Tuesday was a much needed normal day in Bonn with class and then I was free to go home and take a nap and catch up on sleep. Wednesday was one of the best days yet. The highly anticipated Rhine Cruise was finally here and we got up early to catch the bus over to where it would pick us up in Bingen. Before getting on the cruise we toured a museum dedicated to Hildegard who was an amazing woman physician who left a lot of medical texts for us to see today. Once we were all on the cruise we found the sunniest part on the top deck and enjoyed the beautiful weather and views for about an hour before stopping. While stopped we hiked up to the top of Rheinfels castle which only gave us even better views. A tour guide took us through the small tight knit spaces of the castle where at some points we were underground in the pitch black. At the top we stopped to eat some local potato soup which was not your average soup by any means. After soaking in the views in a bit more with good company our group headed to the bus to head home for the day.
On Thursday we got up even earlier than we did on Wednesday to go visit the local Bonn University hospital to shadow some doctors. To my surprise they were performing complicated cardiovascular surgeries, orthopedic surgeries, and most things in between. Once we got there every one was randomly assigned to a room with a certain procedure going on. I was put in a room with an anesthesiologist and a medical student helping to put the patient under. They didn't speak very good english so I was just kind of standing there watching wondering what this woman was here for. It wasn't until they wheeled her into the surgery room did the other surgeons come in and tell me what was going on. One spoke really good english and told me that they were removing the head of her pancreas because of a cancerous tumor they had found. Being a science major and having just taken anatomy I know how dire and serious this procedure could be. Pancreatic cancer is normally a very aggressive form of cancer and no one can live without a pancreas. Actually having to remove a portion would require a lot of skill. I was able to stand on a stepping stool and watch. Surprisingly not having to scrub in I watched as they rubbed iodine on her abdominal cavity and started to open her up. This was the first time I'd really smelled burning flesh and I can tell you it takes a bit of mental strength to get over it and not get light headed, even though it may happen regardless. I managed to power through it and forget about it as they first removed her gallbladder and a couple of lymph nodes around the area. (The cancer was partially around the bile duct) While this was going on I would later find out that most of my classmates had finished their first procedure in a couple of hours and had headed to shadow a different one, however my procedure lasted an entire 8 hours. I had always wondered how surgeons kept their focus for this long let alone were even able to look down at an open area but I was mesmerized the entire time and hardly got tired. Once the head of the pancreas was removed the surgeon had to suture up part of the small intestine and while he was doing so the small suture needle the size of a small hair broke off and fell, becoming lost inside of the abdominal cavity. At first I didn't know what was going on although I could tell the surgeon was not happy and something wasn't right. We were all asked to leave the room so that the nurse could wheel in a big X-Ray machine while the surgeon attempted to find it. While outside his colleague told me that he had never seen something like this happen before. Thankfully after 20 minutes the surgeon was able to see the needle on the X-Ray (although I don't know how it was incredibly small) and then successfully find it inside of all the bodily fluid in her abdominal cavity. My entire view of surgery was changed after this unexpected but incredible day of shadowing. To them it was just another day on the job but now I had a full and real appreciation for how much skill and leadership it takes to become any type of surgeon. On Friday we had class in the morning and were all packed up for the weekend travels to the Black Forest before we headed to the zoo. I can't lie I wasn't very excited for the zoo on our last day in Bonn/Cologne because growing up I'd been a million times. Aside from maybe a few animals I didn't expect the Cologne zoo to have anything special from what the zoos in Texas had. My halfhearted attitude about the day quickly changed when Dr. Wasser told us that we'd be getting a behind the scenes personal tour from one of the elephant care takers. We were taken back into their office where they watch all the elephants through cameras in their sanctuary. Then we were able to actually feed a fully grown asian elephant as he came right up to a massive steel gate. It was probably one of the coolest things we've done on the trip and the elephant was trained just like a dog. We would hold out a few bread pieces and he would put his trunk through and happily snatch them up. The care taker even had the elephant put its massive foot through the hole in the gate for a trick.
After this incredible experience a group of us rushed off with all of our bags to catch the next train to the Black Forest. After a full day of traveling we were finally there and had to take a tram to get close to our air bnb in Oppenau. Me, Sarah, and Karan were sitting separately at the back of the tram when we got distracted from talking to to family from Wales when we realized we missed our stop and watched our friends out the window as we were driving off. Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal because the trams in bigger cities are running all the time in both directions. However, In Oppenau, Germany this was not quite the case. This ended up being the last tram of the night at 8:00PM and there was not another tram going in the opposite direction. We were taken a few miles the wrong direction when we finally got off with the only other girl left on the tram. Looking around at a vast forest with nothing but a warehouse that stores logs we realized that an uber or a taxi was probably not going to be coming around anytime soon. Along with this there was no service, so everything was looking like a great set up for a modern horror movie. While we were trying to get our bearings we realized that the one girl who had gotten off at the stop with us was about 100 ft away about to get into a car that had come to pick her up. We quickly realized this might be our only way back or else we'd be hiking miles with all our luggage in the black forest at night. I ran to the car, wearing my Hawaiian shirt and looking extremely American (we went to the zoo alright) and tried to flag the car down as it was pulling off and thankfully the woman stopped. I ran up to the car window to ask her if I could pay her to drive us a few miles away and she clearly spoke zero english. However, her daughter in the passenger seat understood and translated to her mom and she was very willing to help us get to where we needed to go. They took us to out friends and saved the night and wouldn't accept any money we tried to give them. So to say the least our weekend was looking like it would be full of adventures, and we had already found out that the friendliness and hospitality in this small town was there in full force. The next couple days we spent finding waterfalls to hike to and just enjoying being in nature really. At night we would come back to the air bnb and just hang out as there really wasn't anything else to do at night in the Black Forest but get lost. These nights ended up being some of the most fun of the trip as we just talked and became super close to one another. Below are some beautiful sights we had the chance to see over the weekend. On Sunday it we headed back to Bonn to have our last day before heading to Berlin for the week to conclude our history of medicine adventures. :(
No comments:
Post a Comment