It was another rainy and sticky day in New Orleans as I rode around town to work, to the coffee shop, to dinner with K., and then down to the Treme to visit with D. and her kitty, Astro, who is very, very sick. I decided to take Magazine back Uptown on my way home. I’d read they were shutting it down for construction, but I guess I didn’t really expect that to happen. I mean, this is New Orleans. Promises of fixed streets and sewers are usually just talk. But no, this time it’s for real, so when I got to St. Joseph, it was time for a detour up Tchoupitoulas. I snapped this picture of the construction because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a street with so many safety cones. I felt exceedingly warned. As I took the photo, though, I noticed New Orleans Urgent Care, and wondered what happens in there. When D. had her cat scratch fever, she called around to find an urgent care clinic so she wouldn’t have to bother the ER with her injury. She was directed to Ochsner, but our visit landed us in the ER, receiving confused looks from the staff. S. broke her hand in a car accident last week, only to find the database her insurance provided had entirely outdated information. K. got an appointment quickly to have her broken wrist examined and set (yes, it has been a bad week for upper extremities amongst my friends), but she works for the hospital and has an inside track. Health care in New Orleans, in other words, is anecdotally, though more importantly officially, in serious trouble. This Urgent Care, though, seems to be a private facility, one that takes insurance, but has only one doctor on call. Health care shouldn’t be this private resource. We deserve quality and available health care here in New Orleans. I wish we had the will to make that happen. I made my detour, jogging back to Magazine on Erato, and passed a whole lot more road construction on my way. Yes, there’s a whole lot to do here in New Orleans.