This past week, we split up into our
German Class groups and shadowed German doctors at Universitätsklinikum Bonn,
and it was awesome. I've only ever shadowed doctors who perform minimally
invasive procedures, so watching surgeons cut up a person and try to repair
them was very new/fascinating for me. The group of doctors I was shadowing were
very serious at first, but as the day went on they opened up a bit and were
more welcoming to my questions. I
think they thought I was already a medical student and were somewhat confused
as to why I was asking some of my questions. But once that was sorted out, they
were super chill and explained everything. Gunner joined me in my operating
room for a while and we saw the surgeons perform a tracheotomy and look for some
sort of metal plate near the spine and the pharynx. At least I think that’s
what was going on (they really didn’t speak English very well). The operation
was really cool! I saw the patient’s internal jugular vein as well as the very beginnings
of the branch point for the internal and external carotid arteries. Four and
half hours wasn’t enough time for the surgeons to finish their operation, so I
had to leave with knowing if they ever fixed the patients problem (he was
having fluid develop in some sort of pharyngeal pouch). Overall, I was super
excited for this opportunity and so glad that this was a part of our program.
This past weekend Shawn, Elaine,
Gunner, Reagan, Sarah and I all went to Amsterdam and it was a fantastic
weekend. When we first got there we found out Shawn was charged twice for our
hostel room, and that situation took a little while to get resolved. Once resolved, we had an awesome brunch
at neat looking café not to far from our place.
While walking around the city, we decided to rent some
paddle-boats and explore around the canals of the city! For quite some time we
could not figure out the steering mechanism and appropriately got smashed by
another (much larger) boat. After wards, we went to the Heineken Brewery and
went through their museum. The
tour was pretty cool. They showed us the percentage of the ingredients in their
beer and the process behind how they make it, but the best part of the tour was
the 3 beers we got to drink on the rooftop of the brewery with an amazing view
of the city. After this we all went on a dinner cruise throughout the canals!
With pizza and unlimited drinks, it would have been very hard to not have a
great time!
The next day we split up since some
of us wanted to ice skate, while others wanted to see the Van Gogh museum…I
definitely went ice-skating. We went to this 400 meter ice track and skated
next to some people who were going HAM. They were seriously flying past us.
After this we made a 1.5 hour walk to meet back up with the others in our group,
and all ate dinner together. After dinner we got on our train. After trying to
figure out which cab we were supposed to be in, we settled in for the long ride
and woke up to the train chilling in Cologne. It was just sitting in Cologne
for 2 hours! After, we started moving again, the conductor decided to skip Bonn
HBF in order to save time. So we got off in Beuel and took a cab home. I ended
up getting home around 2 in the morning (we were supposed to arrive at 11:30).
Despite the two instances (the hostel and the train) I had a blast in Amsterdam!
Good times with good people.
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