Day 38 - History of Anesthesia Museum

Ugh, another early day, though thankfully not as early as yesterday, so that's a relief. My day started off with German, which is getting more and more easy now that I have a handle on some of the basics of conversation. For example, when we sat down Fenja asked us how our week in Vienna was, and it only took a single second to understand and respond to the question. Pretty soon, I'll be able to have a stunted conversation in German instead of a stunted conversation in English. Quite the milestone. After that class, I got together with the three other people that are going on the Mediterranean cruise so that we could book our tickets. Unfortunately, all the regular inside cabins were already filled, so we had to get the premium inside cabins. So instead, each of us are paying $25 more. And we get a reservation and personal waiter at the restaurant of our choice on the ship. I'm perfectly OK with this. Anyway, two of our group had to go to class, so the last person and I figured out plain tickets to Milan and a hotel for the one night we're staying there before we get picked up for the cruise.

Alright, this may have gotten a bit confusing, so I'll lay out a basic itinerary (also, I'm super excited for this spring break trip, so I'll take any chance to dwell on the topic.) First, we fly into Milan, Italy on Saturday morning and check into our hotel before spending the day in Milan. We spend the night, then get up for breakfast before heading back to the airport where we'll be picked up by the cruise transport to Savona, Italy and board the ship. The next week goes as follows: Monday = Naples, Italy. Tuesday = Palermo, Sicily. Wednesday = Tunis, Tunisia. Thursday = at sea. Friday = Barcelona, Spain. Saturday = Marseille, France. Sunday = return to Savona. This is going to be so awesome!! We've already started coming up with things that we want to try/see for the 6-9 hours we'll have in each city and we'll all be able to see the cool places that we probably will never have a chance to see again, and definitely never be able to see again during our schooling years.

In other news, homework is starting to pile up again, especially since I have a physiology test on Friday in addition to this homework, and of course all the tests that need to be done before Karnival starts next Thursday. After design, we had a bit of time to eat and do stuff before we left for the anesthesia museum. The museum was really cool, and one of the founders was still alive and actually gave us a tour of the anesthesia. He told us about a lot of the devices through the ages, and even showed us his monitor that he used as an anesthetist. He also showed us the continuous closed circuit monitor that he was instrumental in creating, the underlying process of which is still being used in hospitals today. He was, in one of our teacher's words, a 'God of Anesthesiology.' He was also super sweet and when we were presenting over the various methods of anesthesia, he dropped a one cent coin and it spun forever. He stopped it with his pointer, and when one of the students picked it up and gave it back to him, he turned to the student and refused to take it, putting it in the student's pocket and saying it'll give him good luck. Naturally, all the girls let out the obligatory "awwwww" that comes when anything exceedingly young or old does something sweet or cute.

The Museum

 Dr. Stoeckel's old monitor

 A sample of the monitor he helped to make

 A recreation of an old fashioned anesthetist's office

Dr. Stoeckel himself

After the museum, I went home to spend time with my family, and am now going to work on reviewing the previous lectures for my test on Friday. Hopefully I'll be able to get through a lot of stuff today, because tomorrow is completely full with classes and activities. Including a Karnival warm-up for next week. That'll definitely be fun.

Till tomorrow!
Erin Z