CHARLOTTE, N.C./July 7, 2018 –Taneva Bush ’19 is steadily progressing on her goals to become a doctor. She took an intensive 10-week internship in Summer 2018, as part of the Undergraduate Research Fellowship program at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio. It was the second time around for Bush, who’d done an initial fellowship last year in the Department of Anesthesia at the hospital’s Research Clinic. She was of such benefit, the hospital invited her to return.
“I love the people I work with and how open I can be,” Bush said. “Asking questions is my favorite part by far.”
Bush is performing the duties of RNA isolation, to confirm Slc10a6 RNA expression in muscle afferents by femoral neurotracer injection, but not in cutaneous afferents by saphenous afferent.
“The goal for our research is to find a new way of effective and safely managed treatment for children who experience neuropathic myalgia, rather than continuing treating them with opioids or other anti-inflammatory therapies,” she explains. “I’m also performing mice injections, perfusions, dissections, cryostat tissue cutting, and molecular techniques such as cell counting and microscopic analysis.”
Initially, Bush suffered from anxiety over the complicated research. As one of very few African-American women in the program, and feared showing her full potential.
“When I found out everything I was going to be doing, I was afraid to touch anything in the lab because it was going to be on me if I messed up. But then I realized it's research, and that's what happens in research. Sometimes you mess up, sometimes things do not go the way you want them to go, and sometimes things are perfect. It’s a matter of learning to accept that.”
She took encouragement from one of her mentors, anesthesiologist Ali Kandil, who reminded her, “It’s fear that sits in the way of what we can do. Once you drive out fear, you can do anything.”
“The scope of what I’m learning has changed tremendously, with the help of the team I work with,” Bush said. “I’m grateful they see my potential, and the ambition to do great has made me diligent. I can’t believe I’m doing a fellowship at the No. 2 pediatric hospital in the nation!”
