Losing Brother Mark

Notebook Recollections

August 1980. I was five years into my first real doctor job after interning one year at Minneapolis General Hospital. Family Doctor at West 7th’s Helping Hand Health Center across from Mancini’s, in the former Little Bohemian Bakery. 32 years young. One of my first patients of that day looked very, very fragile.

“I just lost my best sister to a heart attack one month ago,” said a 70 year-old distressed lady. “We were always close, and I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

“I’m really sorry,” I said.

“We talked every day and most evenings. I don’t know what I’ll do without her.”

I told her I knew exactly how she felt.

She said, “How could you possibly know? You’re so young.“

I waited a few moments.

“My beloved 29-year-old brother, Mark ,was killed in a car accident in Utah last weekend.”

She reached out and grabbed my left wrist and started crying.I got shoulder heaves with dry tears.

I knew we family docs should never one – up our patients suffering or switch the conversation to our own trials and tribulations.

We were commiserating, going one on one with our losses.

I asked her where she and her sister went to high school. She handed me a wallet picture. Saint Joseph’s Academy in St. Paul.

From my pocket coin purse I showed her a quarter-sized Lake Superior agate Mark gave me in the seventh grade.

I saw an awful lot of death at Minneapolis General. Babies, oldsters,and everybody in between. People cut or shot or stroked out. Cancer, blood clots to the lung. Meningitis. People who died by their own hand or anothers. Mutilated, burned. Some smiling beautifully, angelically. Bless them, they were all dead.

I asked my world-wise intern advisor, Dr. Stuart Thorson, if we FPers were in the death business or the life business.

He said both. “Death is a huge part of life. We help people live, of course, and we help them and their loved ones pass on with less pain, less fear. More comfort. More understanding.”

Yes! Thanks, Doc.

My brother, Mark ,was a filmmaker. Film-schooled in Toronto. I was so proud of him. And Mark thought it pretty cool that I was an intern at The General. He even spent a night with me at the hospital during my ER rotation. My senior resident let him wear the blue scrubs we nurses and doctors wore.

That night, 2 a.m., we heard over the loudspeaker “Attention,

attention. Four school buses of evacuated nursing home survivors of a facility fire are heading to Minneapolis General Hospital. All available interns and residents report to ER receiving…“

Well, Mark and I were already in ER receiving.

Mark got pulled away to a stabilization room and was helped into gloves, mask and a surgical cap. I got sent to an ambulance bay to help unload patients. We didn’t see each other for the next six hours.

75 elderly burn and smoke inhalation patients were triaged and treated that night. No losses. Mostly numerous ,singed eyebrows and superficial burns. Mark was dressing first and second-degree burns. Not that he knew how, but he sure did by morning.

Around 8 a.m. I found him fiddling with an unlit cigarette outside the columned main entrance to the old hospital.

“We’ve got to make a movie of this place!“ Mark said. He flicked the cigarette down the front steps.

I didn’t doubt him, but I sure did wonder how the hector that would happen.

Mark was all over it.

“We’ll get permission to shoot a 10 minute short. You know, interview ER staff. Find some of those patients from that night… Then present to some of the top brass and pitch a 30 minute, 16 mm color documentary film with sound.”

He was standing on the hospital front steps, looking up at the columns and expounding. Gesturing. “You and me, buddy. We ‘ll hire a local film crew and second camera team.“

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the old General was closing in a year. And then being torn down. For a new Hospital palace two blocks away.

“Hospital admin will go for a historical preservation-type deal,” Mark said. “The senior medical staff sure will.“

“How about the money. And the time?“ I said.

Mark said it will happen.

I mortgaged my 1973 Bronco for $8000 and Mark did the same on $1500 of camera equipment. We took out some ads in the U of Mn Daily and got our crew. Admin signed on. The doctors loved the idea.

In early spring, 1976 ,we began filming and interviewing in the old hospital six months before it would move. We filmed three wild days of the hospital move itself.

Finally, one full year after new hospital occupancy ,we did follow up interviews on the same people and filmed new building shots. The film premiered with 4 showings for the staff in 1980.

On May 13, 1981, Mark was a passenger in a car that drove off an icy Alta ,Utah mountain road and dropped into a 1,000 foot canyon. He was making a ski film. I was that young doctor at Helping Hand with a whole lot more empathy for people or patients who suddenly lost loved ones.

Mr.Positive Update

It’s been 5 1/2 months since Carl , Mr. Positive’s diagnosis of stage four cancer of the esophagus. Six months to live without chemo, one year with.

Carl’s best friend Karen told me “Carl is still Carl. He never complains. He’s doing much better than the doctors expected. He gets chemo every other month…”

Full column on Mr. Positive in September ‘s Community Reporter.