I had to wait for a day off of work to continue this. It's been crazy otherwise too. I am only 28 weeks pregnant and my doctor wants me to have non stress tests twice a week from here on out.
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I guess it was about 2am Monday morning when the wind really started to pick up. A couple hours later after the rain started falling hard the power went out and the generators kicked on. Keep in mind that the huge generators used to power this hospital were located outside of the hospital on the GROUND. At 7am, just as I was getting off work the wind was blowing harder than I had ever seen in my life. I went to my room to try to lay down and the first of several panic attacks began. The wind must have blown part of the roof off because the ceilings in the two rooms adjacent to us caved in. Sand, dust and who knows what else permeated the air and I started freaking out to say the least. I dug through my handbag frantically for my inhaler. I had been dealing with chronic bronchitis for a year and the last thing I needed was to feel like I couldn't breathe. I was almost to that point anyway. The next hour felt like an eternity as I was begging God to just let me fall asleep so I could get some mental relief. I could only describe the tension as this: you know when you go to the doctor and you get a shot. You close your eyes, wait for the burning to subside and you let your breath out when you feel the needle removed. Well, the needle was never removed and the burning wouldn't subside. The wind kept getting harder and louder. There was no breaks. The intensity just kept building like it was feeding upon it's own energy. The windows were boarded up and it was so dark. My boyfriend made me lay down with him beside me. I was terrified, I cried and cried. He didn't flinch. He just held me tighter and hushsed me quietly until my prayer was answered and I passed out.
I woke about 11am. The wind was still strong but not nearly as bad. I could hear the rain and smell the still lingering dirt in the air. Voices from the hallways streamed into my room. Nothing good or bad being said that I could tell. Just people waiting and sitting. My boyfriend smiled at me, circles under his eyes, hair a little disheveled but no less an angel in my eyes. He told me to come and take a walk with him. Apparently he had left a couple times while I slept to look around. He kept his arm around me as we walked up the hallway toward the new wing. I stopped when we came to the windowed passageway and, as I took in the view outside, the seriousness of our situation started to sink in like a branding iron. The first floor of the hospital was completely submerged. The parking lot and the surrounding neighborhood was a violent ocean. I looked to the left of me and saw a young woman standing with an infant in her arms. Both of them with life vests on. She appeared to be in a trance. As the fear in me started to creap, I forced it to stop for a moment as my heart broke for her. As scared as I was for my own safety, I could not imaging having my children with me to fear for also. OH GOD! MY CHILDREN! I had to believe they were safe along with my family. I couldn't allow my mind to create any thought otherwise. I was on the verge of snapping as it was. My immediate concern was if the water was done rising because the roof was the only place left to go, at least for those of us who could be transported upstairs. I looked up and saw a small riverboat headed toward us. There was a few adults and a woman holding an infant that couldn't have been more that 4 months old. They drove up to the window frantically waving their hands obviously trying to find out how to get in. A security guard who had seen them yelled and motioned to them to go around to the other side of the hospital to the balcony. They did so and the small crowd that had gathered to watch went there also. Now I get to introduce you to a person I will never forget. I'll call him Randy. He was one of the biggest, burliest, sweetest black guys I have ever worked with. He was a Patient Assistant. He would help the nurses with patient needs such as walking, eating or getting in and out of bed. Everyone loved him, and we loved him even more now. He began to reach over the balcony rail and started pulling these people out of the boat. I looked up and saw more boats headed our way. And so began the long afternoon of rescuing about 300 refugees from the water. Randy didn't quit for a single moment. He was amazing.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Day #2 of My Katrina Story
I woke up the next morning not really having slept. I mainly worked the 7p-7a shift so I was not accustomed to resting at night. It was Sunday and my only hope at this point was a mandatory evacuation which I could have sworn on the news said was in effect. Now, at this point, it is very important that you understand the structure of the hospital. It was two stories with all the patient units on the second floor. Just two weeks prior to the storm, the hospital opened up a new 7 million dollar wing complete with a state of the art ICU unit on the bottom floor and a beautiful, wide cement balcony. Mabe a covered terrace is more like it. Anyway, the second floor of the new addition was just a little higher up than the old part of the building.
I didn't do much that morning. I watched more news, I listened to the plans to move patients and tried to play some games on my laptop. I wish I would have had the sense to be sure I had a full charge on my cell phone while I was sitting there. My dad called me in a panic about noon begging me to leave before the contraflow ended. I tried not to let him hear me start to cry. I told him my car was broken down and I had no choice but to stay at that point. He told me to be careful. I knew he was wishing there was a way he could come get me. This was when I started feeling stupid for leaving my family and putting myself in danger. My children had already lost their father not even two years earlier. How could I put myself in this position? I started to feel fear on a new level that I had never experienced. I had no idea then how more familiar with the spectrum of fear I would become.
About 2pm one of the young nurses approached me with a favor to ask. This little girl and I had some differences between us recently. She jumped down my throat one morning when she came in to pick up my patients from me, something about some pain medicine I didn't give that was due just moments before she took over. I proceeded to jump down her throat in return and by the time I came back to work that night she was all apologies. Now, she needed a favor. She was scheduled to work the 3p-11p shift but if she left right then she could make in time to evacuate with her family. Would I take her shift? I did. What the hell, mabe I was saving the girl's life. I guess as helpless as I felt it made me feel like I was doing some good. So, I clocked in. I had a few patients that were being transferred to our sister hospital in New Orleans East along with a couple of our nurses to go with them. This was the idiots in power calling themselves "evacuating". I got all the pertinent paperwork and charts together to send with them and helped get them loaded on the bus. By the end of the night, we pretty much had the patients (lots of them with family members) that would be riding it out. The storm would be coming in the early hours of the morning. We started transporting all of the patients to the new wing along with all of the food and laundry that we could find on the bottom floor. My boyfriend and I moved to a different room closer to the new wing and got settled.
I had to work straight into my night shift that I was scheduled to work. Everyone was nervous but this was hardly anyone's first rodeo with a hurricane. Surely, it would pass through tomorrow and at the most we would have to wait a day for transport of some kind to come get us. We were pretty secure where we were at, everything would be okay.
I didn't do much that morning. I watched more news, I listened to the plans to move patients and tried to play some games on my laptop. I wish I would have had the sense to be sure I had a full charge on my cell phone while I was sitting there. My dad called me in a panic about noon begging me to leave before the contraflow ended. I tried not to let him hear me start to cry. I told him my car was broken down and I had no choice but to stay at that point. He told me to be careful. I knew he was wishing there was a way he could come get me. This was when I started feeling stupid for leaving my family and putting myself in danger. My children had already lost their father not even two years earlier. How could I put myself in this position? I started to feel fear on a new level that I had never experienced. I had no idea then how more familiar with the spectrum of fear I would become.
About 2pm one of the young nurses approached me with a favor to ask. This little girl and I had some differences between us recently. She jumped down my throat one morning when she came in to pick up my patients from me, something about some pain medicine I didn't give that was due just moments before she took over. I proceeded to jump down her throat in return and by the time I came back to work that night she was all apologies. Now, she needed a favor. She was scheduled to work the 3p-11p shift but if she left right then she could make in time to evacuate with her family. Would I take her shift? I did. What the hell, mabe I was saving the girl's life. I guess as helpless as I felt it made me feel like I was doing some good. So, I clocked in. I had a few patients that were being transferred to our sister hospital in New Orleans East along with a couple of our nurses to go with them. This was the idiots in power calling themselves "evacuating". I got all the pertinent paperwork and charts together to send with them and helped get them loaded on the bus. By the end of the night, we pretty much had the patients (lots of them with family members) that would be riding it out. The storm would be coming in the early hours of the morning. We started transporting all of the patients to the new wing along with all of the food and laundry that we could find on the bottom floor. My boyfriend and I moved to a different room closer to the new wing and got settled.
I had to work straight into my night shift that I was scheduled to work. Everyone was nervous but this was hardly anyone's first rodeo with a hurricane. Surely, it would pass through tomorrow and at the most we would have to wait a day for transport of some kind to come get us. We were pretty secure where we were at, everything would be okay.
My Katrina Story
I got to looking at my profile after I set it up and, in it, I had mentioned that I was a registered nurse until Katrina hit us in late 2005. I guess I should have some self therapy and talk about this some more, it's going to gush out on my blog eventually (among other tragedies turned bittersweet) so I may as well do it now, at least I will be interesting for a minute.
Wasn't it the end of August that year? the 30th, I think. Details like that escape me, plenty of other details will be as vivid in my mind unitl the day I die and, I swear to you, I was certain my number was up then. Ugh..I can feel already my muscles tensing up and my gut balling up just knowing I'm about to go back to that place in my mind. This may be something I do over several posts, so bear with me.
Okay, August 2005. I was a Registered Nurse at Chalmette Medical Center just south of New Orleans. Getting prepared for a hurricane was not new to any of us. All of the hospital employees were well aware of the policy that if you are scheduled to work when a hurricane is supposed to hit, you must take whatever steps necessary to be sure you are there when it does. I was terrified of the thought of loosing my job, my children and I had been through terrible hardships during the previous two years, I could not allow us to suffer again after we had just began to get on our feet,. So that is where my head was, it's very important that you understand this and, in the future, after this venture is complete I will go into detail what that is all about. I wasn't even thinking that hospital would be destroyed and there would be no job to go back to regardless.
The storm was supposed to make landfall Monday morning. The contraflow was going to start Saturday and the Twin Span would be closed Sunday. I packed supplies, clothes, my camera, and my cell phone....my MIRACLE cell phone. My boyfriend decided he would come with me. Can you believe I was scared for him to stay in Picayune, Mississippi alone? What a joke. I was so clueless. So off we went. Crossing the Twin Span was earie. The contraflow had not began yet so we were the only vehicle crossing the lake TOWARD New Orleans. We got there Saturday afternoon. We settled into an unoccupied patient room near the nurse's station where I worked. My boyfriend decided that he would see if he could go find some ice and some drinks at a nearby store and I decided, since I was there, I might as well pick up a shift even though I wasn't scheduled to work until Monday. Things were kind of quiet, so far, in the hospital. Doctors were trying to disharge as many patients as they could. Other employees were making their way upstairs to get settled in. Some brought their entire families with babies as young as 2 months old! I had left my three kids (ages18 months, 5 and 7) with my parents. They were going to stay at a church in Picayune. That was a common tradition in our little community. I felt pretty confident that they would all be okay, why would I worry about myself? About an hour after my boyfriend took off in my car I got a call from him on my cell phone. My car had broken down. "YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!" I screamed. I had just made my 12th payment on that car. The entire year that I had owned it I had maintained it meticulously and it ran like clockwork. My safety net for retreat was just blown to hell. Yes, I had kept at the back of my mind that if it looked like all hell was going to break loose, I could leave before the Twin Span was closed and worry about a job later. I wouldn't be abandoning my patients as long as I didn't accept any on Sunday. Seemed like a plan to me. I was starting to get nervous at that point. After my shift was over I retreated to my room and watched the news. I could hear the pace picking up in the hallways. Everyone else was watching the news as well and I assumed their nerves matched mine. My boyfriend had found a ride back to the hospital via some gracious mexicans who found the time to tow my car back to the Emergency Room parking lot. Chalmette City officials were pleading with everyone to leave. It was clear that the levees around us would not hold and very minimal authorities would stay behind to ride it out. I decided to try and get some sleep.
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Gotta stop here for now. The dishes don't do themselves and the laundry fairy is on strike. I will be able to tell my story better if I do it a little at a time anyway.
Wasn't it the end of August that year? the 30th, I think. Details like that escape me, plenty of other details will be as vivid in my mind unitl the day I die and, I swear to you, I was certain my number was up then. Ugh..I can feel already my muscles tensing up and my gut balling up just knowing I'm about to go back to that place in my mind. This may be something I do over several posts, so bear with me.
Okay, August 2005. I was a Registered Nurse at Chalmette Medical Center just south of New Orleans. Getting prepared for a hurricane was not new to any of us. All of the hospital employees were well aware of the policy that if you are scheduled to work when a hurricane is supposed to hit, you must take whatever steps necessary to be sure you are there when it does. I was terrified of the thought of loosing my job, my children and I had been through terrible hardships during the previous two years, I could not allow us to suffer again after we had just began to get on our feet,. So that is where my head was, it's very important that you understand this and, in the future, after this venture is complete I will go into detail what that is all about. I wasn't even thinking that hospital would be destroyed and there would be no job to go back to regardless.
The storm was supposed to make landfall Monday morning. The contraflow was going to start Saturday and the Twin Span would be closed Sunday. I packed supplies, clothes, my camera, and my cell phone....my MIRACLE cell phone. My boyfriend decided he would come with me. Can you believe I was scared for him to stay in Picayune, Mississippi alone? What a joke. I was so clueless. So off we went. Crossing the Twin Span was earie. The contraflow had not began yet so we were the only vehicle crossing the lake TOWARD New Orleans. We got there Saturday afternoon. We settled into an unoccupied patient room near the nurse's station where I worked. My boyfriend decided that he would see if he could go find some ice and some drinks at a nearby store and I decided, since I was there, I might as well pick up a shift even though I wasn't scheduled to work until Monday. Things were kind of quiet, so far, in the hospital. Doctors were trying to disharge as many patients as they could. Other employees were making their way upstairs to get settled in. Some brought their entire families with babies as young as 2 months old! I had left my three kids (ages18 months, 5 and 7) with my parents. They were going to stay at a church in Picayune. That was a common tradition in our little community. I felt pretty confident that they would all be okay, why would I worry about myself? About an hour after my boyfriend took off in my car I got a call from him on my cell phone. My car had broken down. "YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!" I screamed. I had just made my 12th payment on that car. The entire year that I had owned it I had maintained it meticulously and it ran like clockwork. My safety net for retreat was just blown to hell. Yes, I had kept at the back of my mind that if it looked like all hell was going to break loose, I could leave before the Twin Span was closed and worry about a job later. I wouldn't be abandoning my patients as long as I didn't accept any on Sunday. Seemed like a plan to me. I was starting to get nervous at that point. After my shift was over I retreated to my room and watched the news. I could hear the pace picking up in the hallways. Everyone else was watching the news as well and I assumed their nerves matched mine. My boyfriend had found a ride back to the hospital via some gracious mexicans who found the time to tow my car back to the Emergency Room parking lot. Chalmette City officials were pleading with everyone to leave. It was clear that the levees around us would not hold and very minimal authorities would stay behind to ride it out. I decided to try and get some sleep.
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Gotta stop here for now. The dishes don't do themselves and the laundry fairy is on strike. I will be able to tell my story better if I do it a little at a time anyway.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Introduction of a Newb
Okay, i think i found out the definition of "blogging" something like 30 minutes ago and here I am. This is soooo right up my whatever. I can't believe i haven't found this before tonight. Too much work and not enough play to say the least. I titled this Blog "Here we go, ready or not" because I am finally setting out (more like SITTING out in my living room at my desktop)to follow a dream that i've had for years and at the same time I will be giving birth to my fourth child. The latter won't happen for about 3 more months, but you get the idea. I'm a writer at heart and when I was in school I wrote articles for our small-town newspaper and tons of stories and poems that, since then, got buried at the back of my closet under my hope-to-fit-again cuttoff shorts, flannel shirts and combat boots. (Grunge rocked!)
For a long time I have put this off afraid, I guess, of opening myself up to criticism and whatever else goes along with this sort of thing. Now that I think about it, though, I have humiliated myself in so many other ways by taking a different road so what do I have to lose now? I guess I needed Circumstance and Opportunity to meet in the middle at just the right time in order for me to step out. Well, that sounds like a good enough excuse anyway.
So, like I started to say, I'm totally psyched about the blogging thing. I, of course, think that I am extremely interesting and one that would cause others to look inside themselves...blah blah blah I've got tons to say!
For a long time I have put this off afraid, I guess, of opening myself up to criticism and whatever else goes along with this sort of thing. Now that I think about it, though, I have humiliated myself in so many other ways by taking a different road so what do I have to lose now? I guess I needed Circumstance and Opportunity to meet in the middle at just the right time in order for me to step out. Well, that sounds like a good enough excuse anyway.
So, like I started to say, I'm totally psyched about the blogging thing. I, of course, think that I am extremely interesting and one that would cause others to look inside themselves...blah blah blah I've got tons to say!
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