This
week was not one in which a multitude of information was learned, but still one
that I was able to experience some of my favorite parts of the program. The
week started with a tour of the Cologne Zoo. I legitimately think that we were
the oldest people there who weren’t parents and even though I am a 20 year-old
college student, I will never outgrow the zoo.We got to go on a “behind the
scenes” tour of the zoo itself, getting to feed giraffes, seeing where the
elephants are trained, and seeing where and what exactly all of the animals
eat. It was unlike any other zoo I have ever been to in that most of the animal
exhibits felt open to the public, almost as though some of the animals could
freely escape if they wanted to. This obviously wasn’t the case and was the
result of careful planning, but definitely enhances the experience of anyone
who visits the zoo.
The
next day we got to go to the University Clinics at the Bonn University Medical
School and view live surgery. This was something that I was initially
apprehensive about never having seen a live surgery before, but it was
incredibly cool and made me possibly want to explore a career in medicine
instead of just strictly engineering. I was put with an anesthesiologist who
worked in the orthopedics section of the OR. Being with the anesthesiologist,
he explained everything that he had to monitor within each patient and showed
me throughout the surgeries different adjustments that he was making in order
to make sure the patient was still under anesthesia and not in pain. The first
surgery I got to experience was a 16 year old girl who was having plates and
pins removed from her hips which had been placed there a few years previously
to help her femurs aligned properly. The coolest part of this surgery was being
able to see the holes in the bone where the pins had been put in. The second
surgery was with an older lady who had a badly dislocated shoulder. One minute
they were opening her open up and the next they were sawing part of her bone
off in order to put an implantation in. This surgery is the one that absolutely
baffled me, because it reached a point where the surgeons did not know how to
properly put in the implantation. They hammered and hammered, presumably
forcing a piece of the implant into her shoulder socket, but then stood there
with her arm literally almost completely dislocated from her body talking to a
person from the implantation company on the phone figuring out what to do. I
had to leave though before they resumed the surgery (which hopefully ended with
a successful implant). That was seriously one of the coolest experiences not
only of the program, but of my entire life.
On
Wednesday we went to Bingen, where we got to see the museum of Hildegard von
Bingen, of whom we had a lecture about from Dr. Wasser the day before. She was
a very interesting and impressive woman, and getting to experience the garden
and descriptions of what and how she used to utilize certain plants for healing
made it an enriching experience. The museum itself was entertaining as well,
featuring some of her music and drawings of her visions among other things.
Following that, we went on a cruise on the Rhine River, which exhibited the utter
beauty and rich history of the Rhineland. There are castles all along the river and we got to stop at one
of them named Rheinfels Castle to take a tour of it. It was well preserved, and
we got to see secret tunnels, the dungeon, and a humongous storage room, which
had all been used when the castle was occupied. Best of all was the view from
the top of the castle though, in which you could see much of the beautiful
landscape surrounding the castle. I definitely would not have minded being able
to live in the castle and getting to experience that view each and every day.
No comments:
Post a Comment