Last week in Bonn :(

Oy! I can’t believe we are already done with our fourth week here! Traveling with my group in the program is such a norm for me now. Though it took me a few weeks to develop relationships with the people in my group and accommodate to everyone’s different personalities, I am truly thankful to have such an amazing and fun group of now-called-friends to travel around Europe for the past four weeks.

Due to poor timing with the weather, this week started off with lectures in the new AIB, and it felt as if it had been forever since we finally had a “normal” day of school in Bonn. As always, Dr. Wasser had much to inform us about significant times and people in medical history. On Tuesday, we woke up extra early and to take a trip to the University Clinics in Bonn, where we got to watch several surgeries. Unlike many other people in my group who have frequently shadowed surgeons in the past, this was only my first time to witness a live surgery! Although nobody said anything when Dr. Wasser asked if anyone “thought that they might faint today,” I was actually quite nervous that I might not be able to handle it and had to mentally prepare myself for all the blood I was going to see. However, when we went into the room, the surgery had already started and every single part of the patient was covered up except for the section of her shoulder that the surgeons were working on. As I watched the surgeons shave off the part of her shoulder bone that was abnormally protruding from her shoulder area, it seemed more like a mechanic working on a car or an artist working on an arts and craft project than a surgery. Similar to fixing a car or doing arts and crafts, there was no ONE way to successfully complete the surgery; the surgeon could complete his task however he pleased as long as he got the work done. Once the surgeon was done, one of his assistants stitched the patient back up like it was no big deal. I was amazed at how easily the skin would stretch back into place as the woman in the patient’s chair slowly came back to life. The “magical” thing about surgery is that there is no magic…it’s simply the manual dexterity of human hands that can so skillfully cure our bodies’ internal imperfections. The second surgery that I got to see was a “clean-up” of somebody’s foot. The patient had some unknown infections in the tissues and possibly the bone in his foot, and the surgery was a clean-up and sampling of the dead tissue found inside his foot. I am not only incredibly thankful for all the anesthetics that we have today to reduce most of the pain, but I am also curious to observe more surgeries in the future. I was a bit frustrated when that one particular nurse got strict about us going out of the room without changing our clothing or having more than two people in a surgery room, because I wanted to see more surgeries. But nevertheless, watching these surgeries was an eye-opening experience to me.

On Wednesday, we went on the bike tour to Remagen! We biked a little over ten miles along the Rhine to get to the museum. Though it was quite tiring to keep up with everyone, I thoroughly enjoyed the bike ride. The weather was perfect: sunny with a slight breeze to keep our faces cool, and the scenery was beautiful. Going on a tour at the Peace Museum of Remagen was quite an experience as well. Like Dr. Wasser had told us before, Mr. Kurten (our tour guide) played a crucial part of the tour itself because he runs the museum. Similarly to Mr. Stoeckel and his museum of the history of anesthesia, it was obvious that Mr. Kurten knew so much had had so much passion about the history of the Ludendorff Bridge and Remagen. After we biked back to the train station in Bonn, Katharine and I went to the Haribo Shop one last time to buy our final batch of Haribo gummies before going back to the States!

And finally, Thursday was the Rhine cruise! We took a train to Bingen and visited the museum of Hildegard von Bingen. It was interesting to go on the tour through this museum because Dr. Wasser gave us a lecture about Hildegard so we had a good background about her works. I found it interesting that Hildegard “founded” so many healing theories and techniques that seem somewhat illogical today. Some of her theories, such as the theory that the shapes of the plants indicated what part of the body it could heal, seemed a little silly to me. It’s crazy to think about what people in the medicine world thought in the Medieval times and how much has changed since then. We then ended the day with a climb up to the castle at St. Goar. Because we could not catch the English tour guide, we split up into groups and got to make up our own stories about different parts of the castle. This was a fun idea and a good break from the guided tours we were used to. Alexis, Katharine, Mikaela, and I were to tour the rest of our group to the underground coal mines of the castle. All in all, it was a fun and event-filled last week in Bonn, and I was extremely sad to come to my host family’s flat after the Rhine cruise because I only had a few more hours left in Bonn before our train left to Switzerland. Bonn was the perfect place to be stationed for our study abroad experience, and I couldn't be more thankful for everything my host family has done for me here!