[ollie]

My sister JUST sent me this email. She's down there as an RN.

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Well here we are, living the life of Hawkeye, Radar and Trapper John. Our Base of Operation (it's called a BOO, I'm not kidding) is literally a MASH tent city set up on the grounds of a major medical center in a little town called Marrero, just south of the Mississippi River. This is one of the few functioning hospitals in the area, but all patients have to go through our DMAT first. About 80 percent of the people who go through our unit are treated by DMAT personnel and then released. We are seeing an incredible 1,500 patients a day. Helicopters are flying overhead all day, national guard is everywhere, cops are wearing flak jackets and carrying machine guns. It feels like someone else's country.

We are seeing all sorts of patients, dehydration, wounds, horrible infections. Lots of folks are coming in with rashes and burns from the crap (literally) in the water, many are infected with drug resistent bacteria. People have absolutely nothing. No medications, no money, nowhere to stay, no proof even of who they are. We had one guy come in looking for dialysis for his mom. She had already missed two weeks of treatment and was failing fast. We had nowhere to send her - all dialysis units in the area are nonfunctioning. We've had one guy who's been hanging around the BOO for two days. His wife and child were killed, he has nowhere to go and no money to get a bus back to where his home used to be. All area shelters are filled. We're feeding him MREs. We're seeing a lot of injuries from people who are trying to clear rubble by themselves and we're running a massive vaccination clinic for people who need HEP A, B and tetanus. We dealing with psych patients who've been off their medications for days or weeks and are decompensating rapidly. (But who am I do talk, it probably won't be long before we are all decompensating!)

Our introduction was memorable. We rode down here in a convoy with an armed federal protective services agent (who, by the way, got us lost and took us another 45 minutes out of the way) and arrived at 4 pm, having no idea of course what the hell to do or how anything functioned. Two hours after we arrived, the DMAT team that had been manning (personing?) the BOO left us and we were essentially on our own. We had a fraction of the staff they did and put in a frenetic 17-hour shift, grabbed a few hours of sleep and started all over again. The weather here is cruel, broiling hot and humid. All we do is sweat and drink bottled water. We smell like goats and look like convicts. The mosquitoes are voracious. We are all exhausted.

I do not know how long we are going to be here - the deployments by necessity are fairly short - anything more would probably kill us. We certainly hope to be home by next weekend, maybe even the middle of the week if we're lucky. There's a line for the computer so I've got to go. (We're sleeping, by the way on cots in a fitness center, all of us together. What is it with the feds and gymnasiums anyway?)

Thanks and love to all
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ollie