Week 4: Hannover and Norderney

Monday morning we had the surprise that Dr. Wasser had a buildup of wax in his ear and needed to have it removed so we had some extra time to finish up our blogs for the last week. (I wish we had more of these happen, because as you can see I’m a little behind on my blogging). This called for just one lecture this day over the History of Anesthesiology in preparation for our trip to the anesthesiology museum on Tuesday. After our pre-departure meeting for our excursion to Hannover and Norderney, we went with Mira to the Haribo outlet store. This is where I went into “end of the world survival mode” and ended up buying a little over three kilos of Haribo deliciousness! It’s not all for me I’ll have you know, I did save some for my family when I get back to Texas! After a large delay with the subway system not working, we ended up walking a for a few kilometers to finally get to a tram that was still operational due to a wreck that had occurred on the top surface. When we made it back to the AIB, we watched a movie called “The Lives of Others”. This movie is the best movie I have seen in a few years even though it was a German film with English subtitles.

On Tuesday we went to the University clinic area in Bonn to visit the Anesthesiology museum. Our guide is, as Dr. Wasser described it, a part of the museum because he developed the first IV anethesia. He personally had collected everything that was in the museum and been the director of the museum for like 20 years. He gave a lengthy tour of the museum, but it was well worth it! We then went and had lunch and made it back for a class on the History of Medicine in the West. We were supposed to have an AIB soccer cup (undoubtedly I would have won) but it unfortunately rained all day and it had to be cancelled. Instead, for that night, I went back to my host mom’s house and we all had a great night of relaxation and eating one of her great meals! Also, she gave me a reflexology foot massage which could be used for diagnoses of illnesses and also to then help alleviate the problems. However, she says that she has not been trained to practice this as a medical professional so she can just do the exam and massage the feet and you can take what you want out of the treatment and she will leave it up to my discretion whether I need to look into a problem more. As she gave me the exam and massage, she found out that was a relatively healthy person with just some kind of problem or tightness in the area that corresponded to my lumbar spine region. All in all, it was a great experience!

We left early Wednesday morning for our excursion to Hannover. Upon arrival, we checked into our rather nice hotel and headed off to the MHH to learn about cardiac surgery and then more specifically left ventricular assist devices (LVAT’s). The doctor that was supposed to give us the tour and lecture had an emergency surgery he had to perform so he was not available so his colleague gave us the presentation. She was more than capable of explaining everything in detail and then allowed us to go to talk to patients about their devices and also to patients that are waiting for a heart transplant. After visiting the hospital, we went to the Axolotl Research center. We subsequently had a 30 minute lecture on the biochemistry of the Axolotl species which explained to the most current knowledge of how the axolotl is able to do bioregeneration.

We had a 7:21 train to Norderney on Thursday morning. Upon arrival in Norddeich Mole, we had an hour ferry ride to the east freisland island of Norderney. We then put our stuff up and went on a guided mudflut hiking tour with Dr. Rahmel. This was crazy because there is so much biology that can be learned just by the interactions of all the organisms in this biologically diverse and rich environment. I participated in a navigation competition where we pretended there was fog by using blind folds. I then had to make my way towards a predetermined pole. Apparently I was doing good and staying on track until I took an unexpected hard right. After the hiking, we went and ate some really bad north sea shrimp!

Friday morning we had a bike ride tour with Dr. Rahmel. He explained a lot of the biodiversity of the island and all of the measures they are taking to preserve this environment. Then, we went to the IFR clinic where people go to learn how to be healthy and start getting in shape. A major problem with adults is that they start getting in routines that mainly involve sleeping and eating. This can lead to many health issues later in life and could even shorten their life expectancy. We then proceeded to have a fun sport outing with rockwall climbing and playing some basketball. Then we were off to Amsterdam!