Thread by @gorskon

It's so hard to believe for me that #September11 was 20 years ago. I was about 30 miles from Ground Zero, at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey (now @RutgersCancer) at the time. It was VERY real to me. 1/

We normally had our breast cancer tumor board 8-9AM Tuesday morning, and #September11 was no different. near the end of the tumor board, then-director of CINJ Dr. Bill Hait poked his head into the conference room and said that a plane had hit the #WTC. 2/

It wasn't long before all non-emergency clinical activity at the cancer center and @RWJUH was halted, and all clinical staff were instructed not to leave, as we then expected mass casualties helicoptered and brought in. 3/

At the time, it had been only a couple of years since the last time I had practiced trauma surgery in Chicago; so I was raring to go and help. In the meantime, Emergency blood drives were organized. (I remember raiding my research lab for a scale to weigh blood bags.) 4/

I was honestly expecting helicopters and ambulances to start arriving at any moment. While waiting, I listened to coverage on the radio and, sometimes, watched it in the infusion center, whose patients were sent home as soon as was feasible and intermittently called my wife. 5/

As the day wore on, it became increasingly clear that it was not to be. I and other medical staff waited around many hours. By 9 or 10 PM, though, it unfortunately had become apparent that there were too few survivors for our hospital's services to be required. 6/

Around that time, doctors and clinical staff not on duty that night at @RutgersCancer and @RWJUH were finally allowed to go home. In the days that followed, I learned that a number of people who worked there had relatives or friends who died in the Twin Towers that day. 7/

Twenty years after #September11, I can't help but wonder if the reactions to the attacks, the nearly endless war, the security state, the xenophobia, were part of what laid the groundwork to what has happened over the last 5 or 6 years. 8/8