This week was full of medical tours and adventures. On Tuesday, the Bioscience students were permitted to shadow surgeries at the Uniklinikum in Bonn. Although I am much more partial to animal surgeries, myself and everyone else was super pumped.
When we arrived at the Uniklinik, we dressed in scrubs, hair nets and masks. I was assigned to the the Herz OP (Cardiology) to watch a double coronary bypass.
I entered the operation room just as the year old patient was anesthetized. As the doctors and nurses began prepping the patient for surgery, I spent some time speaking to the Surgeons and other students. I found out (in german) the patient was 71 years old, had a fairly recent heart attack, heart disease, coronary blockage and Type II diabetes. The most difficult part of watching the surgery was looking at the fat surrounding the heart. It made me physically sick and for a few moments I could not handle it. Obesity and Diabetes is a serious problem people. The last thing you want is somebody cutting veins out your legs to replace your crappy heart arteries because you couldn't put down the Oreos.
The most intriguing part of shadowing the surgery was watching V-fib (Ventricular Fibrillation) - which was essentially watching the heart spasm for eighteen seconds before it stopped beating completely. That was bad ass.
Later in the week we visited Dr. Stoeckle's Anesthesia museum. The collection of items ranged from antique opioids, oxygen tanks, breathing masks, and a replica of an older operation room.On Sunday my host family took myself and their nephew to dinner(lunch) in Cologne. This lunch/dinner was very interesting because my both of my host parents speak several languages, and my host nephew is half Japanese. We took turns translating funny English words in German, Arabic, and Japanese. It was very cute how they tackled the language barrier between the four of us and I am really growing to adore them.
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