Biosciences Bonn: One Crazy Week

Oh man, this was a crazy week! 211 Test Tuesday & I aced it! It was going to be a good week. On Wednesday, we went to the Uniklinik!! To do what you ask? To shadow surgeons!! Initially, I was supposed to shadow a cardiac surgeon with James, but the room was packed, so I was sent to another department. I ended up in the gastrointestinal department! I actually walked into the operation in the middle of a surgery. It's weird because German hospitals aren't strict at all in terms of their privacy policies. I definitely could have walked into any operation room to observe a surgery, and no one would have questioned it. I witnessed 3 surgeries: a cyst removal and 2 intestinal reconnections. I had never witnessed a surgery in person before, so I was excited to see whatever I could. I really loved it, but I found that the surgeries became redundant really quickly. Maybe this was from an observer's standpoint; I'm sure that as the surgeon, everything step of the surgery has to be done very meticulously! In either case, I understood that the patients left the operation room in a much better condition than when they entered, and I would be very satisfied with being a surgeon in the future and being able to help save lives on a daily basis. One of the really neat things that happened that day was that I got to meet a 5th year German medical school student! Her name was Johanna, and she was just the best! She explained several medical concepts to me, and she gladly answered all of my questions. It turns out that medical school in Germany is extremely cheap compared to the US. All they pay for is books! Wowzers. Legit thinking about doing medical school here because of that. I told her that we were studying abroad here and that we would be leaving in May. I asked her if she had any recommendations for what to do in Bonn; she had a thousand and one suggestions! She even offered to give me a tour of the city. It turns out that she had studied abroad in the US beforehand, and she didn't want me to miss out on anything in Bonn or have any regrets about not going somewhere. I finished my observations around 3 in the afternoon. Most of the other students had already left. I found the other two that were there still and made my way back to the AIB to get back to studying. I left the AIB around 10 to go to the grocery store before heading home. While picking out which bananas I wanted (I CAN GET 3 for .77 euros!!), I looked down to check the time on my watch and welp. It wasn't there. WHERE WAS IT??! I realized that I had left it in my scrubs back at the hospital...(GREAT!). Sooooo. I immediately hauled booty over to the bus stop and caught the bus over to the Uniklinik. I got to the hospital around 10:50; I got lost a little bit, but eventually I made my way to the surgery areas where we observed earlier that day. The hospital is a scary place to wander around at night..especially if you're alone! Anyway, I found a few doctors and asked them if they knew where the dirty scrubs were or if they knew where the laundry machines were. They looked at me and reprimanded me about wearing shoes and clothes into the surgical area because it could contaminate the facility (I completely forgot :( ). In either case, they didn't seem to eager to help and told me to come back tomorrow morning. I went back to public side and searched the area to try and find the laundry machines but to no avail. Just as I was about to leave, I ran into 4 nurses; they asked me what I needed, and I told them. Unfortunately, they spoke little to no English, and I spoke little to no German. I tried to use my amazing charades skills to communicate, but it didn't help too much. Just when all hope seemed lost, I remembered that I had downloaded the German language to my Google Translate app on my phone, so I whipped it out and typed my thoughts out. It actually worked! They showed me where the dirty scrubs were and started searching through them with me. Within 5 minutes, we found it! What nice nurse; I couldn't thank them enough for what they did! I made my way back to the bus stop to get home. So. Throughout this entire semester, I don't think I've made it an entire day without falling asleep on some sort of public transportation. I usually stay awake for at least half of the ride, and then, sleep takes over. Tonight was not any different. I had asked the guy if the bus stopped at Kopenhagener Straße prior to getting onto the bus; I guess he remembered what stop I wanted to get off at, so luckily, the guy was nice enough to come back to wake me up..quite embarrassing, but hey! At least I made it home!! Among all the trouble, there are still many kind people! The day after, I performed in a flash mob for the Texas A&M visualization students; a few of the students were going to use this for their end of the year project…….what can I say? Clubbing in Europe has made me a professional dancer :P. Fast forward a couple of days to the Friday! After classes, we had a group excursion to the Horst-Stoeckel Anesthesia Museum, led by the founder Dr. Stoeckel! The museum wasn't as large as ones we had seen in the past, but it held various contractions that were big milestones in the history of anesthesia. We were able to see 1 of 5 iron lung machines left in the world; a patient with inefficient lungs would be entirely immersed in this machine, which would produce negative pressure in order to help the patient breathe! What a contraption huh?? Immediately after that ended, my friend, Amran, and I booked it to the airport via the SB60 bus! We were headed to Auschwitz in Poland! We stopped in Munich for a 30 minute layover before making our final journey to the city of Kraków. For some odd reason, every form of transportation that we took today was delayed (we both came to the consensus that it was because Amran was a passenger on them). We arrived in Kraków around 11. Making our way to the hostel was harder than we had imagined. Most of the Polish people that we ran into spoke even less English than the Germans, and my charades skills can only take me so far. Anywho, we caught the train to get from the airport to the city and stumbled around Kraków for another 30-45 minutes before finally finding our hostel. Kraków seems to be a poppin' place to be at on a Friday night!! We were in a 10 person room; by the time we had finally checked in and everything, it was close to 2AM and everyone was sleeping. We tiptoed in and tried to get a few hours of sleep before we needed to catch the bus (at 5AM) to Auschwitz. I don't remember falling asleep, just waking up all of a sudden. It was pretty cold that morning, so we literally waddled our way over to the tram stop to get to the bus station. A few hours later, we arrived in Oświęcim (Polish for Auschwitz). I had been to the Dachau Concentration Camp a couple of months ago when I traveled to Munich; Auschwitz was very similar but on a larger scale. Auschwitz I still had most of the original buildings. Each building had been turned into an exhibit for the extermination of the citizens of a European country. We also walked through the crematorium and gas chambers; it was a very eerie place that made all visitors that passed through it really consider what happened in these camps 70 years ago. The other camp, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, was designed primarily for extermination. It was just as dreary of a place, but it was so much larger than any of the other camps that I had seen before. There wasn’t any part of the camp that was a museum or exhibit for the visitors; instead, it was just a large space that contained rubble of the buildings that had been torn down. It’s hard to imagine that society allowed for such atrocities to occur over the course of human history! We made our way back to the bus stop, arrived at the Kraków airport, and flew back to Germany. We arrived in Bonn around 11; I took a shower and tried to get as much sleep as I could. The Bonn Marathon was tomorrow, and it was going to be a long and tiring day. I got to the old AIB at 8:15. I was running the half marathon, which started at 9AM. I stretched and stretched before the half marathon started mainly because it was the thing to do but also because I hadn’t trained for this at all. I needed anything and everything that could help me finish this run! There were 7 Aggies in total that signed up to run the half marathon including our circuits & signals professor, Madeleine Durkee! We lined up and waited for our turn to start the race. It seemed that everyone was going to run together, but as soon as the whistle blew, everyone just went at his or her own paces. I fell way back so that I wouldn’t exert too much energy at the beginning, and everyone else went on ahead. From that point on, I was in my own world; I ran for about 8-9 miles at a constant pace. I passed a couple of other people up, but I kept on running and waiting for the finish line to appear. I had been running for about an hour and twenty minutes before I finally felt it in my legs; I realized that I had never run for this long in my life before. The most was maybe half an hour nonstop? Around kilometer 15, I started struggling. I realized that I actually didn’t even know how many kilometers I was supposed to run in total! I knew that half a marathon was 13.1 miles, but I didn’t know what that equated to in kilometers. I asked another runner how many kilometers was in the half marathon; he must’ve thought I was crazy for signing up to run in a race before I even knew how much distance it required. OH WHALE. I had to stop around kilometer 16, and from that point on, it was a struggle. I would get fluids from the water stations (Oddly enough, some of the water stations gave out soda and beer for the runners. I wondered who would actually take the beer in the midst of such an exhausting run; I guess Germans just go hard. I didn’t question the presence of soda at the stations because….well…..I took several cups of Coca-Cola in addition to the bananas and water haha! Shhhhh!!) in an attempt to refuel and continue that run, but nothing helped. I would run for about 30 seconds before having to stop and take a break. Well, this went on for about 20 more minutes. Finally, Madeleine and James (another student who signed up for the half marathon) caught up to me. At the time, I wish they hadn’t seen me, but in retrospect, I’m glad that they did. Madeleine was “caboosing” all the stragglers and making sure that we finished the race. She forced James and I to keep running even when every part of our bodies was screaming at us to give up. At one point, the entirety of both of my legs cramped up; Madeleine’s response “it’s all mental now; you just have to keep running, and don’t stop.” And that’s what I did (painfully). We made it to the last kilometer and saw the yellow banners for the finish line. We decided to finish strong and sprint for the finish line. As we got closer, we realized that it wasn’t the finish line; there was still about half of a kilometer to go. I just remember thinking to myself “wow, you’ve got to be kidding me.” Maybe it was me being determined to try and finish strong or maybe it was the adrenaline pumping in me as I neared the finish line. In either case, I zoomed ahead of the group and didn’t stop until I saw the black and white squares signifying the end. I just wanted to get it over with and be able to sit down. About a minute later, I finished, and finally, I was able to stop and catch my breath. I waited up for James and Madeleine, and we made our way to the old AIB. Most of the other Aggies had finished 15-20 minutes ago and had been waiting at the old AIB. We talked about how each of our runs went. Those who trained seemed to have no trouble with it at all; maybe I should train at least a little next time…….and actually train, not carb up with tons and tons of gelato! We limped over to the resting area for all of the runners who had finished. There was complimentary beer, wursts, chocolate, and juice. We took what we could, found an open area, and sat down. Honestly, I was so tired that I could have passed out right then and there. Getting up was close to impossible, but I did it. I went back to the apartment and took a shower. It was so hard to drag myself back to the AIB to finish my homework, but it happened. I wonder how sore I’ll be for the next few days..