[This is a continuation of my previous post which I have been editing for the last week. Decided to go ahead and post under a different heading since the other was getting so long. Thus, if you wish to read what preceded this you'll have to go to the prior post. OK, legalese finished...]
The night was stagnant, and we got fewer patients in after midnight. Yes, some of them had the hopeless look, especially the elderly, but most of them were just looking for some help, none of them expected miracles of us. Unlike New Orleans, a large city, this is place was all about neighbors. Yes, southerners carry guns, and one had even posted the local motto on their battered housefront, "You loot, we shoot." But, they weren't really shooting at anybody. The people banded together, naturally, neighbors with an intact roof offered protection. Anyone with a grill cooked out for their friends. They pooled their gasoline to make inland forays for supplies. They bought ice as soon as roads opened, and guarded each others houses. They looked after their elderly neighbors, trying to keep them hydrated and cool in the heat. They fished out what was left of their lives from the wreckage, and they didn't sit around waiting on someone to show up to help. They never had trusted the federal government anyway, something about a war 140 years ago...
The DMAT team was great -- enthusiastic and willing and game. The pharmacy they set up dispensed need drugs, no questions asked. Antibiotics, insulin, BP meds lost in the rising water, needles, syringes, tetanus vaccine, asthma meds -- anything on their rather generous fomulary list was free to the survivors. I don't even think they asked for insurance cards. Wouldn't have done any good, mostly people didn't even have ID. We even gave out Benadryl, ibuprofen, children's Tylenol. All the little things you might pick up for yourself at a pharmacy had ot be provided -- the pharmacy we're in as bad a shape as most other buildings.
The DMAT team also took the load off the ED, seeing the mildly injured, or the worried who just wanted a tetanus booster, or helping those who really didn't know where to go get directions to the nearest shelters. They processed over 400 patients a day, dealing with the needs of two-thirds or more of them, only sending the truly ill in to us in the ED.
And among the ED staff were other types of volunteers. People like Cam and the respiratory tech and myself who had just taken into our heads to drive down after the endless pictures of people struggling with no help from the very ones we paid to provide for this sort of situation. Others, came by way of temp agencies, but came with the full knowledge that they'd have to deal with the heat, lack of facilities, lack of back up or technology to which most of us had grown accustomed. They were no less to be thanked just because they had the foresight to do it with pay. No one could pay them enough to stand about in the miserable heat, listening to the heart-breaking stories, go unwashed for days, leave their much more comfortable jobs, be required to come up with endlessly creative ways around the failed technology. Some physicians had come at the urging of their colleagues who couldn't make it on their own but were willing to cover shifts for them if they would just go and 'help those people.' Their professional colleagues.
The church groups -- The Salvation Army, the Catholic Churches, the Evangelicals, the Baptists and Methodists -- organized themselves to deliver care within hours, and organized their people to help dispense the clothing and food and water sent down from the north. However else lost the people were, they knew if they could make it to one of the local churches they'd get help and shelter and food.
So, let me clear up my motivations. I was not noble; I came down because I was angry with the Federal Government and the News Agencies, and I was curious. I knew these people from childhood and just couldn't imagine my father's family standing about waiting on the Federal tit to come down out of the sky to supply them sustenance. I got tired of the version of events that CNN and Fox and every other network was feeding us, drowning us with nightly, daily, images that seemed to say we were helpless and it was hopeless. I had to go see for myself. Maybe that is the root of all travel writing, all journalism. To go and find your own version of events, your way of seeing them.
So, am I here to contradict those pictures? No, because I wasn't there at the same time or in the same place, but I do want others to know that the story is not over nor as damned fucked up as it looks on the 6pm news. We may not have saved that many starfish, but, at least I can say we tossed a few back in.**
** Refers to a story that circulates periodically through the internet about an adult walking along a beach after a terrible storm has washed up many sea creatures above the high water line. Many of them are clearly dead or dying as he saunters past them. Ahead he sees a small boy bending down every few feet and tossing something with all his strength into the water's edge. The adult walks up, curious, "What are you doing?"
The little boy looks up and says, "Saving the starfish before the sun gets too high."
The adult looks at the climbing sun and says, "It's useless, you can't save them all."
The little boy bends down and flings a starfish into the surf, "Maybe not, but I just saved that one." Then he walked on to the next.
