Cameron Parish destruction

Today, I did a driving trip through Cameron Parish. I may have alluded to this driving trip made by others in team 2 when we had a 'day of rest' back in early October. At that time, the water was still high and the destruction nauseating. I guess I wanted to go to see what the Cameron residents went back to after they left our special needs unit and also to shed some light on the loss of these people as so much media attention had been given to the events of New Orleans. This was echoed during the nursing team meeting from the other day, the fact that Rita victims have been neglected in coverage and perhaps clean-up efforts.

Anyway, I did the trip through Cameron Parish and came back up to Lake Charles. I’ve created a narrated slide presentation for you all to check out via the U of MN’s server. Be sure to have the volume up loud enough. The link is here: http://breeze4.umn.edu/p13954177/

There were many songs of the day today that I encourage you to check out: Lucinda William’s 2 Cool 2 Be Forgotten, Howlin Wolf’s Moanin’ at Midnight, Bruce Springsteen’s My Hometown, Bruce Robeson’s Rayne, Louisiana and Lucinda’s Lake Charles. The IPod certainly came in handy during the 6-hour tour!

“Drove my [Lincoln Town Car] to the levee…”

Today was another laid-back day of touring. Carol’s friend Paul lent me his Lincoln Town Car for the trip yesterday and told me to keep it as long as I needed. So I was lucky to have it again to do a little more traveling in the region. I have been attracted to the Atchafalya River and basin since reading John McPhee’s book The Control of Nature and accompanying chapter about the river. Hilton Tacke is the immunization specialist for the region and seemingly the most quintessential Cajun of the people I’ve encountered on this trip. He’s made reference to ‘the basin’ numerous times, referring to it as being one of the best places to look for gators.

So today, I jumped in the Town Car (a much more pimped out ride than my ’93 Topaz!) and went east and north. What a trip! It was really awe-some seeing the giant levees that line the banks of the river. I captured a couple photos of the river, with a picture-perfect setting of the swamps, complete with cypress trees in water up to their bellies. Also, someone had introduced me to a local derogatory term, “levee trash”, which is used to describe some folk in the way ‘white trash’ describes some personalities elsewhere. I may have seen some of those people on my travels today.

I ended my trip in Lafayette, where I swung by the Heymann Center before going out to the Super Target. (The Super Target to re-acclimate myself to Minneapolis as my trip is winding down!) You may recall that the Heymann Center was our home for the first two waves of Minnesota Lifeline and the adjoining convention hall served as the special needs unit. When we had gone for lunch last Tuesday, I noticed a sign saying “Gun Show, this weekend at the Heymann Center”, which was funny to me because I had a dream or passing thought about that very thing before my trip down! The gun show was last weekend and today there was a Home and Garden Show in the same space as the special needs unit. I felt compelled to stick my head in and look around and paused in amazement at how time passes and things return the same.

Last night, on the very same stage that we slept on, Allison Krauss and Union Station played to a sold-out house. Today, there was a theater show that attracted many African-American theater-goers. I’m glad that everyone going into the Heymann Center was going in for a very different reason than we were 6 months ago.

I likely won’t get to journal on my time Monday as I’ll be crashing at Bruce’s place before flying back to Mpls very early Tuesday morning. My plans are to help out at the Lafayette PHU in the morning and most of the afternoon and attend my own class’s lecture by computer videoconferencing in the afternoon. I hope to pass on a little of what I’ve learned to my students.
Thanks all for tuning in to hear about my travels. Though this has all been mostly about my fun times down here, I plan to share the hard, public health details of the trip and where things seem tao be now, six months later, when I return. Love to my family.

Fightin' fowl!

Barbara, Roy and the girls have a pet rooster in the back yard. I upload this solely to embarass her!

Note to family- I tried to get my photo taken with the fowl, but it is indeed a fighting rooster and nearly pecked at me when I crouched next to it. Notice the leg-leash attached. (Thank God bird flu has not hit North America yet!)

Evangeline Oak

Barbara took me by the Evangeline Oak, immortilized in a Longfellow poem of the same name. I found it ironic that Minnehaha Falls was named after Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha and now I find myself standing by a big oak tree with the same historical context.

Apparently, in the story, the hero or heroine stands by the tree waiting for their love to come. Hence, my contemplative pose! (Yes...I've washed my clothes since the other day.)

Not "swamp nurse"

On-campus swamp on UL's campus (Yes...apparently there are gators in there!)

Thurs evening, Carol's house
Sorry for the delayed update, folks. I've had little internet access until tonight when I realized that I can bootleg a neighbors wireless here at Carol's! Couple that with a late evening at a 'drug dinner' (more about the reason why later), I've been too tired to do much else when I get home. Tonight, Carol and I are chillin' with pizza and beer!

The past couple days have included a lot of personal education. A nice thing about the trip this time around is that I get to learn more detail about the public health system and how it works. One of the fascinating programs I learned about is the Family-Nurse Partnership program, which was featured in a recent New Yorker article "Swap Nurse". Though the PHNs here aren't very proud of the sexy title, the work described in the piece and recent Nightline special (www.nursefamilypartnership.org) is pretty accurate of the tough kids/young families these nurses are seeing. Please check out the website and view the TV special, found on the right side of the page.

I had the very cool experience of visiting the UL-Lafayette School of Nursing yesterday and guest lecturing this morning. Though the topic of 'culture' isn't my favorite to speak on, the students were excited to hear about our Minnesota Lifeline experience as many people down here didn't know of the work.

Today, after the speaking gig, I went back to the office to help Carol with emergency preparedness work, was audience with Tina before her big-wig presentation tomorrow and ran out to St. Martinville with Barbara to see Kathy Guidry's beautiful, well-run ship at that PHU.

I'll save the fun day of tomorrow for a later posting, but I can say that it will involve crawfish and Lent. (Remember, Cajun-country is very Catholic.)

A quiet lobby

Despite the foot of snow in Minneapolis yesterday morning, I got out of MSP and flew safely into Lafayette. The weather is much nicer here than up there! (And the people remind me of it nearly every hour!)

Today was my first day at work and I returned to the Lafayette PHU under very different circumstances than when here last October. I walked into the lobby where 50-60 people had awaited primary care services after the hurricanes...there was no one today. It was a very quiet lobby indeed.

I was once again greeted by friendly folks, the real heros of public health. I delved into the 'STD clinic' in the morning and immunization clinic in the afternoon. I even got the chance to play nursing instructor to 6 UL nursing students when shooting up multiple babies with numerous shots!

I retired to New Iberia after my first full day of work. My host is Carol Broussard and I've enjoyed hanging in New Iberia. We finished the evening over at her mom's place were I was filled with much authentic 'Puerto Rican Cajun' food. (That's an inside joke!) I am concerned that I will return to Mpls much chunkier than when I left!

Six months later...

It's now the middle of March, 6 months since many of us were hosted by very generous friends in Louisiana. On Monday, I received a call from our public health nurse friends, Carol Broussard and Barbara Hebert, inviting me to return to help with the many activites that keep them busy. Apparently, there was a meningitis outbreak that proved to be fatal (killing two college students) to add insult to the Katrina and Rita injury.

I'm excited to go down and look forward to helping out again. In a selfish way, I may find closure to my experiences then since I left so abruptly on October 5th. But that will be a small part of simply getting away for a while and doing what I like to do and do best... the 'public health nursing thing'. I look forward to sharing my experiences with you all!

I leave Monday the 13th and will begin work on the 14th. See you then!

Scott