Boring Blog

Monday flew by in a sleepy haze as we woke up at 3:30am for a 6:30 flight that landed at 9 and made us rush to a last minute guest lecture scheduled for 10:15. Ouch. Needless to say I’ll be bumming some notes off my fellow classmates from that day, but thankfully on Tuesday I got to sleep in and got a solid 13 hours. I definitely needed it. Getting back into the swing of classes after two weeks of adventure will be tricky again, but with the enmodes project ramping up I know I need to get my head out of the clouds/off the island. 

Wednesday we went to a clinic to shadow some surgeries up close and personal! AKA my favorite thing to do and my hope for a future job. Another early morning under my belt. 

Apparently the clinic we went to either wasn’t expecting us or totally forgot we were coming, because some of the BMEN kids who went yesterday were forgotten about and came with the BIMS group, but half of the BIMS group got shafted to a “children’s day” thing where no surgeries were occurring, and we wandered around like lost ducklings for awhile til some doctors made some adjustments to find things for us to do.  

I managed to walk into a spinal fusion procedure, which, of all the operations happening in the hospital, is the one thing I’d hoped to not get because I’ve seen a bunch of those when shadowing Dr Alford, a neurosurgeon back home.  It was still a fun experience, because this operation was majorly intensive.  The patient had an existing fusion of 3 vertebrae and needed another layer added, but the existing hardware wouldn’t work with the newer hardware the hospital had on hand and all the screws and rods had to be taken out and replaced!  This was a very different process than the minimally invasive spinal fusions I’d seen Dr Alford perform over the summer.  

Being the week after spring break, it was only fitting for me to get sick and stay home the weekend after.  I didn’t do much over the weekend but try to get better.  I also realized that I’m only sick when I’m in Germany/possibly my host family’s house because as soon as I leave again I get better, and every time I return I get sick again.  Meh.  BUT the lazy weekend gave me a chance to study for physiology and get some other schoolwork done.