Surgery, Strikes and Studying

I'll start off this post with the most exciting thing that's happened so far this week, which was visiting the Bonn Clinic where we got to shadow some surgeons in the operating rooms. This was one of my favorite activities because it was especially pertinent to my interests. (I'm planning on going to medical school after getting my undergraduate degree.) We traveled by bus to the clinic where we split up into groups of three or four to go to watch various surgeries (although I think the majority, if not all, of them dealt with orthopedics). I got to see the better part of two surgeries, and they were awesome! Both had to deal with either the insertion or removal of metal, stabilizing parts, and I just kept thinking about how some biomedical engineer had to design the pieces that were being used in everyday life with actual patients. Just a cool thought.

I have shadowed in the past, and actually in a surprisingly similar field- pediatric orthopedics. For me, there were a surprising amount of similarities between what I saw here and back home. For example, the operating rooms and all of the equipment was near-identical. I mean, it makes sense; both the US and Germany are developed countries that would be expected to remain up-to-date on modern technology, but it was weird to think that excepting the German writing on everything, the OR's of the two different countries would be virtually indistinguishable. However, there were some differences: the scrubs and shoes worn by all the medical professionals belong to and are washed by the hospital, rather than the individual. Also, the OR was much warmer than I was used to during the first surgical procedure. I'm not sure if that was the surgeon's choice or under some other influence, but I'm glad that I wasn't feeling too squeamish to begin with, otherwise it might have been too much.

In other news, a lot of the blog posts have mentioned the bus/tram strike. Unfortunately, in a city so spectacularly dependent on and well-integrated with public transit, when you take away the transit you've just got a confused and inconvenienced public. That being said, it really wasn't too inconvenient for me. Although Andrea and I normally ride the tram about ten stops to the AIB, on Wednesday morning we just had to wake up a bit earlier and catch a ride with our host father. It was the first time I've been in a car since that first day arriving here in Bonn.

To finish up, I just thought I'd touch on schoolwork a bit. Nothing has changed drastically since the last post I typed; courses are moving apace. The challenge this week was the massive amount of DIFF EQ homework and the test that we had today. Not to dwell on the negative, though, I'm SO looking forward to Spring Break! I think we've all earned a bit of rest and fun. I'm flying out to Barcelona on Saturday for a week, and I'm really looking forward to seeing Spain for the first time. Plus, I'll be able to speak some Spanish while there and perhaps make up a bit for my lack of functionality in German.

Tchüss--