Through Hell and High Water

DR. BEN DEBOISBLANC

MEL LAGARDE

CHAPTER 11: THREE MOTHERS, THREE SONS AND A SORROW SHARED

By Jane O. Hansen | Tuesday, May 16, 2006, 12:51 PM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

New Orleans — Celeste Waddell didn’t know whether Hunter Reeves felt her presence. A respiratory therapist at Charity Hospital for nearly 22 years, she refused to leave her patient’s side as he struggled for his life. Hunter, unconscious, had come to Charity the week before Hurricane Katrina, in critical condition. Waddell, 46, didn’t want him to die alone.

At 23, he was barely older than her son, Christopher, her only child. She’d always been so proud of him. Christopher had been sickly as an infant, but he’d grown into a strapping young man. At 6-foot-2 and weighing 300 pounds, he’d been a freshman walk-on player the previous year for the Northwestern State University football team in Louisiana.

It was the mom in her that drew Waddell to Hunter. His medical treatment had been cut off by the storm. But she didn’t want the young man to suffer.

When the emergency power failed, she kept him breathing by squeezing a bag to pump oxygen into his lungs. When the heat rose, she fanned him. She poured her drinking water onto a towel and put the cloth on his fevered brow.

Dr. Ben deBoisblanc, director of the medical intensive care unit, tried to relieve her, but she snapped at him. Leave me alone, she said. I’m all right. Go help somebody else. The two had worked together for 15 years, and often fussed at each other.

Throughout Charity, people were on edge. They felt as if they were trapped on a sinking ship.

Someone who became known as “The Food Angel” brought the staff half-full Dixie cups of cold canned pork and beans or cold tomato soup. But food was running out for everyone. Nurses gave hungry patients multivitamins to provide at least some basic nutrients; some gave themselves intravenous fluids to prevent dehydration.

In the delirium of little sleep, food or water, they could see helicopters circling above and landing across the street at Tulane Hospital. But they were locked inside their own prison. They had no idea what was going on.

By Wednesday, rumors were flying. They’re coming to evacuate Tulane but not us. Gangs have taken over the hotels. People are committing suicide in the Superdome.

They could see looters wading through the water with stolen goods. They heard the crashing of storefront windows and occasional gunshots. In the growing anarchy, they feared that armed thugs would storm the hospital. The crisis in morale was evolving into mutiny.

Dr. Ben and others came to a conclusion: The only way we’re going to get off this rock is to rescue ourselves.

He was fed up with the false promises that the government was coming. He questioned whether hospital leaders were even asserting themselves. The CEO, Dwayne Thomas, remained five blocks away at Charity’s affiliate, University Hospital, which had also lost backup power.

Dr. Ben respected those who seemed to be in charge at Charity — Ed Burke, chief financial officer; Ron Broadus, director of human resources; Adler Voltaire, Charity’s chief administrative officer; and Dr. Jim Aiken, medical director for emergency preparedness. But they didn’t appear to him to be thinking outside the box. Katrina was its own breed of hurricane; it didn’t fit into the neat confines of the emergency preparation plan they were relying on.

Some medical staff felt those in charge were like generals in a war room who seldom ventured into the field. They cared deeply about the patients, but they didn’t know what it was like to watch them gradually wither away without dialysis. The doctors and nurses were in the trenches, their hands aching from hand-ventilating people they feared would die in their arms.

Charity staff had called CNN to let the world know of their plight. Soon afterward, the CEO of an air ambulance company headquartered in West Plains, Mo., contacted someone at Charity. His helicopters were already assisting in the evacuation of Tulane Hospital. He had four medevacs that could each take one patient if Charity could get its four sickest over to the Tulane parking garage, to a makeshift helipad.

Dr. Ben consulted with other doctors: Which four should go first?

Dr. Ben stopped by Hunter Reeves’ bed to reassure his mother, Sherry Hebert. Hang in there, he said, grabbing her by the arm. We’re going to get him out of here.

Of the four patients they had chosen to evacuate, Hunter was No. 1. He was young and his condition was treatable, and that meant his chances of survival were good if he received the medical care he needed.

Preston Johnson, on the other side of the ICU from Hunter, was also among the four. Preston, 25, had periods of consciousness, but his condition was unstable. He would bleed from his ears, nose and mouth; then the bleeding would stop.

Doctors were unsure what was wrong with Preston, although they knew he had suffered abdominal trauma during a fight. When Katrina hit, the pathology remained uncertain, but an oncologist said he had some type of lymphoma. They had started him on steroids, and the medication seemed to be helping.

His mother, Carolyn Lewis, had brought him to Charity a month before the storm. A former staff sergeant in the Air Force, Carolyn had been living on the sixth floor ICU, sleeping in the waiting room when she wasn’t at her son’s bedside reading Scripture, stroking him or singing his favorite hymns. She was good medicine for him, the staff felt. Every time she walked in, he perked up.

Waddell, who had helped care for Preston before the storm, had seen a similar reaction when the young man’s children came to visit. A couple of weeks earlier, Preston had been so gravely ill that doctors suggested his two little boys, 5 and 3, be summoned to see him. The older one, nicknamed Bubba like his father, ran in and said, Daddy, are you coming home, are you getting well? Preston opened his eyes and smiled. Waddell was struck by how happy Carolyn was to see her son’s reaction.

The respiratory therapist was a little more optimistic about Preston’s prognosis than she was Hunter’s. After the hospital lost backup power, staff had begun weaning some patients from their ventilators to see whether they could breathe on their own. Their evacuation would be easier if the machines did not have to be moved with them. Preston did fairly well in his trial off the ventilator.

Waddell knew the anguish Carolyn and Sherry felt. The mothers had become close, and she understood why. One day, when Preston had taken a sudden turn and seemed near death, she had spoken with his mother in private.

Waddell wore a necklace with three gold charms: a little boy, a football helmet and the words, “No. 1 Mom.” She also wore a gold cross — a gift from her son. For the first time, Waddell had told Carolyn about Chris.

He would have been 20 this year.

On March 1, 2004, Christopher Waddell collapsed during football practice and died from a heart attack. Losing her only child had been life-altering. He was “a kind and gentle giant,” she wrote for the college athletics Web site a year after his death. His life was a testimony “that it is possible to beat the odds by making the right choices in life.”

Carolyn was stunned by Waddell’s loss. I would never get over that, she thought. Her only child.

Waddell had told Carolyn gently that there could come a time when she, too, might have to say goodbye to her son.

I know you don’t want to see him suffer. So you may have to let him go.

Once again, medical staff prepared patients to leave. This time, they were determined to evacuate their four sickest, with or without government help.

When it was time to take Hunter, Waddell knew she had to say goodbye. She could not accompany him; patients here still needed her help. But it was hard to let him go. She wanted to be there for Hunter because she hadn’t been able to be there for her son, Chris, when he died.

She didn’t know whether Hunter could hear her, but she leaned over his bed and whispered goodbye, squeezing his hand.

Tell Chris I love him. He’s going to take care of you.

After strapping Hunter onto a spine board, doctors and nurses carried him down five flights of stairs to the outside. His mother lighted the way with a flashlight.

Then they prepared to move Preston. Carolyn watched as they wrapped around his arm a wooden cross someone had made him. They slid a key ring, with photos of his boys, around his middle finger.

Like everything in this operation, getting to Tulane from Charity would be hit-or-miss. How would they move four very sick people through channels of deep infested waters?

A Tulane employee had managed to float out in a canoe and flag down a National Guard trooper with a truck big enough to navigate the floodwaters. The trooper, who had lost contact with his unit, at first hesitated to help. But with no radio to ask permission, he agreed to go ahead.

Down on the ramp, Sherry jumped onto the truck with Hunter, but was told to get off. She did not complain; she wasn’t worried about herself. Like Carolyn, the mother was thinking only of her son. She kissed him goodbye.

Carolyn could not see Preston after they put him onto the back of the truck. She asked whether she could go with him, knowing she was his strength. No, they told her; she’d have to stay behind. A doctor and a patient’s father lifted her up so she could touch him. Mommy’s right here, * she told him. *I’m not going anywhere.

When he opened his eyes, she kissed her hand, then touched it to his cheek. Crying, Carolyn told Preston she loved him.

The two mothers stood on the emergency room ramp, holding hands and watching until the truck was out of sight. Each wondered: Will I ever see him alive again?

ON THURSDAY: Trouble in the parking garage. Chapter 12 of 22.

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