustrating for her, and we want to do the best for our patients.  I talked to the head physicist again, about the doctor's interest, and after a few snags we finally had our first prostate patient get an MRI this afternoon.

 

It worked beautifully.  We can see everything we need to see, and when the doc looked at it she just kept exclaiming how excited she was to be able to finally know what she was contouring.  By this point everyone has forgotten it was my idea to look into it again, and I was the one to find the journal article with the technique, etc.  I don't mind.  I'm just glad it's going to work out, 'cause this is a big improvement.  I figured you guys wouldn't mind me bragging a little, though.  *g*

 

In writing news, I've probably managed about 800 new words so far today, and I'll write more tonight.  Thing is, it's all going to replace an existing scene, so it doesn't help my wordcount.  Ah, well.  It's revisions I would have to make at some point anyway.  (And my counter isn't updated - so I'm actually a little farther along than that.)