Submitted by Darius Pirestani on the 2018 winter session program in Italy sponsored by the College of Health Sciences and the College of Arts and Sciences…
While my first week in Trieste fostered a sense of newfound excitement in a place I’ve never been to before, my second week took a much different direction. After spending a couple of days in the city, I developed a great sense of direction so navigating my way around Trieste was no longer an issue. Furthermore, I slowly began to develop my own daily routine: wake up every morning at 7:00 am, eat breakfast, take the bus to the hospital, complete my shadowing and then return back home to run some errands before making plans to go out with my friends. I grew extremely comfortable in my routine and felt a great sense of belonging as a result. Shadowing Ospedale Cattinara’s neurology department was entirely different than my previous week in Cardiology — the stroke unit was a quiet ward where mostly unresponsive patients have spent weeks hooked up to feeding tubes and IV’s, with doctors doing their daily rounds knowing very well that most of the patients would not make any progress. Nonetheless, they persisted with visual tests and reflex examinations, taking blood pressure and other vitals as much as they could.