The Back Story

This sequence of events really starts with a series of heart attacks just before Christmas 2002. Over a 5 day period I suffered 7 heart attacks that I mistook [from past experience] as kidney stone attacks. The good people at University Hospital in New Orleans took their blood test and rushed me into two angioplasties over two days. Unfortunately there was a complication during the second procedure, and after a code blue in ICU which afforded me another near-death experience, I held on for the next week. After a month of recovery from the bleed-out, I was able to function well enough to return to part-time work. [Thank you, Leigh.] For the next 3 years I was actively involved in developing and managing a successful business operation. Life was good.

The morning of Monday, August 29, 2005 brought Katrina. The following days exposed the complete system failure of our own local, state, and federal governments. I returned to New Orleans 5 weeks later, and learned that I had lost my home.

Though I had plenty of the various medication I needed on hand for the duration, I was unable to obtain refills of my prescriptions in November anywhere in New Orleans, because not a single pharmacy had reopened. This, I realize now, was the beginning of the end of anything related to my own good health. On November 19th, I suffered a stroke while sleeping on the floor of my business.

The good people of The Spirit of Charity Hospital, operating out of tents in the now infamous Convention Center, brought in a mobile cat-scan and later transported me to Touro Infirmary. There, the medical staff of the destroyed Charity Hospital and the decimated LSU HealthCare Network, working in unfamiliar surroundings, guided me to improved functionality and gave me direction for follow-up care at a health clinic they were reopening some distance from my own location.

One was forced to do EVERYTHING differently than we have ever been taught or learned how to do on our own. The good folks at Touro evidently did not realize that patients could not get prescriptions filled ANYWHERE in the city. Due to the pharmacies being looted by the city's addicts during and following Katrina, we had no pharmacies. When eventually some did reopen, New Orleans' patients had to follow far more involved and strict procedures than ever before to simply get a prescription filled. Most of these rules have now been adopted nationwide, and I am certain many of you are now dealing with many of the same aggravations that we here in New Orleans have had to deal with since The Thing. If you are unfortunate enough to require pain management, that in itself is a whole new ballgame entirely.