HURRICANE KATRINA RN Relief Weblog

Giving hope

Sharon Hill, RN, deployed to the Houston Astrodome 

I started out here (at the Astrodome) in Hydration. This was the most basic need.

Some people were held here for 24 hour observation. I started IVs but I also found that we were providing a kind of social service by listening to people.

One woman came in with no clothes at all. She had socks and a hospital gown. We were able to get her clothes, and she said, "These are church-going clothes. I've never had anything like this before."  Another man we spoke to was a hero. He had the only two-story house in his neighborhood. The second floor was above the water.  He took his boat and went all around the neighborhood collecting people until his second floor was full. As he floated down his street searching for people, he passed many bodies. He told us, "I wanted to turn them over, to look to see who they were, but I couldn’t do it."

The most gratifying thing to me is coming here and being able to help, whether the medical need is basic or complex, or as simple as listening to people’s stories. We let them talk and tried to give them hope.

Proud & worried

Christie Delemos, RN, deployed to the Houston Astrodome

CNA made it very easy to be here. I was shocked that it would be so easy. It has made me very proud to be a part of CNA.  I think I always thought of CNA as a bargaining organization, but this has shown me that CNA is a professional organization with goals I want to support. They quickly mobilized to bring care to patients in need. It was impressive.

Many of the people did not have good access to care prior to this. We've seen untreated diabetes here that was an issue before people even arrived. Many of the people here have not been cared for, have never seen a doctor, have never had an eye exam. It’s so evident that people need access to basic care.

This event really proves that we need a national health care plan.

Concerned for their future

Rachel Carver, RN, deployed to the Houston Astrodome 

People came here with nothing. They left their glasses behind.  They had no identification. I primarily worked triage here, and people had a lot of basic needs. There are a myriad of needs, including psychological problems among the evacuees that are being thrown into the Houston community.

It still isn’t clear what is going to be done on the Federal level. The people are being moved to smaller shelters, but how does that solve their problems in the long-term. I feel very concerned about what will happen next.

Making a difference

Tina Simon, RN, deployed to Earl K. Long Memorial Medical Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

You look at the coordination it took for CNA to do this and you have to be impressed. I’m glad CNA made it possible. Most of the patients I see can’t talk about what happened. One woman told me her friend was killed at the (New Orleans) Superdome. Most evacuees are too traumatized. I saw an elderly man. He was beautifully dressed. But his shoes were wet, and there was silt all over them. When you’re here, you feel like you’re a cup of water on a forest fire. But together, we’re a lot of cups. We’re making a difference.

Healing touch

Janelle McClung, RN, deployed to Pascagoula Mississippi, Singing River Hospital

On one day I went to the small town of Pass Christian, Mississippi. They sent physicians and nurses out into the community to see if we could assist people. We drove up and down and anywhere we saw people we asked what they needed. We found one man whose mother had died and she was still in what was left of the house. He didn't know what to do, so we helped him get assistance.

Their houses just weren't there anymore. There were just piles of rubble. You couldn't tell where you were in the town, because there was so much debris. We marked the place to return to by saying, 'turn right at the house frame next to the blue wall'.  It was amazing that we were able to find anyone again.

One nurse I worked with touched the arm of a woman we were helping and the woman dropped to her knees and cried and hugged her. She had lost everything. She had nothing. She said, 'you are the first person who has touched me since this happened'.

Katrina victims' moxie touches nurses

California caregivers find Mississippians are gracious, tenacious.

By Christina Jewett, Sacramento Bee Staff Writer,
September 19, 2005

With their homes leveled to rubble and their lives rendered a scramble for survival, Mississippians still smile upon receiving a post-tetanus-shot lollipop, Lynda Moss has found. The Acampo registered nurse and her sister, a nurse from Lodi, spent the last two weeks in the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina, caring for people whose sorrow made her weep and whose resilience, well, made her cry.

"Everyone there would say, 'God bless you for being here to help us,' " Moss said. "All the time, it was overwhelming, everyone, without fail." Moss said a team of 19 nurses organized by the California Nurses Association initially arrived in Jackson. They first went to work in the rural Stone County Hospital, which was receiving an influx of 130 residents from a damaged nursing home.

The nurses were among a slew of Californians who went to the Gulf Coast to help; some are beginning to return to the state. On Friday, 14 members of the Sacramento Fire Department's swift-water rescue team returned. Some of the 116 California Highway Patrol troopers also came back. (read more)

Home after giving lots of TLC

Hug makes helping out in Mississippi worth it

By J.M. BROWN, staff writer, Vallejo Times Herald
September 19, 2005

With her relatives hours away, a lonely woman who'd lost her home, car and clothing to Hurricane Katrina went limp in the arms of Vallejo native Joelle Marek Treanor. "I hugged her really tight," Treanor said, recalling her most memorable experience volunteering at a coastal Mississippi hospital. "She started sobbing. She was whispering 'Thank you.' She had told me that it was her first hug. She needed it so badly."

For Treanor, a Watsonville labor-and-delivery nurse, the anonymous encounter inside a makeshift tetanus clinic where she worked several days for eight hours a day made being away from her own family worthwhile. "That was my big moment," Treanor said. "We probably hugged three minutes."

Treanor was among several nurses, including a Benicia native, who returned to California last week after volunteering at Singing River Hospital in Pascagoula, Miss., where they relieved exhausted medical personnel. With a new wave of Californians arriving to replace them, the nurses told of the tearful goodbyes they shared with the Mississippi patients and children with whom they bonded. (read more)

Disaster Routine

CNA’s Bonnie Martin’s (NPQL) daily journal gives a glimpse into the routine of nursing in disaster zone.

It's 1am in the morning and we have a little breather.  I got to sleep in after my shift last night and spending some time on the computer catching up on reading and writing emails.

We are staying in a room in the hospital wing and Ankhasanamen (a CNA RN form Oakland) who had worked the night shift was still sleeping, so I quietly got dressed and went to see how Lynn (a CNA RN from Sacramento) was doing on day shift. She said all was well and that it had been very quiet.
Well, let this be a warning to all nurses everywhere for all time: NEVER, EVER use the Q word, PLEASE !!  Because then we didn't stop moving from 10:30 am to 7pm. We were desperately trying to find a medication source for an evacuees’ Insulin supply.

We were initially told that Wal-Mart was providing a week supply of medications free for evacuees. They stopped doing this due to overwhelming demand.  But even when they were doing it, they were not supplying free Insulin or free Inhalation medication. The Insulin we needed for an evacuee costs over $100 and she is on quite a large dose and needs fairly frequent refills.

Red Run-around

We were then told that Walgreen’s would provide the medication if she had a voucher from Red Cross, which of course, she didn't have. Just coincidentally a few minutes later, four Red Cross volunteers arrived at the hospital by accident. They were driving by and noticed the hospital sign and decided to stop by and see if we had any urgent needs. They said that they didn't even know that this hospital was here until they saw the sign. (It is the only one in the parish and the parish is geographically the largest in the state, but with the smallest population.)

We told them that we needed vouchers for medications but they told us they were only supposed to find out about "urgent" needs, such as food and water.  They said we could call Red Cross for vouchers but that they had no idea how long it would take to get them. In their defense, they were volunteers and expressed their own frustrations and much dismay about how poorly things were being handled and their inability to provide actual assistance. The people here are complaining that the Red Cross phone numbers don’t work, are always busy, or refer them to a web site which refers them to the phone number that referred them to the web site.

The Red Cross volunteers recognized that this was a common complaint heard at many places but of course they have no ability to fix the problem either.  So, do we have the Insulin yet? No, but we have great hopes for tomorrow. The administrator of the hospital is going to authorize the use of the pharmacy they normally use and will pay for the Insulin from their own fund. One problem solved thanks to Lynn's persistence on the phone on and off for hours.

Wonderful People

While this was going on a gentleman who is sheltered a few miles from here came in and asked if we could refill his prescriptions for him.  We were actually able to get his refills called in to Wal-Mart before they stopped taking orders.  A driver from the hospital drove up to Lake Charles (about 40 miles away) to pick up the gentleman’s medication.  Actually, they are supposed to only do that for the evacuees staying here.  The hospital workers are a wonderful group of people in a wonderful community. I can't praise them enough. They didn't wait for any red tape to be cut, they just jumped right in and started helping anyone who needed it.

We were also working with an elderly woman with some medical needs and her daughter who is exhibiting some psychosocial/stress problems that is making care of her mother a bit more difficult. Without giving details, it involved a trip to the emergency room, drawing blood, discussing results with mother and daughter and helping them with decision making. My hypertensive patient on oxygen is not having a good night either. Her blood pressure is still quite high and she is not feeling too well.

It’s made worse by anxiety attacks. She doesn't actually need emergency care.  There is not much we can do medically tonight (we will try to get her meds adjusted tomorrow.) I just talked with her awhile, helped her get comfortable in bed and gave her a back rub. She was able to go on to sleep and we will hope for a better day tomorrow.

Night Nurses

Speaking of tomorrow, that's now. It's 2am as I have had to stop writing to do a few things. I am working on the "hospital" side from 11pm to 7 am because the RN who works here has hurt her back and there was no other RN to replace her. So I am helping out over here.

I will be relieved at 7am by Lynn, so we’ll only have been up for 22 hours. Piece of cake - I'm a night person. Ankhasanamen has been up since noon and is on the night shift now as well on the evacuee side. She will be up about 19 hours. Good thing she is a night person too.
One happy event today

One family that has been here for nearly three weeks and was taken into a staff member’s home for a few days, will be in an apartment in the area very soon.  Only ten more families to go.

Neighbor-to-Neighbor

Sharon Hill, RN, hears a story neighborly love and trama

He was a 37 year old construction worker. He lived down near the levy and had the only two story house in the neighborhood, and he had a boat.

When the water started to rise, he went around collecting people from the neighborhood, and brought them to his house, and all of them were on the second floor and on the roof. While he was going through the water, he bumped into floating bodies, but said he just ‘pushed them out of the way’.  He told me, ‘Sometimes I wanted to turn them over, to see who they were, but I couldn’t’”. He told me that mostly he would leave them and continue to rescue people.”

Sharon and several other nurses have said that part of what they do here is listen to people. They say that people are deeply traumatized, and they feel their role is to care for the patient, and part of that is hearing their stories and attempting to understand while comforting them.

Saving Lives, Losing Lives

Claire Hart, RN, tells a story of heroism in New Orleans

I met a man named Wayne. He came in for a dressing change. His fingers were cut from holding onto the edge of a roof.  Wayne worked as a nurses’ aide in a convalescent in New Orleans. He went in on his day off to help with some of the patients. He and another woman went out for a smoke and saw the water coming fast and saw branches floating up the street so they ran inside. The owner had a boat in back of the convalescent center.

They ran to the back to get the boat to get the elderly people out.  The security guard had to shoot the glass out of the double doors in back. They floated the people out on their mattresses and were able to get them to safety. The man was frustrated because the news said the Coast Guard came and saved those people, but he said they didn’t see any Coast Guard for four days. He was stranded for some days himself, eating from a chunk of meat and drinking a bottle of Gatorade. The man said he lost a total of 34 of his friends in the flooding.