Through Hell and High Water

DR. BEN DEBOISBLANC

MEL LAGARDE

Chapter 21: THREE MOMS: HARDSHIPS SHARED, FRIENDSHIPS FORGED

By Jane O. Hansen | Friday, May 26, 2006, 01:38 PM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Nearly two weeks after her son’s death, Carolyn Lewis was still searching for his body.

It wasn’t at Baton Rouge General, where he had died shortly after his evacuation. Carolyn called the local sheriff’s department.

I’m trying to find out where my child’s body is, she said.

Her sister called the governor’s office. Someone said he had been taken to Huey P. Long Medical Center in central Louisiana. But when Carolyn’s oldest son called there, asking about Preston Leon Johnson, the hospital had no one by that name.

She went on local television, pleading for help from anyone who might know where the body of her 25-year-old son had been taken. In the second week of September, she got in touch with Celeste Waddell. Perhaps the respiratory therapist from Charity Hospital could help.

Waddell had told Carolyn she wanted to stay in touch. The year before, Waddell had lost her own son, and she knew what Carolyn was going through. You will always have a place in my heart, Waddell had told her while they were both still trapped inside Charity.

After making some calls, Waddell told Carolyn it was likely Preston’s body had been taken to the mass morgue for Katrina victims set up by the federal government in a warehouse in St. Gabriel, La., a small town about 70 miles northwest of New Orleans. A funeral home would have to claim the body.

Carolyn told the local funeral director he would be able to identify her son by a tattoo on his left arm of praying hands and the words, “Only God can judge me.” On Sept. 13, the man found Preston at the makeshift morgue. The keepsakes Charity nurses had wrapped around his arm and middle finger before his evacuation — a wooden cross and a key chain with pictures of his little boys — were gone.

Recently, Carolyn sat in her small, tidy home in Lake Charles, La., surrounded by religious objects and family pictures. She wore a blue denim sweat suit and large silver hoop earrings, her hair piled on top of her head. She said her son’s death could have been prevented had he been moved out of Charity earlier and into a functioning hospital that could have given him proper care.

“I feel everybody passed the buck,” she said. “The president did his share of it, the governor did her share of it, and the mayor did his share of it.”

Although it was not the family’s custom, Carolyn had Preston’s body cremated. The remains are in an urn in her home.

At 55, she is helping raise two active little boys, her grandsons, ages 6 and 4. The last promise she made to her son was to be there for his boys. “I thank God for him,” she said. “I was proud of him. I thank God that he was mine.”

Sherry Hebert went straight to Hunter’s bedside at Earl K. Long Medical Center in Baton Rouge after saying goodbye to Carolyn. It had been three days since she had seen her son.

He had been evacuated from Charity Hospital Wednesday night. But she didn’t get out until Friday, Sept. 2. That night, she had begged everyone — the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Guard and the Louisiana State Police — not to make her fly from the New Orleans airport to a military base in San Antonio. Her son was lying critically ill in a hospital in Baton Rouge, close to her home. She wanted to head there. But authorities told her evacuees were under marshal law and now “federal refugees.” For the time being, they would do as they were told.

Almost as soon as they landed in Texas, Sherry and Carolyn had walked away, grabbed a taxi and gotten on a plane to Baton Rouge with a layover in Memphis. They were back in Louisiana the next morning.

When Sherry arrived at the hospital, Hunter was still critical and on a respirator. He was swollen all over; his kidneys no longer worked. He would remain in the hospital for 49 days. Sherry slept on the floor the first 22, while he was in intensive care.

If he had been evacuated from Charity a day or two earlier, she believed, he wouldn’t have lost his kidneys. But Hunter, now 24, got out alive, and for that she is eternally grateful. Had it not been for Dr. Ben deBoisblanc and all the staff on the sixth-floor ICU at Charity Hospital, Hunter would not have survived. By putting a tube into his chest on the way to the Tulane Hospital helipad, they had saved his life.

Hunter was eventually discharged from the Baton Rouge hospital, had a seizure and returned. In the coming months, it would be touch-and-go with more seizures and treatment for Goodpasture’s syndrome, a rare immunological condition with symptoms like those of leukemia. But he made gradual improvements.

On Saturday, Dec. 3, Hunter Reeves married his fiancee, 18-year-old Kristy Arceneaux. He wore a tuxedo and a cowboy hat to hide his loss of hair from chemotherapy. Dr. Ben was there, and after the couple was pronounced husband and wife, Hunter made a speech. He thanked Dr. Ben and resident Dr. Jeffrey Williams for saving his life.

On March 17, Hunter’s wife gave birth to a baby, Kali Ann. “She is a sweet baby and doing fine,” Sherry said. “Oh, she looks just like Hunter.”

The family hopes Hunter will be placed on the list for a kidney transplant. Sherry said they were told it could take a year. Meanwhile he gets dialysis and physical therapy three times a week.

In recent months, Sherry has spoken by phone with Carolyn and Celeste Waddell. Carolyn asked about Hunter’s wedding and told Sherry she had a gift for her new grandbaby. Sherry wants to surprise her one day with a visit.

“I think the three of us felt the heart-wrenching pain of what our kids were going through,” Sherry said. “They both touched my life. It’s something I’ll never forget.”

On Sunday: The fate of two hospitals and two men who helped lead them through crisis. Last of 22 chapters.

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