Concord Medical Resident Returns from Louisiana

September 21, 2005 – Tending patients under the watchful eye of the National Guard in a temporary shelter filled with 6,000 evacuees isn't typical residency training.

But for Rachal David, practicing via the Cabarrus Family Medicine Residency Program sponsored by NorthEast Medical Center, it was a week she wouldn't trade for anything.

David, 31, went to graduate school at Louisiana State University and felt inclined to use the skills she learned there to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. She returned from Louisiana, where she had volunteered at the Baton Rouge River Center, which had been turned into a shelter.

Going to Louisiana wasn't part of an organized effort for David. It was just something she felt compelled to do.

"I tried to go through different agencies, but it was taking too long," she said.

But once health care professionals like David started showing up at River Center, they were put right to work and a temporary clinic was established.

David stayed with family she had in the area, but other physicians slept on cots, she said. Local churches offered hospitality to other physicians.

It was the only shelter in Baton Rouge and volunteering there meant being something of a social worker, too, David said. Taking names of family members people were searching for and helping them make plans to leave became part of the physicians' unspoken responsibilities.

"Nothing prepares you for the emotional state of the people," David said.

Most of the people who needed medical care were suffering from chronic problems. Needles weren't being handed out for safety reasons, so diabetics had to be given insulin every day.

The Louisiana Pharmaceutical Board gave the physicians whatever drugs they needed except narcotics, or prescription painkillers, which were not allowed in the shelter.

Several pregnant women were waiting for cesarean sections that had been scheduled in New Orleans, so David spent a day driving to hospitals to make appointments for them and to arrange transportation.

The phones were out and the city's population had tripled, making traffic a nightmare.

Eventually, people started pouring in with symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea, as well as upper respiratory infections. The crowded conditions had caused little bugs and infections to spread throughout the population.

The elderly and infants, who have weak immune systems, were moved to a specified area. And yet another area was sectioned off on an upper floor.

"Demented individuals and autistic children who couldn't handle the general population were (placed there)," David said.

Because the National Guard was screening everyone with metal detectors and enforcing a curfew, David said she didn't see any crime in the shelter except for stolen medications.

"You have to be realistic and know crime will happen and people will take advan-tage," she said.

And though crime wasn't a big issue, fear of separation was. David said she saw many people who needed to go to a hospital but refused, afraid they would be one of thousands who were separated from their families.

But there's a silver lining to every cloud, and David said she saw it in the people who came to volunteer, from Red Cross personnel to celebrities.

Many of the people at the shelter got to meet celebrities like Gloria Estefan and Oprah Winfrey. David herself got to meet Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, as well as Jim Caviezel, who stared in "Passion of the Christ."

David has less than two years left of her residency and then plans to move back to Louisiana to practice medicine.