Day Seven- Gators

I am working with a local girl from Mississippi. I tell her I need a diet coke to start my morning off so she takes me to a place called Sonic, which is an old time drive-up with rollerskaking waitresses. A woman with rather fat legs on roller skates brings me a can of Diet Coke on a tray. That wakes me up.

My partner tells me how she and her partner were lost for two days during the storm, having to take refuge in first a fire station than later in a sewage treatment plant as the waters rose. At one point she and her partner were joking about how their car was going to need a little more than an "Orangeline Special" washing at the end of the day. Not long after they were wading in chest deep water as part of human chain trying to get to higher ground. She also told me about being sent into KMART in the darkness with only a flashlight to get needed radio supplies to get the communications system running, and suddenly getting very scared by an strange foreboding, and then hurrying to get the supplies and get out of the store. Later she heard that six corpses were found in the store along with four alligators.

Outside all the shopping centers there are piles of wet clothes, the remains of donations.

I ask my partner whether people got many clothes from the donations. She says they did, but as one of her regular partners -- a large girl herself -- said. "What makes all these little itty bitty Yankee woman who ain't seen a sandwich inside the last three months think us healthy Southern women are going to be able to fit in anything they send down here?"

Our first call is for chest pain. We arrive outside a motel to find a young man hyperventilating. "He don't speak a lick of English," the firefighter tells us, then I start rattling off the Spanish with him, and they are somewhat amazed to see a paramedic talking Spanish. It turns out the guy is from Honduras and his baby sun died there three months ago. He works and sends what money he can back. This morning, all of a sudden he was having trouble breathing and his hands got very cold and he was scared. By the time we get to the hospital, he is feeling much better.

We spend most of the day on the shore. My partner takes me down to the WalMart which is now a see through WalMart.

She tells me how the security guard there always used to give them a hard time about parking in the fire lane, threatening to write them tickets. She said after the storm when they went down there, they drove right up to the fire lane and took pictures of themselves standing in front of the ambulance parked there.

By the water the wind is really whipping up as the hurricane approaches. Port-o-potties are getting blown over and knocked across the road.

We talk to a police officer who is on the lookout for waterspouts.

We give out some more tetanus shots to workers.

We do a call for a motor vehichle and find a woman with neck pain. What is funny is how down there everybody knows everyone. A firefighter introduces us to the patient by saying "This is Patty, John down at central fire's sister's cousin's neighbor's wife. She got four kids, two dogs and cooks a fine apple cobbler."

"Okay," I say, and I tell her my name and say it my pleasure to make her aquaintence, circumstances aside.

Our last call is in a poor neighborhood for a man feeling week. He has colon cancer and hasn't seen the doctor for awhile. He ran out of colostomy bags during the storm and hasn't had one one for three weeks now. His abdomen is stained with feces and there are flies landing all over him. His nail beds are white and while I can't get a pressure, he is only going at 96 on the monitor. We take him in.

The shift is over and they bring us back to the base. Dinner is country fried steak, and as always it is mighty fine.

The new people from our division have come down and I give them tips on what to expect. "Its just like up North," I say, "You do ambulance calls, except the people are very thankful and the scenery is mindblowing. And you need to play with the stretchers before you put your patients on them. You'll have a great time."

Eleven-o'clock I'm in bed.