Russian Romance

Saturday, January 9: Since I did not go to Paris like mostly everyone else, I got to catch up on my sleep. I woke up at 10:02 remembering that the hotel stops serving breakfast at 10:00. After running downstairs into the dining room, the nice lady let me eat. I was very happy.

Sunday, January 10: Today, I woke up at 8:00am to shower, eat breakfast at a reasonable hour, and to catch an 11:31 train back to Berlin. I arrive an hour early just to be safe at the train station to see that the train will be 20 minutes late (ca 20 minuten spa"ter). Deciding to sit out in the cold ant wait, I realized that the train ended up being fifty minutes late. Sitting in the warmth of the train now, I am excited to be going on a date with a foreigner!

Monday, January 11: My date with Anastasia lasted until Monday morning. We ate at a fancy café house and then went to the ballet. The performance was very modern, but still had a few ties to classical style of ballet. After leaving the opera house, she invited me to her apartment for some tea. It was the best tea I’ve ever had. Arriving back in Hannover at 3:40 am, Ryan and Phillip were sitting outside the room smoking cigars discussing religion. After sleeping for 2 hours, I went to a hospital and learned about dialysis. It’s interesting how the risk for a heart attack increases by 500 times if one is placed on dialysis. The machines throw clots and place extra load on the heart.

Tuesday, January 12: Today was the best day of the trip. We had to wake up really early and catch a train to the Heart & Diabetes Center North-Rhine Westphalia. The teaching hospital specializes in cardiovascular surgeries. I witnessed the implantation of a Heartware LVAD! I watched as the anesthesiologist prepared the patient. I witnessed the sawing open of the man’s chest, how they burned away tissue to make room for the LVAD, and even the redirecting of the vessels to the cardio-pulmonary bypass. The doctors prepared the LVAD (made sure it worked), and implanted it. After these quick 4 hours, Olaf came and said that we had missed lunch and it was time to go. The afternoon was awesome as well. I got to see other kinds of VAD’s and even a new experimental total heart replacement!