El Centro nurse practitioner Arlyn Duval could not be with her grandson Monday to celebrate his fifth birthday. She is in New York, assisting with relief efforts after Tropical Storm Sandy slammed into the East Coast a little more than a week ago.
Duval is part of a disaster medical assistance team based in San Diego. Duval said the team is attached to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Her team consists of six doctors, at least four nurse practitioners and one midwife, she said. Nassau Community College in New York has been turned into a makeshift shelter, where Duval and her team are tending to the needs of more than 80 people who are unable to care for themselves, people who did not have the means to evacuate before the storm hit. Some have mental disabilities. Some are aged. Some have physical disabilities. Many have been homeless for years.
“We’re taking care of a chronic population,” Duval said.
Some have relatively simple needs, like medication to control diabetes or hypertension. Others in the shelter are suffering from issues that make treatment more challenging, like schizophrenia or substance-abuse withdrawals, and some of them are angry.
“After three days of no access to alcohol or marijuana … things are not comfortable for them. These are the people who do not have the money or connections to leave,” she said. “There are many reasons to be angry.”
Although she is not necessarily afraid of the people she is treating, she and others on her team are pairing up whenever they check on their patients, she said.
“We brought our own medical supplies,” Duval said. “The Department (of Health and Human Services) brought a cache of drugs. We have pharmacists with us. We write prescriptions and the pharmacy fills them.”
The scale of destruction that Tropical Storm Sandy left in its wake is not new to Duval. She assisted with the relief effort in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina tore through the city, leaving large swathes of the area devastated.
She said that New York was better-prepared for the storm than New Orleans was.
“With Katrina, the area could not be evacuated until things got bad,” she said. “Here, hospitals evacuated before things got bad.”
Better preparation does not mean that life is easy by any stretch. Duval said lines for gasoline stretch for blocks, and it is being rationed.
“You only get $20 worth of gas, and it’s about $3.50 (per gallon), give or take,” she said.
Inconveniences aside, the emotional and mental toll wrought by Tropical Storm Sandy is very real, and locals are trying to cope.
“PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) really does exist,” she said. “Those that had pets don’t have their pets (anymore),” she said. “You talk to one person, and he’s fine. The next one has lost everything.”
Although Duval and her team are doing all they can to help ease a bad situation, Mother Nature is not finished with New York.
“They’re expecting a snow storm (today) or Wednesday,” Duval said.
Staff Writer Antoine Abou-Diwan can be reached at 760-337-3454 or aabou-diwan@ivpressonline.com
To comment on this story click here to be directed to Facebook.
