Sunday, February 12, 2012

University Clinics and Tour of Bonn [written Wednesday, December 28]

We made it to the bus station on time today morning! This probably isn’t such a remarkable thing for everyone else in the group, but I’m completely baffled by the train system. All I know is that the blue stop will take me to a place where I can find some ATMs, which is useful information considering that I haven’t been able to withdraw money yet.

I saw a rectal cancer removal surgery today at the University Clinics. The operating room procedure was very similar to what I’ve seen in the operating rooms in the US, except that the iodine here is an unusually bright traffic-cone orange. The atmosphere here though was far more relaxed, and the anesthesiologist I was shadowing was very open to teaching. She was especially excited to point out a vial of propofol in her drug cabinet and explain its notoriety as the drug that killed Michael Jackson. Dr. Rainer’s tour of Bonn was quite a walk but gave us the chance to experience the grey, quiet, calmness of Bonn in greater depth. It was especially exciting to visit the excavated site of an ancient Roman villa, complete with a bath and a hypocaust system for heating the water. It’s remarkable how much history is under our feet even as we simply walk around the city.

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