Monday-Today was the day to visit the Hannover Medical School. A bit to our dismay though, when we arrived, our planned tour of the nephrology department was put on hold due to circumstances beyond our control. We headed to a conference room inside the hospital and waited until the doctor who we were supposed to meet came. When the doctor arrived, he gave us an in-depth look at the German healthcare system , and showed us how it compared to our in healthcare system in the States. The differences between the two were astounding, in both a positive and negative aspect. All of us in the group took away the message that neither system was perfect . Both systems needed a bit of new thinking. We then ate a quick lunch at the school’s cafeteria and made our way to the Hannover Vet School. The visit was interesting because I had never really visited a vet school, even though I had class inside one for a year. It was an interesting experience, and much different than a medical school. After this visit, we made our way to the city hall and learned some of Hannover’s history, much like we did in Cologne. After this, we had free time and made our way to a hotel restaurant to have some hot chocolate and dessert. When we got back to the hotel, we all made plans to eat dinner at a German restaurant nearby the hotel. Dinner that night was very filling and fitting as our last dinner in Germany.
Tuesday-Today was the day we were visiting the Heart and Diabetes Center of North Westphalia .We took a short train to Bad Oeynhausen. I got selected to be in the group which would see surgeries later in the afternoon, so the morning’s tour was a tour of the research part of the center along with the tele-medicine section of the center. The presentation given to us at the research center was a great way of showing how molecular medicine and physiology worked to help people. Our tour of the telemedicine department was great as well. I had no idea that such practices were being done here and back home in the States. Lunch came and went and it was now time for us to go observe surgery. It had been hinted in the morning that some of the surgeries in the afternoon would be heart transplants. When the director came by and picked up our group and asked who wanted to see the total artificial heart replacement, Daniel and I jumped at the opportunity to see it. During the portion of the surgery we watched, we had the opportunity to see the heart removal, canulation of the vessels and the sewing of the sewing ring. Unfortunately our time was cut short, but this surgery will be one I remember for a long time. Our day in Bad Oeynhausen was drawing to a close, and we headed back to Hannover to grab our last diner with our program coordinator Nils. It was a great dinner, and a nice farewell to our “papa duck”. After dinner we headed back to the train station and waited for our night train to arrive to take us to Vienna. We had arrangements to stay 6 people to a room, and sleep on our way to Vienna. Unfortunately for me, I was plagued with sinus problems and general discomfort, thus did not sleep the whole train ride, making another, long sleepless night/day on a train. 7 hours later, we arrived in Vienna and I was glad to be outside of the 6 x 5 x 8 coffin I had just been in.
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