Day 68

I rarely manage to beat my host father to the kitchen in the mornings, so when he came downstairs and saw that I had already ate breakfast he was mildly alarmed. It was the day of our school visit to the University Clinic and I was chomping at the bit to get going. Austen and I got to the Hauptbahnhof before we needed, as per usual, and the rest of the group slowly trickled in. When we headed out to board the bus, it began to snow. Having lived in southwest Texas for the majority of my life, snow in March was almost unheard of. Once we got to the Uniklinik and placed all of our coats and belongings in a random office, we were escorted to the locker rooms. Once the females and males were separated, we changed into mismatched blue scrubs and green crocs. After we donned out hair and face masks, we stepped into the hallway and were met by a tall man who oversaw the pairing of students and anesthesiologists. A group of us followed him down a corridor and he left each of us in a separate room. I had the wonderful fortune of being able to watch Dr. Struchhold work. Dr. Struchhold is an anesthesiologist who teaches medical students in a vary hands on manner. The student that was working under him for the current cycle was named Caroline, who was from Heidelberg. Having just been to Heidelberg, her and I talked about what the best places were and why schneeballs were so popular until the patient was wheeled into the operating room. Once the patient was hooked up to the monitors, Caroline and Dr. Struchhold busied themselves by constantly checking vital signs, gas temperature and flow, and the amount of medicine being administered to the patient. It was interesting to learn that there are specific drugs that are commonly used in a German operating rooms that are highly unpopular, and sometimes illegal in America. Dr. Struchhold was kind enough to take me under his wing and simplify the complex machinery that I was attempting to decipher. The first surgery that was being performed was an inguinal hernia reparation. Dr. Strucchold explained to Caroline and myself about the differing levels of anesthesia, and how we didn’t want our patient to go into a deep anesthetic state since the surgery was relatively light. Since Dr. Wasser had just finished teaching my class about cardiac and respiratory physiology, I had a better understanding of why Dr. Struchhold made the adjustments that he did, what the graphs on the monitor meant, and the effect of the certain classes of drugs on the patient. After a few hours, the procedure was finished and Dr. Struchhold decided that it was time for a coffee. Caroline and I followed him to the break room, where we were introduced to colleagues of our anesthesiologist. Once the coffee was gone, I was given ten minutes to walk around and explore before the next procedure started. I ended up running into several of my classmates and was able to briefly hear about the surgeries that they had seen before heading back into the OR. The next procedure was a thyroidectomy. Since this procedure was slightly more invasive than repairing an abdominal wall, the patient needed a different kind of anesthesia mixture than the previous patient. Dr. Struchhold explained that anesthesiology is a very personalized field of study, since every patient is very different and there are multiple ways to sedate a patient. One of the surgical nurses saw me trying to view what the surgeons were doing and was kind enough to bring me a small stepstool. Even though the stepstool did raise me off the ground a couple of inches, I was still to tiny to see over the tall doctors and decided to return to Dr. Struchhold’s corner. At various points in the procedures, he would pull a piece of paper out of his notebook and draw a body system or chemical molecule and explain a concept to Caroline and I. My favorite mini-lesson was when he compared red blood cells to a truck, and how there were a limited amount of seats for passengers. There could only be eight seats, or hemoglobin binding sites, in one truck and once one passenger got in the vehicle, more naturally wanted to follow. He happily entertained any questions either of us had for him, and was very knowledgeable about the history of Bonn and the hospital that we were in. Once the clock struck one, we had to say our farewells and I left to regroup with my classmates. I found Camella, and her and I managed to get mildly lost before finally finding Dr. Wasser. When we arrived back at the AIB, class began as usual and we had an uneventful ending to a very eventful day.