05-SEP-A-14
A FULL DAY WITH A RE-ENFORCED TEAM
CARING FOR 112 PATIENTS, INCLUDING A US MARSHALL WHOM I REHYDRATED AND A NUMBER OF PATIENTS WHO
HAVE MEMORABLE STORIES—AND A FEW PHOTOS TO FORWARD TO YOU
September 12, 2005
I may have a number of photos to attach to the email message as I had promised. If it is possible to send them, they may send more of the story than the script that I will shorten for today, and hope to append the notes I had sent last night with the attachments of the last several days of activities in the clinics and the drill as many new people have rotated in and about half the number of newcomers had rotated out. We have done some work of the kind that the people needed badly today.
One of my patients was a woman who had several problems that were relatively easy to correct and we gave her the medicines she needed and the scripts that would carry her long term. She then told me about how she missed going back to work. I asked where she worked, and she replied Meadowcrest Hospital. She began to cry when I told here that I was IN Meadowcrest Hospital, and that it had not looked so good in a long time, since it was policed with each of us assigned chores that even included emptying every refrigerator and freezer of the spoiled food that had rotted in there and had fought off the odors and retching stink that pervaded the place when we first found it, abandoned, with stuff catered everywhere. It was now taken over—not by the vandals and squatters she had feared (although in a sense we are—but by people who know about hospitals, typically live in them, and care about them and are trying to turn it back into a habitable and functional unit as rapidly as possible. There is a dedicated amateur cleanup crew with a lot of forward motivation, such as a Professor of Surgery whose job last night was vacuuming the carpets in the dining area of the cafeterias and cleaning the floors of the kitchen—and it would be turned over to another crew of the same kinds of people who were buggy about the cleanliness of the place since first of all it is home to us, and second it is because we know JACHO standards which we hope to maintain. She started to have hope since she had feared the worst, that it was destroyed and would never be a functioning hospital again, and we told here against the predictions that it would be two years before it could be used as a hospital, we were making sure it was a very good hotel and would have an emergency room rehabilitated within the next two shifts of rotating volunteers, ready to re-open within the next month. She was a happy camper.
A nice young guy who was a US Marshall, graduate of the LSU program in finance and stationed at Jacksonville Florida where he served warrants after a busy term in Washington DC came in a little wobbly. He is sleeping at a fire house after volunteering with his boss, a woman agent of the US Marshals with a nine millimeter Glock low on the right thigh and a Mac-10 slung over her shoulder, which he had just got rid of himself when I secured it with his co-worker. Believe it or not, the female agent (from Orlando) is named Katrina, and always wondered why her mother had named her such a strange name that no one knew (before) how to spell. The story is that they would be busy today since there was a large shipment of money coming down to the area in order to have the banks reopen in the next several days. He had a busy day lined up but developed explosive diarrhea last night. No on in the station had a similar problem, but he was too weak to stand up. Through and IV popped into him before he knew what was happening I poured in five liters of saline solution and he still did not feel the need to pee. I gave him a couple of liters of solution of Gatorade powder I had mixed up myself and an Imodium, and then walked him, still light headed to the john where he peed an “amazingly small quantity”. So, I convinced him that he was at least a half dozen liters down, and he went back to the station under his own power to be ready to report for duty tomorrow since the watery clear (probably rotavirus) diarrhea was self-limited. He is going to stop in tomorrow on his rounds.
The locals are bringing in Chicken and Pork chops they are getting from the Piggly Wiggly which opened today, and grilling it on the barbecue we found in the school. They are going to get shrimp from someone they know tomorrow and we will put opt some good grilling. I want to do some good things for these fellows since they are heading home after the long duration of their tense stay in Iraq intercepting the smuggling of RPG’s and AK-47’s largely through Imams and the mosques which were off limits to them. I heard lots of stories and got a number of great anecdotes I will record later about their experiences in Iraq, and how eager they are to go HOME to Arkansas on Saturday if their demobilizing orders come through. I will save these stories for later, but these guys relate to me for two reasons: first, they have nearly all come down with some kind of sore throat and fever and I have most of them on antibiotics and some analgesics. Second, I understand them for reasons that they have missed several hunting seasons and are eager to get out for elk hunting in Colorado (which they rapidly learned I knew something about) and we will probably swap out on a Chesapeake waterfowl hunt as I try to keep in touch with them to hunt the flooded timber for pintails at some point. It was fun since when I ask them stories about what they know and like best, and they find out I can match them quite a few of those same dream experiences for them and back up a few of those stories with some pictures. These are Arkansas country boys who had never been outside the country and they heard about Kamchatka Snow Sheep, Siberian Brown Bears, Altai Wapiti, and Dall Sheep—let alone Caucasus Tur. I still know pheasants and a few ducks and especially appreciate whitetails!
We picked up a Pharmacist on our team today and it turned out when I met her I learned the today would be her birthday. I went through the muster roll call this morning and then made the announcement that incoming pharmacist Musser was not only here present but on her birthday at that. “Have you never forgotten ANY fact important to someone else?” she asked.
I will see if I can get some pictures attached to this and will try to send a couple per transmission if they make it out of the Command Post.
This forwarded message may have the address of our group picture as we were rolling out the other day in the blog site http://aacomccu.blogspot.com Later I will try to forward soem pictures form our site as we are in action in the Jefferson Parish communities.
We had a full dress moment of silence in commemoratingthe events of 9/11 four years ago--the last tiem everyone was pulled together as massively as this largest natural disaster in the nation's hisotyr. We are moving toward a routinized work day, with improvemetns all around--tomorrow we may get electricity to our Lincoln School site and we hope to have our Arkansas National Guard regulars returned form Iraq to guard us in better quarters by gettingthem out of their hard cement bivouac to wwhat may be A/C comfort and all the gooides we can purloin or purchase for them to supplement the MRE's. We are distribuitng bottled water, food, ice and necessities of the kind that anyone who uses diapers, infant formula or femine hygiene products might recognize. Our internist and pediatircain have "rotated out" so I am covering that part as well as some trauma now occuring in th cleanup crew who are stringing wires and clearing treefalls.
A C-130 load of replacemetns has swapped out our EMS service troops and will bring us in some replacemten docs for whom we are teh "Old Guard" first on the scene. We are "policing" the commandeered Meadocrest Hospital to the point tha it looks far better thatn it did when we arrived, bt we have "deployed" and "procured" much of its abandoned supplies for our forward clinics--but the massive FEMA mobilizatoinis now makingour supply chain much better and fastere. Each day we see doubled numbers of patinst and can now deliver the tetuanus and hepeatisi immunizatoins we all had to be here.
So, it is "maturing" and the colonels who "roated out" like the FEMA Director are being replaced today by a General as we have turned out a derlict and devastated situation withiin twenty four hours into an up and runnign "Operatoin Lifeline" seeingover a thousand patinets within twenty four hours of our regrouping and changing the mission inot what was requested by the local Parish President who is "Blessing us" as the efforts now seem ot be teh shocase of the relief efforts on this side of the Mississippit. Security has imprved to the point that we are now going to be allowed to travel in convoy with flashers and sirens but not necessarily requiring an armed guard fore and aft--at least during the daylight hours before curfew. We are under martiallaw with the interseting social system that brings along in train. We had a hot catered meal of fried catfish and jubolaya today which shows we are mvoing form MRE's cooked in thier foil packets toward some degree of normalcy. I and all the others are snacking on too much junk food alwasy alvailabe and having no exerise because of our perimeter security boundary, so I should run--but the substitute is that a neighboring citizen brought over dumbells and a bench for the school site so maybe we can work off a few of the unecessary calories even though it will not be "marathon condition" that I will carry away when the C-130 goes "wheels up" in ten days.
I have little news about Derwood's rehabilitiatoin and it has no major appliances now with four refrigeratoin units awtinreplacemtn on order. I DO have some informatoin from speaking with Daonld who is going to be speaking Monday and Tuesday with two competing cardiac surgeons about the advisability of prompt aortic valve replacemten and details of th nature of the valve and anticoagualtoin requirements and the implicatoins of ech decision--this should be more cleear in the attachments.
I am doing what I shoud and can, and will continue to do it until someone else is more useful than I!
Cheers!
GWG