September 2008 Archives

The 35W Bridge is open again.

They remade it. Built it up again, re-connecting the two sides of Minneapolis that have been for the past year so inconvenienced by detours and extra commute time.

In a sort of morbid gluttony, I drove across the new bridge four times yesterday. The first time was just because it was close and I was there and all it would require for me to ride the wings of this shiny steel phoenix was simply to go one stop past my normal exit. And suddenly I was on the bridge, hastily but very carefully re-constructed after the tragedy of one year ago that had so briefly thrust Minneapolis in to the eye of the international media frenzy - remember when it was the top story on both CNN and BBC? And for like 45 seconds everyone in the entire industrialized world was afraid to drive across bridges? And there I was, driving across this particular bridge, with the skyline of the great City of Lakes rising dramatically from its reflection in the Mississippi, and all I could think was, "Is this all?" I don't know what I was expecting - perhaps something a little more... momentous. But it was just kind of a regular bridge, made of grey concrete, with railings and arching streetlights and a distinctive lack of fanfare. Well, to be fair, there seemed to be a vague sort of squiggly blue sculpture at either end that was designed to maybe represent the river? A tribute to the 13 fallen? The inevitable passage of time? The slow march of all things towards death? The perils of rush-hour traffic?

At some point on one of my trips across the river last night I thought it might be an appropriately symbolic event to mark my return to the world of the weblog, my own attempts at narrative having collapsed abruptly into their own whirling river over a year ago. The rescue efforts were valient, but at the time unfruitful. And yet here I am, in a testament to midwestern stoicism, still a resident, still working at the hospital, still trying occasionally to go out into the world and have some fun.

Now I am officially a second year emergency medicine resident, a title that holds more responsibility, more work, worse hours, and, yes, slightly more respect. And my passage into the brave new world of the G2 was, like the bridge to which this thin veil of symbolism clings, quite unmomentous and without much fanfare at all. In fact, on the night of our end-of the-year graduation party (which is perpetually Hawaiin-themed because of its title, The Aloha Party), I was on call in the hospital on Cardiology.

But despite the well-lit concrete harshness of it all, every day reveals more about the strange tragicomedy that is human existence. Last week I saw two patients in as many days who had parasite-based delusions. Each sat on their little hospital gurney and told me that the cause of their pain, without a doubt, was the large parasite that lived inside of their organs. And then last night, before embarking on my symbolic journey across the bridges of Hennepin County, I was stitching up the head of a 17 year old kid who had been shot a bunch of times. One of the bullets had gone into the top of his scalp, grazed his skull, and exited a few inches away from another part of the scalp, without damaging his brain at all. He was incredibly lucky, and I told him so. Standing behind the head of his bead, clipping his hair away in little clumps, fiddling with the familiar process of numbing, cleaning, prepping, setting up for suture placement, I witnessed the reunion between this boy and his parents. He half cried to his mom, "I don't want to be in Minnesota anymore." This was his second time being shot since he moved here a year ago. She said, "You don't have to, baby." And then she screamed as the water that I was using to irrigate his wounds shot through the tunnel that the bullet had formed in this kid's scalp and squirted out like a little fountain from the top of his head.

ps I'm back!!! Catchy new title, eh?