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I am from a small rural hospital in central Mississippi. We are leaving at 2:30 AM on Tuesday taking two truckloads of supplies to the hospital in Hancock County. This will be our hospital's second trip to the coast since Saturday.

The hospital in Hancock County emailed us a list of things they needed, basic things that a hospital has to have to care for its patients: normal saline IVs, Lactated Ringer's IVs, Gentamycin IVs, IV Antibiotics of any sort, baby formula, antiobiotic cream, Pedialyte, PediaSure, anti-diarrheal meds, cortisone cream for rashes.

Our administrator was on the phone all morning, calling other hospitals in the Delta, telling them Hancock County hospital needed things, specific things.

By 2 PM today, we had everything we asked for - every single thing. What we or the other hospitals were short on or couldn't release, we went to WalMart and KMart and Fred's and bought - baby bottles, creams, lotions, hand sanitizers, bandaids, tape, bandages.

But every hospital gave everything they could spare, and several of them even delivered the supplies to our hospital in Indianola to save us time. Some hospitals sent cases and cases of IVs, some sent cases of baby formula, some sent antiobiotics, but every hospital that we contacted sent something.

It was so hard while we were in the stores - because everywhere you looked, you saw something that you know somebody needed. I felt guilty as I gulped down a Sierra Mist while in the checkout line; how could I ever again drink something cold without the memory of people suffering for lack of something to drink?

How can I ever complain about a dirty house, or dirty clothes to be washed, or grass that needs mowing after I have seen people who literally have nothing in this world left except the clothes on their backs?

How can I ever not be thankful that when I flip that little switch on the wall that my lights come on, that my air conditioner runs, that my freezer and refrigerator contain cold and frozen food?

Disasters happen. It's a fact. You can take it to the bank. But it's where push comes to shove, it's when the men are separated from the boys, the women from the girls, and the helpers from the apathetic. It's when we find out exactly what we are made of on the inside, how strong or weak our character is.

The scenes of total and utter devastation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast are horrible and heart-breaking at the same time. But the bottom line here is that the people of Mississippi need help.

And we're going to help. Because that's what we do in the South. We help our neighbors. It's not a trait unique to Southerners, but we do it and we do it well.

And I only hope that in 6 months I am still grateful for my dirty house, dirty clothes, overgrown lawn and house that needs painting. I don't want to not remember. We need to remember.

Be good to one another.

AtticusX

The first patient at the state-of-the-art mobile hospital designed for disasters was a puppy. The dog was dehydrated and brought in by hurricane survivors living in a tent city. But it wasn’t very long before suffering human patients found their way into the remarkable medical center set up in the parking lot of a flooded Kmart.

In the first 16 hours, doctors treated about 100 people: nasty head wounds, car crash victims, cuts from storm debris, dehydration.

With such demand, it is hard to imagine that the doctors weren’t allowed to set up shop in Louisiana, their original destination. They were stymied by red tape there.

“Mississippi stepped up and said if they don’t want you, we’ll take you,” Dr. Thomas Blackwell, medical director of the hospital and an emergency doctor at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C., said Monday. He said the delay in getting deployed was a dispute with Louisiana over what they’d be allowed to do. Yet he held back criticism.

“If anybody thinks this is going to go smoothly, it doesn’t work that way. This is the biggest natural disaster we’ve ever had,” he said.

Now the futuristic $1.5 million emergency response hospital is getting its first real tryout since the Department of Homeland Security established it. The 113-bed hospital travels in a convoy that includes two 53-foot trailers. Equipment includes ultrasound, digital radiology, satellite Internet, and a full pharmacy, enabling doctors to do most types of surgery.

To get the hospital up and running, doctors cleared trees and other big debris by hand from the parking lot. They needed some bolts and decided to hunt for some in the Kmart, but when they opened it, all they found were bodies inside — more evidence of the deadly storm.

http://clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050905/NEWS0110/50905023/1260