Readers Digest: A Healing Force

[Guest guest]

I may have posted this before but well worth repeating. Our US Surgeon

General seems to understand mold.

Mulvey son

A Healing Force

How one heroic doctor is helping her hurricane-ravaged town get back on the

map.

By Lynn Rosellini

From _Reader's Digest_

(http://www.rd.com/offer/rd/current/rdnavsubscribe.jsp?trkid=rdcom_article_top)

An Alabama Hero

Editor's Note: On October 29, 2009, the U.S. Senate formerly confirmed Dr.

Regina , the subject of our profile below, as the nation's Surgeon

General, America's top public health post. is known for founding

a rural health clinic in Alabama in 1990 and rebuilding it after two

hurricanes and a fire. The story below was featured in the February 2006 issue

of

Reader's Digest.

The Day After

It looks okay, thought Regina , as she maneuvered her light blue

Toyota pickup through the mud-slick streets of Bayou La Batre, Alabama.

Maybe we missed the worst of it.

It was August 30, the day after Hurricane Katrina, and all along the

bayou, shrimp boats lay tossed onto dry land, masts and rigging tangled in tree

branches. Crumpled piles of lumber marked where homes had stood, and a wash

of slime inches deep seeped from the open doors of shops and restaurants.

pulled up to her medical clinic. The tidy gray building looked

unscathed. But when she opened the door, the stench was almost enough to make

her sit down. Seawater, old fish and dead crabs mingled with raw sewage.

Chairs and tables were tossed about as if they'd been in a washing machine.

Dr. Regina , 49, had laid out $800 to open her family-practice

clinic in this impoverished community in 1990, and many thousands more to keep

it going. If people couldn't pay -- and many couldn't -- she treated them

for free. Clearly, she wasn't in it for the money. But now her head swirled

as she stared into the ruins of her life's dream. Then she steeled

herself: I can be sad and depressed later.

Bayou La Batre is a hapless little village tucked along a waterway that

reaches like a long blue-black finger from the Gulf of Mexico several miles

into the pine-dotted Alabama interior. Seafood is the town's main

livelihood, but foreign imports and rising fuel costs have driven the industry

into

decline. One-third of the population is from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and

more than one in five families live below poverty level.

When the hurricane sent a 13-foot tidal surge sweeping through, it

submerged shipyards, flooded seven feet up the walls of First Oriental Market,

and

lapped up State Highway 188 a full two miles north of the gulf. By

midmorning, as waters rose rapidly around them, terror-stricken residents

climbed

onto rooftops and into trees. Out on the gulf, beachfront homes built on

eight-foot pilings vanished into the 100 mph winds. Days later, fishermen

trawling 20 miles offshore found doors, paneling and furniture.

Though there were no fatalities, 2,000 of the town's 2,300 residents were

left homeless. Few had insurance on their homes or their boats.

As surveyed the damage, Nell Bosarge Stoddard, 75, whom locals

call " Granny, " pulled up in her Ford. " Oh, my goodness, " said 's

longtime nurse, her voice catching. " Here we go again. "

Stoddard had been with when Hurricane s ripped through the

clinic in 1998. Together, the two women had carefully placed patient files

out in the sun to dry. Then rebuilt farther inland, jacking the

structure up onto four-foot stilts. She still owed $170,000 on the new

building. But now it had been destroyed too.

It was hot and humid -- 90 degrees -- but the two women put on rubber

gloves and set to stripping the reeking clinic. If they didn't get it dried out

quickly, mold and bacteria would render the building useless -- even

hazardous.

As dragged out dripping chairs, lamps and carpet, she made a

plan. She had grown up in nearby Daphne and learned early on the importance of

doing for others. During the Depression, her grandmother, a matriarch of

the rural community, left lemonade and sandwiches for the hobos who

hitchhiked along the highway. Her mother was always available to feed a crowd

or

sign a bail bond if someone was in trouble.

So Regina, after finishing with med school, ignored lucrative job offers

elsewhere and returned to the region, laboring at the clinic from 7 a.m.

until past midnight. On weekends, she traveled across three states to work as

an itinerant emergency room physician to pay the bills. There was never any

question that she would rebuild. Again, the question was " How? "

" Bill me. " , in a white lab coat with a stethoscope around her

neck, was on the phone with the pharmacist at CVS. The week after Katrina, she

had begun treating patients at the community center, where 240 cots were

set up for homeless townspeople. 's " office " was now the stage of

the auditorium. She conducted examinations right there, without even a

curtain for privacy. The nearest bathroom was downstairs.

People arrived with ugly gashes from clearing debris, infections from the

foul water, and allergies from the mold. All could do was ask them

about their medical history; she had no records to consult. Patients'

lifesaving medications for diabetes, asthma and blood pressure had been washed

away in the storm. treated them all at no charge.

Before Katrina, the clinic had just begun to pay its own bills, even if

the doctor still couldn't pay herself a salary. But now, with expenses

mounting, she mortgaged her house for $210,000 and maxed out her credit cards

--

$60,000 in debt. It would cost $300,000 to start over. Meanwhile, how could

she continue treating people here? One day, gazing across the cacophonous

scene at the community center, she had a sudden thought: A trailer would be

good.

Helping Hands

Stan , a tobacco-chewing oysterman serving his second term as mayor

of Bayou La Batre, got the call on his cell phone. On the morning of the

hurricane, with 100 mph winds still blowing, had launched his 18-foot

fishing skiff into the roiling waters that lapped up Highway 188. Using the

police radio in his Ford pickup, he dispatched his son-in-law, a cousin

and a good friend to rescue survivors by boat, while he stood at the water

line, shuttling each load to the safety of a nearby church. For hours, the

tiny crew plucked people from the water: an amputee with one leg, clinging to

a mattress; a man and woman floating in a children's wading pool; another

terrified couple in a tree.

Since then, had barely slept or seen his wife. He had 30 people

staying at his home. At the community center, he supervised the feeding of

17,000 evacuees from across the county, as well as a drive-through supply

center. But for Regina , he always made time. , he felt, had

about the biggest heart of anyone in town. " She's always been there for

people, " he says. In fact, she was the mayor's personal physician.

" Stan. This is Regina. Think you could get us a trailer? " The mayor,

wearing his customary blue work shirt and ball cap, didn't even hesitate. " Yah,

babe, " he said. " Whatever you want. "

In ensuing days, county officials took on the job of locating a mobile

medical trailer. Meanwhile, a bunch of students from Iowa's Vennard College

showed up in T-shirts and boots to chain-saw the pecan and oak trees behind

's clinic, making room for temporary quarters.

Four weeks after the mayor's call, two halves of a double-wide trailer

rumbled down Bayou La Batre Irvington Highway from Mississippi. After the long

trip, the trailer was infested with bugs and caked with dirt. But another

contingent of volunteers -- this one from Mercy Ships -- was ready to

fumigate and scrub.

A nun from St. 's Hospital in Birmingham drove down in a rental

truck loaded with burgundy armchairs and framed prints for the waiting room. A

relief organization from the West Coast supplied worn wooden examining

tables and cartons of antibiotics, insulin and other drugs. paid for

$1,200 worth of gravel to put on the muddy field, then hired a plumber and

electrician for another $3,000.

On October 17, seven weeks after the disaster, the clinic reopened.

With scarred walls, cracked li-noleum, and a hallway so narrow that two

people could barely pass, the trailer hardly seemed a symbol of modern

medical care. But to , it was beautiful.

By now, FEMA had begun to deposit tiny white trailer homes next to the

rubble of destroyed houses and in neat rows in a local park. Life in Bayou La

Batre began to resume. Except for one thing. " People were starting to

understand the severity of their situation, " said. " They wouldn't have

jobs for a long time, and [they had] no houses. "

Now, she expanded her mission to provide more than just medical care. In

the late afternoons, she climbed into her pickup. Cell phone to her ear and

eating cashews from a plastic jar, she rumbled down the dirt roads making

house calls.

" How you doin', Miz Lee? " she called one day in November to Alice

Lee, 77, a short, white-haired woman with diabetes, who poked her head out the

doorway of her FEMA trailer. Behind it lay the ruins of her three-bedroom

house. A colossal black pig rooted in the dust.

" I miss my home, " said the frail woman, stepping onto the porch with the

aid of a three-pronged cane. " This is a little too small. "

was her friend, Lee said. " I rely on her. She takes everyone in. "

The doctor continued down the road, stopping at a small white frame house

across from the bayou. There, another family greeted her warmly. " She came

by to check on us after the storm, " said Jody Schultz, a lanky boat builder

whose home was inundated with seven feet of water. " She does that from

time to time. Just like a neighbor. "

An inspector had slated the Schultz family home for demolition. The young

couple desperately wanted to keep it, but didn't know how to navigate the

government bureaucracy. did. Back at the office, she telephoned one

of the clinic's board members, ph , who is an Alabama state

legislator. Within a day, the Schultzes got a permit to rebuild. " It was my

grandmother's house, " said Jody Schultz. " She helped save it. "

Ready for Renewal

Back at the clinic these days, conditions have begun to improve. Workers

from a Mobile construction company tore up the old wood floor of the

original 2,000-square-foot structure, ripped out wiring and insulation, and

bleached the walls. Volunteers from Construction in Bethesda, land,

are

rebuilding the interior.

, meanwhile, collected $73,000 from her insurance company. She

doesn't worry so much anymore about paying the bills. " I figure I'll find a

way, " she says, adding that she's currently bringing in some extra money

giving speeches to health care groups.

Unlike many New Orleans residents, most townspeople of Bayou La Batre plan

to stay put, despite their losses. has applied for grants to get a

part-time psychiatrist to help patients handle the hardship. At press

time, she hoped the clinic would reopen shortly after the first of the year.

" There's a lot of anxiety and depression now, " she says. " People who

worked all their lives and never asked for anything are having to ask for

everything. "

The seafood industry in the gulf region is not expected to recover. Prices

in the past year -- before the hurricane -- were among the lowest in

history, with cheaper farm-raised foreign imports accounting for 90 percent of

U.S. shrimp consumption. Many of the shrimp processing plants wiped out by

Katrina won't be rebuilt. Most shrimpers who lost their boats had neither

insurance nor money in the bank. Many will have to find other livelihoods.

As for the town, a real estate developer plans to build an upscale tourist

resort, complete with high-rise condominiums and a marina. The project may

eventually create hundreds of jobs for local residents.

For the short term, though, Bayou La Batre remains a melancholy place.

Pine trees, usually green all year, are windburned and brown. Mounds of refuse

still line the streets, and blue tarps cover damaged roofs. But every

evening, as daylight wanes, there are two reminders that life holds hope. One

is the glorious, orange-hued sky as the sun slips silently into the Gulf of

Mexico. The other beacon is the light blue pickup with the white-coated

doctor at the wheel, rumbling across piny back roads toward the lonely lights

of another distant trailer.

*************UPDATE:

After months of work, rebuilding with donations and the help of

volunteers, Dr. Regina was set to reopen her nonprofit medical clinic

in

Bayou La Batre, Alabama, on January 2, 2006. But at 5 a.m. New Year's day,

police called to say that the building was on fire. By the time

arrived, it was gutted. The cause of the blaze, the state fire marshal says, is

" undetermined but not suspicious. "

It was the third time in eight years that the rural clinic has been

destroyed, but will rebuild again. " The patients keep me going, " she

says. One disabled woman, with little money to spare, brought a card

with nearly $200 tucked inside. " Maybe I can help, " an elderly man offered.

" I got a hammer. "

If you would like to make contributions to support the Bayou La Batre

Rural Health Clinic, please send donations to the following address:

Regina , M.D.

Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic

13833 Tapia Lane

Bayou La Batre, AL 36509

Comments :

By Fran , RN , 07/27/2009, 8:52 PM EDT

Dr. Regina , founder of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in

Bayou La Batre, Ala., has been chosen to be surgeon general by President

Obama. DR. BENJAMIN, as an RN who had the honor of working with you on Level

10 at Providence Hospital, Mobile, Al. I would like to say thank you for

being the person you are...we love you, Our country will certainly benefit

from your dedication and knowledge.

By 1HippieChick, 07/13/2009, 10:08 PM EDT

I have this original article with the pictures. I was in Bayou La Batre

w/the Red Cross 2 weeks after Katrina hit. I would have loved to have met Dr.

. As soon as she was nominated, I immediately went to the internet

and found this story to send to all my friends. I think this article shows

the awesome strength, determination and compassion that will make her an

outstanding Surgeon General. Kudos to President Obama for naming her. I am

thrilled beyond words.

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