St. Croix Falls Surgical Center

By "Uncle Hans"


Spring is always touted as such a beautiful time of the year, but I think it is ugly and boring. No water sports, no motorcycling, no snowmobiling, no skiing of any kind--water or snow. The best blog I can come up with is the dedication of our new surgical center in St.Croix Falls, one of my hospitals. This is the outside of the building, which is attached to the hospital....

.....I was intrigued by the story of Dr. Olson, which is a lot like my story. I have nearly 27 years of the same type of work. 21 years of it were 24/7/365 call, now I am every other night and every other weekend. I did my internship at Yankton, South Dakota and part of our duties as residents was to teach anatomy to medical students there, like Dr Olson was. He was a student there in the 50's, I was there in the 70's........

.....the damned building is beautiful, but hard to photograph. This is a nice atrium with trees growing in it where the dedication took place. If the editor (Rex) can lighten it up a little you will see the balding administrator giving the welcome and Wendy in a dark red dress leaning over the railing across the atrium on the second floor........

.........this is the best shot I could get of Dr. Olson giving his talk, which was a collection of old small town surgery stories. He looks good for 83...........

We got together later and swapped some stories. Then he got whisked away by his 7 daughters, all of whom were there for the festivities.........

.......I was struck by the irony of one community that really appreciated it's surgeon and how my community has been recruiting hard for someone to replace me for the last 6 years. Different community or times are changing? I dunno. The last shot is of the OR crew dancing at the local hot spot after the ceremony. I have never seen a public dance hall with a pole that coincidentally appears right in front of the band area. I am sure there have been some pretty memorable amateur performances on this pole over the years.........

....I think I failed to mention that the new facility is named after Dr. Olson in gratitude for his years of unselfish work for the community. The local winery bottled two special wines and had glasses etched for the occasion. Kinda neat. No danger of that happening to me.........

Uncle Hans