By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Have stethoscope - and motorcycle, tent and sleeping bag - will travel.
Dr. Gomer Pound, former chief of staff at Lee Memorial Hospital, grew up in Hattiesburg, Miss., and recently returned to his native state to lend a hand with Hurricane Katrina relief.
Dr. Pound, a Dowagiac doctor until 2000 and now practicing medicine in Lawton, volunteered at Ocean Springs Hospital's emergency room and at a special needs Red Cross shelter after leaving on Sunday, Sept. 4, and arriving on Monday, Sept. 5 - Labor Day.
While back-up generators kept medical equipment operating, the hospital had continued to function without air conditioning in the hot summer heat before his arrival.
Dr. Pound said no one could get any direction on where to report to help. After four days he just headed South. In Jackson, Miss., a curfew was imposed at night on buying gasoline.
In Hattiesburg, 80 miles north of the Gulf Coast, 15 trees toppled in his father's yard.
Dr. Pound rode his motorcycle because it would get good gas mileage and be maneuverable through debris, but ironically, when he encountered $4-a-gallon fuel, he was in Cairo, Ill., not the hurricane ravaged area.
He said gas cost as little as $2.49 on the coast, but purchases might be limited to $15.
He pitched his tent and curled up in his sleeping bag by the Pearl River, waiting until the gas curfew lifted in the morning.
Towns such as Waveland and Pass Christian, Miss., were demolished to an extent they looked "like a tsunami" had washed them out to sea.
He said he visited the neighborhood where Sen. Trent Lott's beachfront home was "gone."
He tried to eat at a seafood restaurant, but "they were sweeping water out of it. The Gulf is so messed up you can't get seafood."
Dr. Pound encountered a Michigan team at Garden Park Hospital in Gulfport. Given an opportunity to go to Ocean Springs, where his dad had a boat, he took it.
Dr. Pound said he had been reading the Jackson Daily News online. In one article a physician called for more doctors. He would eventually meet him and tell him, "You're the reason I'm down here."
One reason for checking the Internet was that normally a Michigan doctor can't practice medicine in another state. Louisiana took the extraordinary step of saying any physician with identification would be classified as an "agent of the state" and malpractice would not be an issue.
Callers had nowhere to be directed. "It was almost impossible to get ahold of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency). It was a huge problem," Dr. Pound said. He had also tried to contact the area Red Cross in Kalamazoo and when his calls were not returned, he drove there.
Dr. Pound said he mostly saw patients with skin infections from combinations of unsanitary conditions and working in filthy water.
The Centers for Disease Control were monitoring health care facilities for respiratory ailments and bloody diarrhea, which could signal dysentery.
He never saw it himself, but Dr. Pound said patients described outbreaks of black mold two inches long, "like fur."
The emergency room appreciated the arrival of some fresh physicians because even a week after the tragedy it was dealing with 300 percent of normal volume out of Pascagoula as well as Ocean Springs.
Dr. Pound said in the Red Cross shelter he dealt with people who lost everything, even their eyeglasses and shoes. There were 130 people living inside a church, where they were served hot meals from food provided by other churches. Semis delivered donated goods. Families still able to live in their homes could place orders and fill boxes.
He said it was "weird" how drug distribution "synergistically happened, it was not organized. Eventually we got most of what we needed. We didn't have penicillin initially or inhalers for asthma." The lack of penicillin seemed ironic given the reports of mold flourishing in the damp aftermath.
Older people in particular seemed to still be in shock. "They took it the hardest," he said. "They worked jobs all their lives and now they're retired and ill and they've lost their homes, vehicles and all their contents and they can't work that hard to get it back. The elderly really needed a lot of care, but they wouldn't ask for it."
Dr. Pound was particularly struck by the dire straits of the displaced who formerly lived in towns washed off the map. "There's literally nobody there" anymore.
He said it didn't rain at all while he was in Mississippi. Many ruined homes with their windows intact didn't even reveal the extent of damage inside, unless ripped-up carpeting or furniture had been deposited out front.