Two poignant memories from Joan Eberhardt’s Katrina diary

Two particular memories of her DMAT service in response to Hurricane Katrina that will stay with Joan Eberhardt forever had nothing to do with direct patient care, but everything to do with compassion and caring. 

            “On our 12th day in Bay St. Louis, a man came running up to our tent with a black bundle in his hands yelling, ‘Help me, somebody, help me,” remembers Eberhardt. “I ran out to him thinking he held a baby.” 

            Inside was a lifeless cat covered with mud.

            “We gave the cat fluids under the skin three different times,” Eberhardt remembers.  “The first time we thought the shock to his system had killed him.  The second time we pasted some food from our military MREs (meals ready to eat) on his tongue.  By the third time the cat was hissing at us as we tried to inject him.

            “The man told us that the cat was his father’s.  The cat has been the father’s only companion for nearly 15 years since his mother died.”

Hours before the hurricane, the son had to finally take his father forcibly by the arm to leave his home without his pet.  It would be 12 days before the son could return to the damaged house.  The son promised his father he would find the cat and give it a proper burial.  In the rafters of the house, the son found the cat underneath an inches thick cake of mud.

Some may question why a DMAT team would spend time caring for an animal.  For Eberhardt and the DMAT teammates, their actions were more than validated later that evening.

“The man brought his father in,” Eberhardt recalls.  “You should have seen this little man, 87-years-old, and the joy in his eyes. He told us, ‘You’ve given me a reason to live again.’ That was thanks enough for us.”

Gratitude and then some

One of the DMAT earliest patients was an elderly woman.  Although they immediately treated her, the team would see her again and again

“This lady had no transportation, and walked with cane.  She lived on the other side of Bay St. Louis,” Eberhardt recalls.  “Yet everyday she kept coming back. She would give each one of us a hug and to see if we were all right.  She gave back so much more to us, than we gave to her.“