Doctor for a day

5:30 a.m. is like a shark. You know, like when you're swimming in the ocean there's always a possibility of it being there, but when you actually experience it it's awful and you never want to relive it again. 5:30 sneaks up on you and attacks in the dead of the night. We experienced 5:30 and it was awful. We got our coffee at the train station and took the bus to Bonn universitat medical school. After arriving we were shown to the changing rooms to get out scrubs and crocs. We got dressed then were assigned doctors to shadow for the day.

My anesthesiologist, Nicole, showed me to our first patient. He was originally in the hostpital for a stint in his coronary artery but during surgery the ureter was accidentally cut so for the las two months he has been in the ICU with catheters in his kidney and bladder. She said he did a lot of drugs and alcohol so it was hard to control his anesthesia because he had a very high tolerance. He came into surgery to change the bandaging around his kidney catheter. She also said that after he woke up from his first surgery he was violent and delirious so they have had to keep him sedated which makes his tolerance even higher. She explained to me that the anesthesia drugs were no longer as dangerous for long periods of time because they didn't require stress on the liver and kidneys to metabolize the drugs since they degrade easily.

After that we started on our second patient. He had blood clots in his femoral arteries and so they were planning on trying to remove the clot if possible. If it's not possible, they would have to do a bypass using one of the patient's veins. She began by inserting a corroded IV probe to monitor the right ventricle pressure and also have an access for quick medicine if necessary. After he was prepped for surgery they administered the anesthesia and inserted the ventilator tube. They then moved into the operating room and began sterilizing the patient with iodine. Before beginning their long journey to been find the arteries. It was a long process and unfortunately I wasn't able to watch until the end but I got a lot of insight into the German medical field.

We schlepped across campus to eat lunch before going to the anesthesia museum. It was very interesting and we were able to learn so much from such a knowledgable man. I thought that the nearly simultaneous discovery of anesthesia in both France and the U.S. was very cool. It was also interesting to see how quickly things progressed from the discovery to modern day anesthesia. 

After that we went home and ate dinner and slept.

6:30 a.m. Up again

7:40 a.m. Bonn HBF

And we are off on another adventure to the Bingen where Hildegard Von Bingen was from. We arrived and took in the beautiful sights of the town before arriving at the museum, we learned about the "mouse tower" and the interesting story behind it before going to the Hildegard museum. I really like the fact that Hildegard was a strong, powerful woman in a time where considered anything but. She literally changed history and that's incredible. I am interested to know whether her 'visions' were visions or were migraines like historians suspect. Perhaps she was prescribing some herbal hallucinogens to herself. We'll probably never know. Unless a time machine is invented. But she probably won't be the first stop on the list. We also so the medical paraphernalia from a roman doctor from the second century b.c. It was amazing how similar some of the instruments were to modern medicine. Things really don't change all that much. Besides the fact that we clean our instruments now but does that really matter? Next we had some time to explore and this really cool collection of messages in a bottle was upstairs. There were hundreds of messages that were sent down the Rhine and found sometimes even years later. 

We then ventured into the "Hilde-garden" and learned about the herbs and plants she described in her books as medicine. My favorite part was probably when she said that it'll either a) work or b) not work and you'll die because God wants you to die. Ultimate medieval medical insurance. 

We then walked to the restaurant for lunch before boarding the Rhine cruise. We saw so many castles along the banks of the Rhine and it was easy to see why Rhine Romantic painters were obsessed with the incredible landscapes. We then got off the cruise to go on a "baby hike" (according to Helen) up to Burg Reinfels. It was a medeival castle that has held its ground for hundreds of years (until the French blew it up). We visited the tunnels, dungeons, and slaughterhouse and we told the various stories and histories by our wonderful tour guide. 

It was such a great day and so much fun!