On Tuesday, we presented our problem statements for our design projects to enmodes. It was really nerve-wrecking because I am not a huge fan of presenting, but I felt prepared and confident in my knowledge of the topic, so I think it went well. We also got our final project teams and assignments after the engineers at enmodes told us which problems were the most relevant and important. Now, I’m excited to have a more specific problems to tackle and find a solution to.
On Wednesday, I had the day off from school, so I decided to go see an Andy Warhol exhibit in Cologne. It featured a lot of signed album covers he designed for The Rolling Stones, John Lennon, the Velvet Underground, Aretha Franklin, and more! The collection was private and had never been put on display before, so it was a very cool experience. I have a newfound knowledge and appreciation for his artwork!
After, I had some time to kill before I had to go back to Bonn, so I went to the chocolate museum. I loved watching, and more importantly, sampling the chocolate there! Sehr gut.
The other highlight of my week was shadowing at the Uniklinik, which is the University hospital in Bonn. I’ve never had an interest in going to med school, so this was my first time ever shadowing or even being in a human operating room. Each student got assigned under the care of a different anesthesiologist, so we were all separated and got to observe different surgeries. At first, I wasn’t too thrilled initially to be in the urology, but everything ended up being okay and I had a blast.
The first surgery I watched was a permanent catheter placement in a male patient who had a problem with incontinence. It was a very basic and routine operation, but for someone like me, who was not prepared to watch someone’s scrotum get cut open that morning, it was pretty intense. If that wasn’t a wild enough morning for me, I was even more in awe of the second surgery. The patient was a woman whose bladder was nearly descended out of her body! It also was a routine surgery, in which the surgeon used mesh to suspend her bladder back up into her body. I was very impressed with how skillfully and meticulously he worked since it was so bloody that it was hard for me to tell what I was looking at sometimes, even though I just took anatomy last semester.
After my own surgeries were finished, I joined a friend in the OR next to mine and saw a little bit of an ortho procedure. The first thing I noticed in the room was the table full of saws, drills, and hammers. I didn’t stay for long, but I was there for long enough to see the surgeons cut a patient’s thigh all the way to the bone. All I can say about that is that I will be okay if I never have to look that deep inside someone’s leg again. I had another friend in cardio unit, so I stopped by there too and watched a bit of open-heart surgery, which was also very cool.
Both working on the enmodes project and observing surgeries were very special experiences because they applied the subjects I’m learning in class to the real world. I feel like I am on this program at the right time in my college career since I get to see how diverse the medical field is and all the ways I can apply my degree after college.
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