NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – The two long, red scratches are a
dead giveaway.
“You got snake bit,” Dr. John Twomey tells the middle-aged
woman who has walked into his disaster center for care.
Twomey, a burn surgeon, is chief medical officer of a
tented hospital set up by a federal Disaster Medical Assistance
Team on the grounds of the West Jefferson Medical Center, just
outside New Orleans proper.
The woman, who cannot be identified for medical privacy
reasons, is one of the 1,500 to 2,000 patients who have been
coming through the temporary facility set up last week.
Even though such cases could occur any day, accidents
always increase exponentially after hurricanes and other
disasters as people seek to clean up the damage.
Teams of nurses, doctors, paramedics and pharmacists from
around the United States are working under the Federal
Emergency Management Agency to supply emergency medical care
for the people who remain in the New Orleans area.
Twomey says they have seen the full gamut of medical
emergencies, from stomach illness to people who stepped on
nails, to the homeowner bitten by a snake as she tried to clean
up from Hurricane Katrina.
“I was wearing gloves to clean out my refrigerator,” the
woman says, somewhat embarrassed. “At least I got that right.”
But she was wearing flimsy shoes in the summer heat.
She had returned to her home in nearby Plaquemine’s Parish
after having fled Katrina. Her house was in fairly good
condition, but the refrigerator was full of rotten, smelly food
after days with no electricity.
She dragged it out into the back yard to clean it.
“Of course the grass is tall right now,” she said, and
added: “It’s usually manicured.”
She stepped back from her task. “I felt something sting me
and I felt it burn,” she said. Certain it was a bee, she went
to a nearby Red Cross emergency assistance center, set up to
aid people from nearby whose homes were flooded.
FAIRLY COMMON SNAKES
They sent her to West Jefferson Medical Center, where she
was intercepted by the DMAT team and an eager Twomey.
“I read the manual on snake bites this morning,” said
Twomey, a burn surgeon from Hennepin County Medical Center in
Minneapolis.
“This looks like a glancing blow,” he tells the woman. “We
won’t use any antivenin now but come back if it starts to
swell. He applies an antibiotic “because snakes have relatively
dirty mouths,” and sends a relieved patient on her way.
It could have been a water moccasin, a copperhead or a
rattlesnake, all fairly common in these parts.
So far, such cases seem to be more frequent than the feared
outbreaks of infectious disease.
Although the floodwaters are a stew of sewage and
chemicals, many people have been able to avoid infection so
far.
Water and sewer service has been restored to some parts of
New Orleans and neighboring Jefferson Parish but the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that while the
water looks clean, it is not safe to drink or to bathe in.
“We have seen people who have done only one brushing of
their teeth with water out of the tap and within six to eight
hours they are violently ill,” said Twomey.
He said they are treating these patients with antibiotics
and Gatorade.
“The national news has people afraid they can’t even go
outside without a mask and a full body suit,” said Curtis
Allen, a spokesman for the CDC in Atlanta who is in New
Orleans.
“There is very little disease here,” Allen said. “We have
not been seeing the diseases that many people around the
country feared.”
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