Dear Diary

Just kidding! But I have resorted back to paraphrasing some of my journal entries for my blogging. It's just easier! The first thing that comes to my attention is the insurance and public healthcare system in Germany, and how it is so completely different from the US. Since we've talked about it on several occasions, I think I've gotten the gist of the main differences. Jonathan posed the question today of how the US would be able to change their system, and our attending doctor said that it would take *alot* of money, and social reform. Americans would have to change the way they think about the distribution of healthcare and insurance, and we would also have to consider the drop in salary of doctors that would result. At this point in time, that kind of change in the US seems impossible, but who knows, maybe we will end up closer to Germany's system in the future! Another really interesting thing from our previous lectures is Dr. Witt's lecture on complementary and alternative medicine. Her explanation of the placebo theory was fascinating! I'd never heard of that before. That a patient with higher expectations of therapy will respond much better to the treatment than one who has lower expectations is something that surprises me. I think this is because I have not ever studied alternative or homeopathic type remedies before, so it's a little hard for me to wrap my mind around these fields of medicine. Definitely the BEST part of this trip so far was the operation that I got to see today! It was the first surgery that I've ever watched in the OR, and getting to watch an open heart bypass was amazing. We didn't get to watch the operation all the way through, but the parts we did see were so... awesome. That's not the best word, but I can't think of a better word for that right now. Seeing a heart beating in someone's chest and being operated on was so neat!! Ok, people are in line for the computer, I will write again later! Guten Nacht!