Week.. she got picked up by her spine...

Spines, and biking, and castles oh my! We got back home from spring break and the next exciting thing on our agenda was surgery shadowing. As usual, Mitchell and I arrived late to the bus station, but all was fine and the class made our way to the Uniklinik. Today, we were all watching some form of surgery take place. We walked inside the clinic and went and scrubbed up all professional like. We looked like the future doctors of America, but in Germany. Madeline and I were together and we watched an orthopedic surgery. There was a tumor around an older woman’s spine, and well as some alignment problems. The smell of burning flesh apparently doesn’t bother me too much. During the surgery, they were surprisingly rough with the woman. They cut straight into her back, and pulled her back tissue apart so they could access the spine. They then proceeded to hammer stake like things into her back. The stakes were hollow so after a couple were in, when they hammered the others in, blood spurted out of the former stakes. It was kind of funny to see actually. They would also take some gauze and shove it inside the body somewhere rather forcefully. Then the weirdest part was that they would grab the spine with a clamp and just start yanking it around. Like her whole body would be rising and falling as they pulled on her spine. It was really strange but cool. Sadly, we had to leave before the surgery was over but it was a really cool experience nonetheless.

This weekend, we decided to stay in the area, and bike down the river from Koblenz. We got on the train, as usual Mitchell and I were running late, right before it left and made our way towards Koblenz. When we arrived, we wandered around until we found some a bike rental place that was part of a restaurant. We got our bikes and headed down the Rhein. It was a gorgeous bike ride. After an hour or so we decided to stop and get lunch at this nice little café along the river. We then continued on. We raced a tractor, and boats, and cars, and each other, and finally, we got to our destination, the Burg Rheinfels. It was castle ruins that had tunnels and cool places to explore, but unfortunately for us the tunnels were under maintenance so we could not go down there. Instead, we climbed around on the castle walls, breaking more than half of the rules there, but not getting in trouble. After monkeying around, we left the castle and went back to our bikes, but tragically, my tires were flat for some reason. So instead of biking, we had to walk the whole way back. We got dinner, and headed onto the train to go back to Koblenz to drop off our bikes, and then once more to the train station where we headed back to Bonn. It was nice to stay in town after such a long time away. It really refreshed me for the upcoming Easter weekend.