The storm was over on Monday at about 1 pm and patients were all safe. Not one person was hurt from the actual storm itself. The water seemed like it plateaued out at 8 feet, but no one could actually know.
Most of the next 3 days were a blur. Monday afternoon, I got back on the floor at 4:30pm and started with the "normal tasks", passing meds, turning patients, etc. We were all in a daze. Windows were broken, children of patients and family members were running amuck, and we were all sweating profusely. All of us (staff members) tried to figure out what our "game plan" was. Considering I am night shift, and most of the night shift people were already on the floor at 4:30 pm, we all had talks about where this week was going. (We were also trying to move patients out of the special procedures unit and back on our floor, into the halls because most of the rooms were unusable.)
Here is some of my coworkers on Monday afternoon. We were still in scrubs and trying to be as professional as possible, without flushing toilets or adequate lighting.
Chuck with flashlight in hand, preparing for night shift.
The last smile from me for awhile. Check out that greasy shine. God, it only got worse!
Belinda
That night was hell. Absolute hell. Patients were screaming for help (no call light system) all night long. Asking for ICE WATER, and they weren't even confused yet. We had 2 flashlights for the night shift. I went and saw my patients and did full head-to-toe assessments on them, like I normally do. I tried to keep my bedbound patients turned and made sure I provided for their needs as much as possible. We had 3 gallons of H20 on the floor, so basically everyone got their water. Our dialysis nurses came and drew I Stats on the dialysis patients to check their potassium levels. Most of our dialysis patients are diaylized on Monday/Wed/Fridays and they weren't able to be diaylized on Monday. We had basic lab services, CBCs and IStats which checked basic electrolytes. Daily weights didn't get done, and our poor dialysis patients weren't eating correctly because we were giving them 1/2 ham sandwiches and bananas for meals. Obviously, our dialysis patients DIDN'T get that.
Tuesday morning. Sweaty, exhausted, having to wait for the sun to come up to chart so we didn't use our flashlight batteries. Basically, I charted something like this on all my patients:
8/30/05 2000 Hurricane Katrina emergency in progress. NAD noted. Respirations easy. Basic needs met. Patient provided with 1/2 glass of water. Turned and made comfortable. Educated patient on hurricane circumstances. Verbalized understanding. Encouraged patient to call out for nurse for needs.
The docs told us that we would be covered with this kind of charting.
ICU and the front part of the building was still running on generator. We all took our cell phones and plugged them in over in that part of the building. I also found a REAL BED to sleep in (Christine's room) and was able to crash for about 3 hours. When I woke up, I decided to survey the damage outside.
The hospital breezeway. That funny thing in the background is a tall fountain. The pool part of it was completely submerged.
The long dark hallways. Our Chief Nursing Officer, Mrs. Beck, told us that there was NO DRESS CODE, so nurse's started working in shorts and t-shirts.
"Ocean front view"--this was the day I saw a snake in the water chasing a school of fish in the employee parking lot.
Since the dress code was relaxed, I decided to nurse in my pajamas and flip flops. You have NO IDEA how hot it was in the building. NO IDEA. We all dripped with sweat constantly.
So I started another shift. Where am I, Wednesday night? I think. It was so hard to keep up with days/nights. We did the same thing we had done the night before. We all made rounds on each other's patients as a group (to conserve flashlight battery power) and charted when the sun came up. The cries of the patients got more and more intense, and we were ALL exhausted. One of our patients who was bedbound and about 400 lbs DEMANDED to be disimpacted that night. The day shift got that job, obviously. The stench of our patient's bodies, along with our own almost got unbearable. We had to also deal with the stench of the bathrooms. The toilets didn't flush, and days worth of urine and feces was building up in the toilets. We did not have one clean toilet on the unit. One of the docs that was staying on our unit confiscated a bedside commode and we used red biohazard bags to have bowel movements. We called it "red bagging it". That day, one of our night shift nurses had collected rainwater from room that was leaking badly and went around flushing toilets with it. She hung signs that said "No toilet paper in toilets. If you must have a BM "#2", please use red bag." Of course, this did not keep family members from other units off of our unit in search of a clean toilet. We called those "fly-bys". Basically, we were keeping our toilets clean, but someone mysteriously would come and poop in our toilets. "Another fly-by". Chuck was rooming with Dr. Hill, and Dr. Hill got really mad at him. "Chuck, I told you to use red bags for BM's!!" Chuck was like "I did! It is in the bathroom, wrapped up." "Well, who the hell sh*t in our bathroom?? Oh, and by the way, take care of your bag. I like you man, but I don't like you that much." We all died laughing. Chuck also told the story about him pooping in the medium sized trashcan because he didn't want to stoop for the short can, and he couldn't reach the big can. LOL. Ahh, the humor.
Night shift charting.
Humor in the midst of hell. Yeah, most people wouldn't find this funny, but you'd be surprised how people use humor to hide other emotions.
The Dream Team
Things only got worse.
About Wednesday or so, we were told that we were "running out of water." We got one gallon of water delivered to our unit in the morning, and that had to be used for staff and patients. Of course, we couldn't neglect our family members, so we gave them some too. We limited our water intake to 1/2 a glass a day. We watched the patients take their meds with just a small sip, and told them that the water had to be conserved throughout the day as much as possible. I, luckily, had my own stash of water and snacks that I brought for home, so I passed out my water to the staff (especially to Steven and Chuck, who were doing the hard work/manly duties). I made sure everyone ate and drank enough. We would all discuss the fact that we would only make about 50 cc's of urine a day, and when we DID pee, it was a moment worthy of applause. Food was also scarce. We got out 1/2 a sandwich, but I refused to eat because the ham was starting to "turn." If I ate anything, it was a package of peanut butter crackers a day (the ones I brought from home). I didn't need to eat, but our men and smaller staff needed to. I made jokes about us starving, and for them to kill me because my fat self would feed everyone for weeks. Morbid, huh? We all talked like this. I completely lost it one day because I catnapped and had dreams about dying at Methodist. I cried, the staff cried. Chuck lost it one morning because we got 1 piece of bacon with our dry cereal. He cried and cried over a piece of bacon. Everyone cried and 'lost it' at some point. Things got miserable.
I text messaged my two best friends and told them to "plan a nice funeral for me." (cell phones didn't get much service. I would get 1 call out every couple of days, but sometimes I could text message. Verizon customers were the only working phones. I managed to sneak a few calls out to my parents. Everyone else thought I was dead.)
I believed I was going to die. Everyone did. We had daily prayer with Father Tom, and music with Jimmy (the transporter who brought his guitar). We sang Amazing Grace. I wanted to believe that God would save us. It was getting hard to have faith. Very hard.
One night, the generator died in the front building. They had to hand bag (Ambu bag) the ventilator patients. Everyone took turns. Patients starting dying. Our trach patient wasn't doing too hot either, but we couldn't move them to ICU (because it was a floor down--the patient was bedbound and there was no generator for venilator use). The doc came in and made him a DNR--"due to emergency conditions, patient's condition deteriorating. DNR." Later the next day, the manpower basically ran out and the docs in ICU decided to put t-pieces on the intubated patients (so if they could breathe on their own, they could. we stopped bagging). We lost 4, I believe. The new morgue was in OR suite number 5...God, I could only imagine the smell. No a/c. Dead bodies. Of course, we had NO MEANS to contact the families to let them know that their loved ones had died, and their bodies may not be recovered for weeks and weeks, making a open casket funeral impossible. Think about it, not knowing your family member died AND no body to have? The dead bodies in the morgue on first floor had floated away. Maintainance had to open the morgue doors to keep the pressure even (?), and those bodies were gone. No body of a loved one. That hurts.
During these days, I saw a dead body floating past the hospital. I mean, I've seen LOTS of dead bodies, but none that were because of a disaster. It hurt. It scared me. Maybe that would be me?
Also, our NOPD (cops) that we had stationed at the hospital, along with our National Guard boys (who were all teenagers and didn't help out worth crap) decided to use their "marshal law" and boat to Walgreens to get us supplies. They got some food products and water (which we got a small bottle of gatoraide and sparkling water, that's all. never saw anything else), but also went to Dillards and "used marshal law" to acquire expensive Polo shirts, jeans, Fendi purses, perfume, candles in which they traded (?) to family members on the floor. It didn't help patients or staff. I was disgusted about this. Our own cops LOOTED. They are all crooked. That's why I want out of Louisiana. You can't trust anyone.
We got down to giving our patients sterile water for irrigaton of wounds to drink. (we also washed our hands in normal saline because our hands started getting irritated by the Purell hand sanitizer.)
We tried to keep the unit as clean as possible.
Our uniforms
I tried not to look outside much, but I kept watching the helicopters pick people off of roofs. We would yell to the people on the roofs of the apartment complexes, they would yell back, and when they got rescued, we would all cheer.
Coast Guard rescue
We were all exhausted. So exhausted, Chuck and I started yelling at each other..
More pics of water damage
Chuck made this sign and put it in the nurse's station
I know my words cannot describe what I have been through. I just hope this explains some of what I have been I've been through.
I have one more update.
To be continued...
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