Grey's Anatomy in real life

A couple weeks ago we had the opportunity to go to the university clinics in Bonn. We all got up super early, arrived at the hospital, and put scrubs on. Next we were assigned to our separate anesthesiologists and surgeries. When I met Dr. E, he was preparing for the patient to come down from ICU and quickly briefed me on the man. This guy had an abdominal aortic aneurysm after having several previous surgeries. His thrombocyte level was far below dangerously low. His pH was elevated. He wasn't clotting blood. There were several factors the doctor listed to me that indicated this would be a very complicated surgery that this poor guy may not get through. They put him on the table to take him to the OR and Dr. E hands me a huge bag to carry that's full of probably 15 bags of blood they were going to need. I've never seen so much blood. Once surgery starts, the OR gets super chaotic. There's a lot of people helping with the surgery along with all of the supervisors coming in and out to make sure everything is going right. This puts me with my back against the wall by the anesthesiologist, not being able to see past the patient's head. Looking back, I think this was a good thing since it wasn't a simple, easy fix surgery and it was the first one I have ever observed. In the first five minutes, they sucked at least a liter of blood out of his abdomen. They worked tirelessly for around two hours through several different alarms indicating various vitals were too low or too high. When they tried to close, he was too swollen and they had to wait. They also couldn't find where the blood was leaking into his abdomen and concluded it was diffusing through the vessels and he would have to have several more surgeries. I was just thankful he made it through. The longest part of his surgery was preparing him for it and to go back to ICU.

The second surgery I watched was to bypass part of a dialysis shunt in a guys arm. He had broken his arm and punctured the old shunt. I watched the anesthesiologist administer all of his medication to put him out and then intubate him. One of the same doctors from the first surgery also was doing this one, as well as two students who all helped explain to me what they were doing. The room was much calmer and I was actually able to watch them as they sewed the new shunt to the old one and took a thick metal hook and pushed it through his arm from one incision to another.

I really enjoyed getting to go to the clinics and observing surgeries. It was definitely one of my favorite days of the study abroad. I learned so much, but it made me so much more conflicted about what I want to go to school for!