“It continues
to be windy here just north of Gulfport. It's a much
clearer night than it has been for the past, well, last
night at least. Clouds are low but they're thin and
they're broken and there's a clear sky above them.
The hope is that tomorrow morning it will be clear
enough to depart and fly back over to the little grass
strip in Livingston Parish in Louisiana where we will
return to hurricane rescue activities on that side,
I should say, hurricane recovery activities. Plan to
load up a couple of RVs with supplies, medicines and
doctors and nurses and drive into the worst hit areas
of Louisiana after hurricane Rita. We will probably
be among the first doctors and nurses on the scene from
outside and are looking forward to getting involved
in direct patient care. So, at least my level of excitement
is fairly high. I'm going to try to get a good night
sleep tonight and get into the air as early as possible
in the morning.
I'm going to be taking Charley with me. He's an EMT
who has come down from New York. 20 years old, caught
a flight down. Actually, I think he came down from Chicago
where he's in school currently, pre-med student, and
he came down with just plans to help in whatever he
found. So, he hooked up with us through some connection
or other, that I'm not clear on, but I'm tickled to
have him. He's a pretty smart kid and he's going to
be a big asset to us, I believe. He'll be here for another
10 days. So, more to come on that project as we get
into it.
Today went well. We had some teams do door to door.
We have one team that was setup in a Walgreens and gave
injections. Immunizations are the big thing here: tetnus
and hepatitis A immunizations. So, that has been the
big draw for most folks. On door to door visits, the
majority of what we've done is, again, immunizations.
Folks are just too busy trying to recover and get their
lives back in some semblance of order to be able to
get away and get the shots that they've been told they
need. So, our arrival with a cooler full of vaccines
is VERY appreciated. I don't have specific numbers for
today. I think it's somewhere between 80 and 130 patients
seen but that's an estimate.
David Trout is scheduled to arrive here in the Gulfport
area on Monday night and until then I have made enough
arrangements that the program here should go without
a hitch until he arrives.” |
