05-SEP-A-10
THE SYSTEM GROWS IN SIZE AND INTEGRATION
AS THIS ADVANCE TEAM EXPERIMENTS WITH THIS NEW
“WHEEL-LIKE” INVENTION
September 8, 2005
We have worked rather well as the advance team after all the stutter start and modifications on the fly, and today we saw five times more patients than yesterday besides clearing up more administrative activities to make our move out more smooth and packing up all our gear to take it back in more easily. We have eaten MRE’s and American Red Cross hot meals (some kind of sauce over rice) twice per day, and today the mobile mechanics, plumbers and electricians are working on the plumbing of the erstwhile Meadowcrest Hospital (now Hotel ) to unplug our plumbing and get showers working. We even had some kind soul brave a whole bureaucracy to deliver a dozen Domino pizzas to our clinic under an armed escort. A bit later we had our Armed Arkansas National Guard under Sergeant Big Fella, secure the zone for us to pack out our gear (we still have to pick up and put down each day since we do not know if we will be moved again) and await our escort. Since they were running thin on armed escorts, we had to wait until there was a whole convoy—fifty pieces of heavy emergency equipment, all with sirens and thousands of flashing lights going, moved out with our four emergency vehicles between Humvees and Louisiana State Troopers and a truck load of National Guards “locked and Loaded” and each hanging out of the truck like collie dogs scanning the ruined neighborhoods we passed through—a great Photo Op if I were not locked inside one of the lead “Mobile ICU’s” and bouncing around inside while sitting on a stretcher. The last time I saw a convoy of that many flashing lights under armed guard, was when the UPS trucks in convoy returned out sweat suits and extra socks form Statten Island at the Start of the New York City Marathon to the pick up point at the Finish Line in Central Park! I know how special that should make me feel about being the centerpiece in a parade, which only my sweat socks had enjoyed before!
I am fine, and working more now on patients than on getting to see patients—which is one of our principle legacies here. We have invented and polished up the system of supply chain and security net in community outreach centers for the groups of volunteers that are signing up in droves to follow us several weeks later. It is a long and slow process—too long and frustrating for some of the Type A personalities who are all generals and no lieutenants or even colonels let along sergeants—and for the moment, I am Major Geelhoed, just doing what I can when and where I can do it.
Each patient I saw today had a need for high blood pressure meds, as well as the kinds of folk seen regularly by internists—fat, reflux, asthma, cardiac and diabetic—all requiring meds and we being the only source for now. A Walgreen’s and a few others are opening up and if I put my DEA number and MD license number on a script with my name, they can get a month’s worth of all meds I order from these sources beyond the week’s worth that we simply supply them from our stock, and the meds will be free to them and paid by FEMA later. I heard that the massive operation I have been describing is rolling out at an increasing level and I am on the front end of that wave being the first group of responders down here, so it will crescendo but within better defined boundaries as we mature the response system in our centerpiece “Operation Lifeline” for Jefferson Parish, which the Parish President has been proud to say is the showcase and a model for other community rehabilitation.
Today each of the patients I saw came with some physical complaint, but each broke down after I sat with them a bit, and after (as our Psychiatric nurse calls it “Three Slaps and a Hug,”) tells me what is really bothering them: Here is what I have heard from a consecutive string of patients I have treated today—all with something for their somatic complaint, but then a lot of connections to the Red Cross and to the Social Services, Child Protective Services and local legal aid:
“ I have not been able to find my brother. My sister has not been heard form. My Grandbabies are only half returned home. I was in the business office of Truro Hospital and I will have lots of time to read now after 40 years on the job. Truoro Hospital was in New Orleans you may remember, and is no more, so I have been able to find contact with only one of my work-mates. I am living with my sister, and I take her pills and break them in half since I don’t want to take all of hers.”
I am now sitting at the big Anne Arundel County mobile Command Post awning and am hooking up to their generator to ask to stand in the queue to send this message back by web access. As I do so a convoy has just passed of uncountable numbers of reserve Army Trucks loaded with supplies, and a hundred buses have rolled in to take people away which is rumored to take place tomorrow as my area of the village of Gretna is under Martial Law. I hear that the price tag of this operation is two billion dollars a day—not counting the Big Bucks of my Salary! Everyone here from Maryland is a volunteer, and a number of the displaced New Orleans survivors are now full time FEMA employees, so there is at least some system of employment coming form all that. The story here is –as of course it is in any massive government and military peroration that the need to get so much stuff mobilized means that there is some considerable waste until efficiency is made to account in the system. But until that happens we are stretching every envelope—not different then Afghanistan and Iraq with the same urgent response in massive quantity. And the gunfire is not different, so security remains their principle concern for volunteer protection.
I will do what I can do until I am not needed as much as someone else—and I will enjoy it!
GWG