The definition of insanity

August 30, 2008 at 3:29 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

It goes without saying that I’m deeply concerned about what happens in New Orleans over the next week. Many of my classmates stayed for residency, and probably some of them are on the Code Grey team (essential staff in a hurricane or tropical storm) this time around. I can’t speak for them, but for me that was not a choice I felt I could make, and still call myself a sane person. It would have been the third go-round for me with hurricane-related destruction of a hospital where I work (Allison, Katrina and Gustav). It was just too much.

Once is bad luck, and twice is bad judgment. But three times is insanity.

However, I am still at the mercy of Gustav in one crucial way: Tulane is my ERAS Dean’s Office. Which means they’re the people who receive and scan all my recommendations, my transcript and my Dean’s Letter into ERAS. How much choice did I have in that? Zero. Believe me, if I had a choice, I’d have chosen otherwise.

So the entire school is closed, from noon yesterday until September 4th, next Thursday, presuming that Gustav does no significant damage to New Orleans. If it does, all bets are off regarding my neurosurgery application this year. Which I realize is a small matter in relation to the damage countless others will suffer, and I don’t mean to minimize or discount that at all. Yet still I am beside myself at the prospect of my application getting screwed up yet again, because of other people’s magical thinking.

So let’s cut through the crap here. The solution for New Orleans and its people consists of two steps: Step 1) locate your testicles; Step 2) get some Cat 5 levees built, or get the hell out. Anything else is just insanity in disguise.

Having said that, I hope and pray that New Orleans remains safe and dry this next week. The shameful thing is that it is a matter of hope and prayer, or at least ordered chaos and statistics, rather than human ingenuity and political will.