In the News

Selanie Tyc, 70, of Minnetrista was admitted to Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis on July 17 after she pulled a stubborn weed from her backyard garden and fell forward onto her face, causing a golf-ball-sized lump above one eye. Her stay was extended by a surprising case of COVID-19, which caused a sore throat and breathing difficulties.

Too few individuals who are Black, Indigenous or people of color (BIPOC) — like Beatty-Metcalfe — become entry-level EMTs in the first place, but fewer make the jump to paramedics, said Dr. Tim Kummer, assistant medical director of Hennepin Healthcare’s EMS division. The result has been a mismatch in the diversity of the EMS workforce and the community it serves, and that can have consequences.

Would-be foragers should know its hard to tell the difference from an edible mushroom and a poisonous one, according to the Minnesota Regional Poison Center.

Mushrooms love humid conditions and wet soil. Officials with the Minnesota Regional Poison Center say that combination has led to an increased number of calls related to wild mushroom exposure this summer.

For the last three years, patients had an additional resource: three Muslim spiritual care providers hired by Hennepin Healthcare. The care providers not only ease patients’ minds, but they have also helped reduce readmission rates for Muslim patients — by more than two-thirds in the hospital’s inpatient psychiatry department.

“We always are concerned and there is an uptick, yes,” said Hennepin Healthcare’s Dr. Myriam Roby, who reports COVID typically declines in the summer. But not this year, as many people gather inside to beat the heat.

According to MMCD, West Nile has been confirmed in samples taken from Anoka and Dakota counties. Hennepin Healthcare has so far reported one hospitalization.

“The majority of people have already been infected and don’t even know it, so they’re not at risk of a secondary infection,” Epidemiologist Dr. Stacene Maroushek explained to WCCO News. “There still are new people to the community, and people not infected before are at risk.

“I specialize in geriatric care because many of our patients are in that age range. I didn’t want them to be placed in the general adult patient category. By the time they get to an older age, they’ve faced many challenges and I want to make sure we give them excellent healthcare.

I’m thankful I’ve been able to work at HCMC and take care of a wide range of challenges cases. That’s what medicine is all about – managing both the simple and complex. You learn and grow from that.”

Dr. Andrew Laudenbach is an emergency medicine physician with Hennepin Healthcare. He says the ER often sees an increase in patients when the “feels like” temperature gets close to triple digits.

“It’s deadly serious,” Laudenbach said. “When we talk about humid heat, it doesn’t just feel muggy, that’s a real thing that can increase the heat’s effect on your body.”

“Of all the parasomnias, sleep-related eating disorder has the worst impact on people’s lives,” said Dr. Carlos Schenck, a professor and senior staff psychiatrist at the Hennepin County Medical Center at the University of Minnesota.

Hennepin Healthcare CEO Jennifer DeCubellis and other officials presented the latest plans for HCMC during an Elliot Park Neighborhood Association meeting last month. They hope to start construction in 2025 and wrap up in 2032.

Dr. Myriam Roby, Health Clinical Outcome Director for Hennepin Healthcare, joins Freddie Bell. She says research is ongoing for cures for long COVID. She encourages communities of color to be active participants in important and health discoveries.

“Most of them do look like cold symptoms — although there seems to be more associated with fever and chills and things of that nature than you would see with a cold,” said Joshua Gramling, RN.

Given Bemidji’s location among the three largest tribal nations in Minnesota, addressing an ongoing disparity of Native Americans in the health sector proved pertinent to Casey Dorr, an investigator at Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute in Minneapolis and a Mille Lacs Band member.

Having been born at Sanford Bemidji, Dorr’s presence on Saturday was a seamless segue to his old stomping grounds and an opportunity to bring Hennepin Healthcare’s event to the Northwoods.

Margaret Udo and her family gathered Wednesday morning in the second-floor lobby at Hennepin County Medical Center for her portrait to be unveiled.

Soon to be revealed at the downtown Minneapolis hospital was a painting in the style of Shuri, King T’Challa’s sister in Marvel’s “Black Panther” superhero comic books and movie, to honor Udo’s journey and survival of breast cancer.

The hospital believes the program is the first food-specific, one-on-one navigator model in Minnesota. But it’s part of an expanding health effort to go beyond offering simple health literature, said Dr. Diana Cutts, a pediatrician at Hennepin Healthcare and a nationally recognized expert in the health impacts of food insecurity. (Dr. Cutts is not involved in the M Health Fairview effort.)

“We have learned, painfully, that giving families a printout sheet or pamphlet isn’t enough. Way too many don’t make the connections that we’d hoped they might,” Dr. Cutts said.

Perinatal mood disorders — such as postpartum depression and anxiety — are the most common complications during and after pregnancy.

Dr. Helen Kim is a reproductive psychiatrist and director of the Hennepin Healthcare Mother-Baby Program and Redleaf Center for Family Healing.

“Let’s pause and bless this time of waiting and bless the gift of life Max’s body may give to others,” HCMC chaplain Sarah Lindberg said to the crowd gathered. “Max, you are leaving this earth much too quickly. … Help us to let go of your life on earth, to sense the heroic presence of your spirit and allow your body to be a gift of health to another.”

Erik Wilson, Max’s uncle, told the group that the family is grateful for their support. “He was a wonderful, wonderful person” who will be greatly missed, Wilson said.

14-year-old Maxwell Wilson is making his final journey to the operating room to fulfill his last wish of saving others through organ donation.

Friends and family dressed in red commemorated Max’s gift of life, along with a flag raising ceremony outside the Hennepin County Medical Center.

Lakeville is grieving after a 14-year-old boy died in the hospital after being hit by a car while riding a scooter earlier in the week.

In Max’s honor, a crowd gathered outside of Hennepin Healthcare for a flag-raising, and a hero’s walk, before his organs were donated.