We've done it -

We created our first shared weblog. Our marriage has finally ... borne fruit.

Almost 2 yrs have passed...

Since I last posted here. Quite a few things have changed, but I'm still the procrastinator I used to be. That's why I haven't managed to keep this blog running. I'll give it another try, though.

I would really love to keep this blog, if its only for myself. So I'll start by giving a short summary of what happened since May 2008:

1. I completed my clinical rotation in Louisville, Kentucky. There are a few posts at another (german) blog about the great time I had there.
2. We then moved to a nice apartment in Mannheim for 8 months, having had enough of Heidelberg and being short of money..., then moved again to an even nicer apartment a few hundred meters away which I already feel sorry to give up...
3. I studied quite a bit from July-October and on till December, when I finally graduated; after I had gotten into the habit I kept studying and passed USMLE Step2 CK and CS by January 2009.
4. In February, I got my first job in a nice hospital not too far away and worked there for a year. I have lots of good memories from that time,
   
5. we also had a great vacation in summer with my soon-to-be-inlaws (at the time) and a nice little trip to Budapest in February, but I still wanted to make use of that USMLE thing,
6. So I took part in the Match 2010 and earned a position in New York... This was really lucky, I presume, given the fact that everything hadn't worked out perfect in the beginning (it was a last-minute thing as usual and had it not been for S.W. kicking me to hurry up when we met in Mannheim at the end of September, when I hadn't applied to a single program yet, I wouldn't have matched at all).
7. Right after that, my wife and I went to China to celebrate our wedding. It was great to have that many friends and relatives come all the way to China and I think everyone had a lot of fun. After the wedding, we organized two trips, first with the majority of our German guests, then another one just with our parents and my 89 year-old grandfather.
8. We actually went to the city where he could have been born in 1920, had his father not been kept from going to China as a missionary physician by the outbreak of WW I in 1914... My great-grandfather had already sort of signed a contract to become the successor of a German physician who had founded the first hospital at that place in 1896. Here are two pictures taken about 110 years apart:
   
9. Since returning to Germany, my wife has been busy studying for her final exams. She already completed two of them, but there are three more to survive...
10. Contrary to this, I have been rather lazy myself since we returned about a month ago (I had not renewed my contract after it expired on February 15th in order to have enough time for all the wedding preparations etc.). It is quite impressive to experience firsthand the corrupting forces of our welfare state. I don't usually think of myself as a lazy person prone to waste his time playing Wii and gaining weight, depending on the state to pay for his livelihood (at least not more than the average person... I used to be addicted to CIV I + II). But I have to admit that I've come pretty close to this. And I must state here that I consider the 1700 Euros I get every month for doing *nothing* pretty much crazy. How did this system work for so long, anyway? I really don't want to be seen as the ungrateful parasite that I might seem to be for some (getting a free education, then leaving the country after "siphoning off" 6000 Euros in unemployment benefits). It just maddens me to think how great a country Germany could be if it actually manages to be such a decent place while wasting so much money in its health care and welfare sectors. I think I can invest that money better than my state, and by "invest" I don't mean buying a Porsche. We could have used a fast car, though,
11. as today we had to cover 350KM by train twice to go to Munich for our US visa interview. What initially appeared as a stressful task (and indeed very much lived up to our worst expectations when the embassy staff told us that my wife's online application form (estimated burden according to travel.state.gov: 75 minutes) had somehow been lost in their system and we had to go back to the main station, find an internet cafe, fill it out once more and be back in a little over an hour... we did get our visas, though) ended up being a great trip that "climaxed" in a quiet hour at the Hofbräuhaus-Biergarten, where we were able to catch a few rare rays of sun and cherish what people everywhere in the world hold to be typical German food: Schweinshaxe + 1 Mass Bier. I've only had it three times in my life, each time at the Hofbräuhaus, but I will miss it...
12. Of course, the subject of the last post two years ago should not be forgotten, especially since it seems that many deaths could have been avoided if building codes would have been enforced, especially in schools. What is most sickening is that people are kept from exposing those who are responsible on the local and provincial level. Although I am no expert to judge, I did like what Ai Weiwei did in Munich. At least he seems to be concerned about the victims.

Dujiangyan

I just listened to this story on the NPR website.

This is more appropriate than analysing or comparing this disaster etc... (sorry). I visited Dujiangyan in 2005 and my thoughts keep going back to this city. But even for those who can only see Sichuan as a remote place with an alien culture, this report must be moving, since it shows a universal human experience.

After listening to this report, I've nothing left to say apart from "don't forget the people in Sichuan and Myanmar and don't spend your time or money on BS!" - from now on, I will try to heed my advice (being this blog's most avid reader) and keep my mouth shut for a while...

Sichuan

I am deeply sad about the disaster that struck Sichuan.

There is just nothing to explain about this - it's absurd, and the only way to respond to it is to not give up and to fight. Right now there are so many people fighting for their and other's lives, it makes me feel bad for all the time that I've wasted in my life - which I could have used at least in part to become a better doctor. So that maybe one day I will be able to do more than just sit around, read the news and donate a little money.

Shanghai

I left Shanghai 5 weeks ago, but I'd like to post my official report about my clinical experience there... My first publication... Although it has been polished and shortened by my the editors.

here's the English version:

A German student's experience in Shanghai East Hospital

It all started with a google search – I was looking for a possibility to do a surgical rotation in China during my final year of medical school at Germany’s Heidelberg University. Soon I found what I had been looking for: A report written by a certain Philip Dautel, medical student from Hamburg, who had been in Shanghai in 2006. A few more online research and telephone calls later, I had established contact with Prof. Zhao Zhongxin, the head of the general surgery department in Shanghai East Hospital, who was very welcoming from the start on. Five months later I arrived at the hospital and was immediately introduced to the entire ward staff. What surprised me most was the friendly reception I received by everyone. In Germany, students are sometimes viewed as a burden by doctors at the larger hospitals. Even though doctors here are busy, too, they often helped me by translating what patients said in Shanghainese and explained things to me. Maybe I was in a somewhat special position, since there haven’t been many European students over here yet. In any case, I must say most Chinese I met treat foreigners very well, which is a field where Europeans certainly can learn from China!

What was also remarkable from a German perspective was the involvement of relatives or friends in the hospital routine. The first difference one notices in a Chinese hospital compared to a German one is how many people there are everywhere… Every patient seems to have someone he knows around him most of the time. [this paragraph was left out in the published version].

Of course, I was most curious to see how surgery was practiced in China. I had been to China before, but I had never come into contact with its medical system. I have to admit that I was surprised by the high level of technical equipment; on the other hand, I was impressed by the efficient way in which many procedures where performed.

Very interesting were some complex operations I hadn’t seen before, like a splenorenal shunt implantation or heart valve replacements. My most exciting moment – in the true sense of the word – was the defibrillation during an open heart op…

Because of the diverse cases I saw I think my rotation in China was not only a great personal experience and a chance to get in touch with Chinese medical students, doctors and patients, but also valuable for my medical studies.

Hopefully, other students will “google” my report on the web and share my experience!

And here is the Chinese version as translated by my girlfriend - 这是我女朋友翻译的报道:

一个德国学生在上海东方医院的实习经历

一切源自于一次在google上的搜索——为了自己在德国海德堡大学医学院最后一年的实习期能顺利完成，其时我在寻找一个在中国外科实习的可能。很快我就找到了自己想要的：网上刊登了一个叫Philip Dautel的来自汉堡的医学系学生的实习报告，他曾于2006年在上海。接着通过几次网络搜索和同他互通电话，我和上海东方医院普外科主任赵中辛教授取得了联系，赵教授从一开始就对此十分欢迎。五个月后我来到了这家医院并马上被介绍给整个医疗队伍。令人惊喜的是，我在这里得到了每一个人的友好接待。在德国的大型医院里，学生有时被医生视为他们的负担。尽管这里的医生也同样很忙，但是他们仍然帮助我翻译病人说的上海方言，或者解释各项事务。也许我处在一个比较特殊的位置，因为医院目前还没有很多来自欧洲的实习生。不管怎么说，我必须说我所见过的大部分中国人对待外国人都非常友好，这一方面欧洲人确实应该向中国学习！

另外在一个德国人眼中看起来值得一提的是，医院的工作程序中介入了许多患者家属或朋友。一下子能感受到的不同便是，和德国医院比，中国医院里到处都有许多人。每一个患者看起来都有某个他认识的人大部分时间陪着他。

自然使我最好奇的是外科手术在中国的实施。尽管我曾经来过中国，但是过去我还从未有过和中国医疗体系的实际接触。必须承认我对这里高水平的技术设备有些出乎意料；从另一个方面说，许多被展示的高效率工作步骤也令我印象深刻。

之前我看到几个复杂的手术十分有趣，譬如说脾肾转移移植手术，心脏瓣膜替换手术。在一次手术中对心脏实施电击的同时——一语双关而言——也同样是我的心最激动的时刻……

因为我所看到的许多人和事，我想我在中国的实习不单单是一个极好的个人经历以及提供了我一个去接触中国医学生，医生和患者的机会，也同样对我个人的医科学习具有十分价值。

希望将来会有别的学生能够在网上google到我的实习报告并分享我的所经所历！

Kentucky

Since April 5th, I am doing a 3-month clinical rotation in Louisville, Kentucky. Everything has worked very well for me, but unfortunately, I lost my laptop at the airport. At least this is a good excuse for not posting for another week...
Short summary: I like Louisville, people are really nice, my apartment is situated in a surprisingly nice part of town. Of course, I am impressed with how doctors work here (no blood drawing and much less paper work; even echocardiograms are performed by technicians, not doctors). And it is comforting for me as a foreigner that there are so many other people from around the world.

Thinking about different approaches to immigration in Germany and the US or Britain, I recently found this gallup report, which really left me mulling over Germany's future. The German government recently annonunced that they would postpone the opening of its labour market (to the EU's new members only) until 2011 - perpetuating the world's worst immigration policy. It really saddens me - there are two big parties in Germany and BOTH seem to agree on this. In the US, there is no shortness of cheap populism either, but many aspects of their policy seem more realistic to me...

Suzhou

I haven't written anything in the last weeks, neither on this blog nor on my dissertation. So it probably doesn't make a difference for my career if I post a few pics here or not... Since February 11th, I've been doing a surgical rotation in Shanghai East Hospital (上海东方医院), a few pictures and some posts in German can be seen here. Of course, it has been an interesting time, I will post something in the next days.

For now, I just want to use a few nice pictures I took in Suzhou last weekend where we visited the largest private garden in China (园林) and tiger hill (虎丘), which is about 500 years old: