Hannover-Norderney

Having been away for 10 days in Salzburg, Vienna, and Prague I was relieved to return to Bonn. Then we were swept away less than two days later to Hannover. Tired I was, but excited to travel to Hannover to hear about cardiology. After a day in Hannover we left for the sleepy island of Norderney. I never imagined to see the North Sea; I don’t think I even knew the North Sea existed. A fond memory is me and a few others drinking wine on the dunes to watch the sun set over the ocean.

              Hannover is far from what I expected. Hannover is a rather large city, so I expected tourism to have found its place there. But this was not the case. As the cardiovascular surgeon explained, there are no major landmarks or festivals to attract non-Germans. The surgeon spoke great English during his presentation on LVADs and kept my attention throughout. As I biomedical engineer, I have a keen interest with such devices because they will probably become my livelihood. The charts we saw showing the improvements made with cardiac output in these devices over the past 15 years astonished me. The next step for LVADs in my opinion is nixing the external battery. No one wants a wire protruding from their chest, and infections are an everyday worry. An internal battery would be a real game changer as long as the cardiac output is comparable to an LVAD with an external battery.

Axolotls might be my new favorite animals. While looking into their tanks, many swam up to me to see if I had pellets for them. Watching them swim is a funny thing because they don’t have much length in their limbs. It’s like the axolotl is learning to swim for the very first time every time. The cuteness is not what draws research to them; it is their capacity for tissue regeneration, and they have a lot of it. As research shows, their capacity for tissue regeneration can be improved with some spider silk serving as a template. Of all things one could use spider silk for, I never thought of it as an application for tissue engineering. But with the optimum spacing in between the fibers for cells, spider silk can be the best tissue chassis. The success story of the man where the spider silk served as a guide for the nerves going down his legs convinced me. He couldn’t walk before, but now he can.

              Mud and salt. That’s all I have to say about Norderney. We went to the Thalasso spa on Thursday, and I have never been so muddy/salty. My skin felt amazing and as smooth as a baby’s bottom, but I had to pay the price of covering myself in mud and salt. The mud moisturized, and the salt exfoliated. On the final day, our group waded through mud with a guide and a bunch of kids who were at a summer camp. I’m pretty sure the guide was a North Sea guru. I finally discovered what a cockle is on that trip. I have heard the song “Cockles and Mussels” my whole life, so it is cathartic to finally put a shape to the name. Also, I was unaware that some worms excreted iodine when under stress. Collin has a stained hand to prove it. Norderney almost felt like an American coastal town. It was a sleepy, laid back town on the ocean with an extraordinary Thalasso spa.