Another Heart Bypass

A few weeks ago, half of the program (the Biomedical Engineering track and I) visited the Uniklinik, or the university hospital here in Bonn.
After dressing up in my scrubs, I was already pretty excited - and the fact that Croc's and other plastic flip flop shoes are the standard for hospitals always makes me giggle. But besides the fun times in scrubs, every student was able to witness first hand a surgery at the Uniklinik that day. Nothing was planned, just whatever

Operating Room we were thrown into!
At first, there was a middle ear surgery with a young 5 year old girl, Ewa. She had a loss of hearing in her left ear, and they discovered that an infection had made some serious damage. As my friend (Francisco) and I watched the surgeon go through layers of tissue, it wasn't the (small amount of) blood that got me, but the utmost calmness he had while operating.
Calmly, in very well spoken English, this Ear, Nose and Throat surgeon answered our every question while continuing to avoid nerves like the auditory and the Facial nerve - a nerve we learned of in Physiology last semester. He only was mildly perturbed during the surgery when Francisco and I started talking loudly about 2 of our friends that passed out during their surgeries. But other than that, he replaced her stirrup (stapes) bone with a small titanium implant that should last the rest of her life.
As he made an incision into her cartilage of her ear, I asked if she'd still be able to wear earrings or other piercings where that incision was made. He replied, "I don't know, it's not my problem."
A little harsh, but what can you do.

Fortunately, the surgery was short, uneventful and successful! Unfortunately, the surgery was short. So while I was sitting in the nurses break room talking about how some friends had feinted during surgery, I was replaying the scene in my head. But as we asked the doctor escorting us if there were other available surgeries, we were on our way again. She tried to find at least 2 more surgeries for the 4 of us that had finished early.
We ended up walking into an open heart surgery.
The anesthesiologist led us up onto a tiny stool, and we stood with another German medical student. And there it was. A beating heart. Just sitting there - or rather - just beating there. The surgeon in charge again spoke English, and again held conversation while doing heart surgery things. He asked us where we were from, and was delighted to tell us he had worked in Houston for a number of years. He began to speak less though as he finished preparations and started to put the heart on bypass. Calm as he was, I could see his heart rate rising as he nicked the patient's artery. Some blood might have spurt out, but he connected it quickly, and did the same with the other end of the heart. And then the bypass for the surgery was done, and sadly we had to leave and join the other students.

We then were escorted around the ICU and the ER ward of the hospital by an anesthesiologist on his day off. He again spoke great English, and told us of the trends of German vs American medicine and even of current social, political and medical affairs. He also had a very frank and plain attitude towards discussing which country held a better position, better statistics or better practices. It was refreshing to spoken to frankly, as it conveyed more of his genuine personality in this first and last meeting we had with him.

More than the fascination of the science and surgery and methods behind the madness of open heart or middle ear surgery, the acceptance of the German medical community was astounding. With only a name for reference, they let random Americans (who don't speak a lick of German) into their hospitals, their ICU's and their OR's.
Whether prepping a patient or open heart surgery, it was amazing how kind and how genuinely they wanted to educate us in the field of medicine.