Hurricane Jill

August 31, 2005

Wow, lots of catching up to do. Let me backtrack for a second:

August 29, 2005
I went to visit a friend of mine up on campus. She’s the administrative secretary for UT’s student government. We got to be good friends back when I was up to my eyeballs in campus politics, and have kept in touch ever since then. She’s truly an amazing person, and has managed to stay upbeat and centered through the kind of stuff that would turn most people into bitter old hags. She loves her job and does it extremely well and without any drama or fanfare. And she was a total rock for me during some really tough times in college–the kind of times where you find out who your real friends are.

So we had dinner at Trudy’s and caught each other up on our lives. She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer the previous summer, and had taken some time off for surgery and chemotherapy. I was taking pathology at the time, so I knew how unlikely it was for someone to survive pancreatic cancer. In my rare moments of freedom to think about other people and their problems, I’d been worried about her. But she was doing well, with no signs of recurrence thus far. She’d started swimming for exercise, and looked great. As for me, she said I looked better and happier than she’d seen me in years, and that obviously being a doctor suits me.

I got home after dinner to reports that the hurricane had passed, and New Orleans was left intact. There was some flooding on the northshore, and in the 9th ward, and Slidell was in bad shape. But the reporters were mostly in the Central Business District, which had some windows blown out but was essentially dry. I breathed a sigh of relief, and wondered how much roof damage my house had sustained. I had called Dan and Mel on my cell phone earlier that day and left a message asking if they want to get together sometime the next day. I got a text message back saying they couldn’t get through to my cell, and to call them again.

Dan and Melissa are one of those couples whom most people considered a mismatch. They got together when she was a sophomore and he was a senior in college. Mel was the former cheerleader, future trophy-wife type, and Dan was an MIS nerd who’d inherited some truly unfortunate hair genes. He was 23 and already mostly bald.

So it mystified everyone what she could possibly see in him, and people thought she must have some self-esteem issues. And supposedly it was “obvious” what he saw in her. However everyone was mistaken on both counts, and to those people who knew them well, they were very evenly matched in intelligence, and complemented each other socially. Athough it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing, since he hadn’t quite broken up with his girlfriend when they started dating. It took almost a year for Dan to untangle himself from his previous relationship, even though he’d known for a while that it wasn’t going anywhere. Frankly I don’t know how Dan and Mel, particularly Mel, got past that, but they did.

In any event, Melissa and I were roommates the year they got engaged. I was mostly good friends with Dan and had been living alone up to that point, but I couldn’t afford to anymore. So I moved in with her because I figured it would be best to live with someone whose boyfriend I already knew and liked, than risk having to deal with my roommate bringing home some drug dealer who’d turn the place into a crackhouse. Then she and I became really good friends that year, and so now I’m friends with them both.

And I just love their kids.

August 30, 2005
I spent the day with Dan and Mel and their kids. It was fun–I hadn’t seen them since summer 2003, and Ryan and Robby are at that age when even a few months makes a huge difference in their abilities and personalities.

This evening I started seeing reports of the levee breach, and rising floodwaters in the city. I stumbled across a website hosted by the second year class that’s been serving as a contact point for them, and decided to join. This evening I heard that the hospitals are flooding.

I wonder, do any of my classmates really understand what that means?

It means the people on the hurricane teams are living a nightmarish existence. And I can picture it all too clearly. The power is probably out in all the hospitals except Tulane, because that was the only one with generators above the first floor. That means Pyxis machines are down, and any electronically keyed access doors are impassable, unless there’s someone inside to open it. So drug access may be limited. Oxygen and ventilatory equipment will be non-functional, and people will have to hand-ventilate with Ambu-bags. Elevators won’t work, meaning people will have to climb however many flights of stairs to transport drugs, IVs and other necessities to patients on those floors. Not to mention that the patients are stuck on those floors, and transporting them for evacuation will be a massive undertaking. Water and wastewater systems are probably broken, so in short order the stench will be unbearable. And there’s no air movement or air conditioning, so it will also be unbearably hot.

Whether I like or dislike the people stuck there doesn’t matter–I feel for them regardless. But naturally there are some I care more about than others. And I don’t know who is on the team this time around, and I’m sick with worry over who might be there.

It’s probably better for med students not to know what it’s like to be in the middle of something like that.

I also know how long it takes to rebuild a flooded hospital, and it’s clear that we won’t be able to continue our clinical education in New Orleans.

August 31, 2005
I spent the day in Houston looking for an apartment.