Invitation Letter

Dear Charity Alumni :

Do you remember the first time you were in charge of a “Room 4.” Do you remember “See one, Do one, Teach one”? Do you remember when your day was so bad and your bank account was so empty that a free meal ticket to the basement Charity cafeteria made you happy? Do you remember coming home after being up 48 hours, exhausted with your scrubs covered in blood…and worse? We all do, we trained at Charity!

Charity Hospital is now only a memory, permanently closed since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In her day, Charity was a busy hospital and trauma center providing free care to tens-of-thousands of patients every year. She was also an amazing teaching hospital with an endless supply of patients for us to treat and hone our craft.

There are books written about the history of Charity and a book describing the final days of Charity during Katrina. But there are no books from the resident’s perspective. We all have stories from our days at Charity – some are funny, some are amazing, and some are just plain unbelievable. This is why we are contacting you. We plan to publish a printed book compiling Charity stories from those who trained there. And we want to include one or more of your “Charity Tales”.

Please take a few minutes and think back to your residency days. We want stories about funny patients and experiences while you were at Charity. We want stories about the amazing Charity “third world” medicine that really worked. We also want you to remind us of any terms or words unique to Charity. If we get enough of these we will include a Charity Glossary in the book (for example – low blood –anemia, high blood – hypertension, sweet blood- diabetes). Also, if you have any photographs from your days at Charity that you think would help the book, please email them directly to us.

Please understand the purpose of the book is to celebrate Charity by sharing our astonishing stories with the world. We do not want to bash Charity – in her day, she was a great hospital and gave each of us priceless hands on experience. We are both proud to have been trained at Charity.

We cannot use any real names of patients, so please if your story has a patient name – you must use a fictitious name. We will be happy to list you as a contributor, or you can remain anonymous. We may edit or rewrite your story, so be patient with us. We will get this published, and if we use your story, you will get a free copy of the book.

This letter is going to all the Tulane General Surgery and Tulane Orthopedic Surgery residency alumni. If you have friends that trained at Charity with other residency programs or with LSU, and you think they would want to contribute, please give us their name and address and we will contact them. If you don’t know their address just give us a name and what type of doctor and a home city or state and we will track them down. The more Charity Tales the better.

Just go to the Charity Tales website at www.charitytales.com. You will need to register your name and sign the copyright release. We cannot use your story without signing the release. You can submit as many stories as you like, and please add as many details as you can remember. Please send the web site link to all your friends that are Charity Alumni. If you have any questions, you can contact us through the web site.

Please take time from your busy schedule and help us write this book. Charity is now just a memory and these stories are now fading into the past. We owe it to ourselves and to Charity to write this book. When we think back to our years as a resident, the best memories are the stories we tell our friends about our time at Charity. We need to share these stories!

Thanks for your help,

Mark Brinker, MD
Tulane Orthopedics 1988- 1993
mark@mbrinker.com

Bo Frederick, MD
Tulane Orthopedics 1985-1990
bo@upperextremitycare.com