Before this week I had never seen a surgery in person. I had never been into an operating room. The most exposure I’d had to a surgery was from Grey's Anatomy and we all know how accurate that is. This week getting to go into a German operating room was amazing. I was actually very nervous going into this because I wasn’t sure how I would react to seeing surgery happen in real life. I didn't want to be the only one to pass out from seeing blood or seeing a person being operated on. We were split into groups and I was in a group of three people. I was really happy for that because I was so nervous about being there by myself. When we were walking down the hallway, my group of three started to get split up and I was left alone going into surgery. I was not at all prepared to go in myself, but I overcame my fear and walked into the operating room. I was able to see two surgeries. The first one was a reconstruction of a mans vertebrae. This surgery was very interesting because the surgeons had already gone in and tried to fix his vertebrae before. The surgery unfortunately didn’t work so what I saw was the removal of the added piece from the first try, to adding a cage around a section of the vertebrae to prevent it from slipping. It was quite interesting and the anesthesiologist was very willing to answer my questions. The next surgery I watch was a tumor being removed from a woman’s hand. The first thing I watched was the anesthesiologist numb the woman’s arm from the shoulder down. After that they did the surgery and the surgeons explained to me what they were doing. This surgery was very neat. Seeing the tumor actually being removed and out of her body was so crazy to me. Something that really surprised me about surgery is how aggressive the surgeons are with the patient. For some reason I had the idea in my head that surgery was a delicate procedure and thats really not how it is.
Before this week I had never been so close to an elephant. While this might not be such a big deal, the trip to the Cologne zoo beat all of my expectations. We met the elephants zoo keepers and they allowed us to go into one of their cages to get up close to the elephants. It was amazing and there were baby elephants! It was so adorable and very cool to be so close to such a huge animal.
Before this week I had never been to Amsterdam. This weekend trip was quite an adventure. While all of us getting sick Saturday night wasn’t ideal, we made the best of the situation and still had a pretty good time. Between the Rijks Museum, Anne Frank’s house, a canal cruise (which ended up being a private tour), and all of the amazing food, I think we had a good weekend. We stubbled upon a market that had everything you could imagine and more. Amsterdam was definitely different than I imagined it to be, but it was still an amazing city to go to and experience.
One thing that I have noticed about being in Europe is that I have developed more of an interest in history. I have always been somewhat intrigued by history, but being in part of the world that goes back so far has definitely intensified the need to learn. Going to each new city, I want to know how it was affected by the war, how old the architecture is, how the culture came to be the way it is, and just so much more.
Overall this week was another amazing one. Now I can’t wait to visit Vienna and Rome!
Savana
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