No, but seriously.

Although I was only in Bonn for a week, having a host home there and getting to know the regional public transportation system and the town made it seem like a place to call home. Realizing that I would be away from Bonn for the next two weeks was, at first, disappointing because it felt like the majority of this trip was going to take place away from the city that we are stationed in. Having spent that last couple of nights in Hannover has made me realize how much I appreciate staying in another city as a group. I am having a lot of fun staying at the hotel and being able to room with the people that I have become close with over the course of this trip. Because we all live in the same building now, we have been able to hang out later into the night before we go to sleep giving us more time to get to know one another.

Going to the Heart and Diabetes Center in Bad Oeyhausen was one of my favorite excursions so far. The telemedicine institute was very interesting. Doctors are capable of checking up on a patient's ECG results, blood pressure values, weight, and pulse using Bluetooth technology! The surgery that I was able to stand in on was a pacemaker implantation, which was way more interesting than I thought it was going to be. Despite the lack of large amounts of blood, an open chest, or a beating heart, I was able to witness the precise and tedious workings of a surgeon. With the task to send the leads of the pacemaker through an opening in the patient's left shoulder, the surgeon took over an hour and half after explaining that this procedure normally took twenty minutes. He was having trouble getting the leads to maneuver through the openings in the heart for proper placement in the left and right side. He even explained that, after more than thirty attempts, he was willing to give up soon and try again in the patient's right shoulder on a future date. Fortunately for the patient, the surgeon was able to place in the leads properly, connect the pacemaker and sew up the opening in the shoulder.

The other excursions in Hannover dealt with veterinary medicine more than human medicine but I enjoyed being exposed to areas that I would not otherwise be interested in enough to venture to on my own. The clinic for cattle that we visited today was a lot of fun. I appreciated the tour progressively continuing with the prognosis of a single cow (or patient). We were able to visit the cow with the torn ligaments in the knee before, during and even after this diagnosis by looking at the x-ray and determining with Dr. Bruning that there was no fracture in the bones of the leg. Although more interested in human medicine, I do love animals so it was neat to see medicine in a different perspective.

Cheers,
Brittany