Jessie:
Dear all:
I wanted to try to write something, both to let you know what I've seen and to help me get it off my chest, I fear I won't be as eloquent as others or as the occasion deserves. All that I write is my own musing and completely off the record. Thank you all for your concern and good vibes sent my way. As you may or may not kow there are 2 "level one" trauma centers in lower manhattan: St. Vincents and Bellevue. St. Vincents is closer to the site, but Bellevue is bigger. When we first heard about the initial disaster we had just finished our morning conference and really didn't know what had happened except that a plane had hit a building. We set up the ER for mass casualties and got assignments of duties. It was very efficient and under control. It turns out that many of the staff in the hospital had watched both crashes unfold as there are windows of the hospital that face south and had an unimpeded view of the towers. In the ER, though, we knew very little and simply readied ourselves for the worst. And then people started coming in. At first, there were a few victims, who had been picked up fleeing the scene, then we started getting rescue workers who had fallen and hurt themselves or who had suffered smoke inhalation or asthma attacks. And all the physicians in the hospital seemingly came down to the ER to lend a hand. We had facilities for over ten simultaneous trauma resucitations. People who had trained at Bellevue in the ER showed up thinking that we, and not their current hospital, would need help. But there just weren't very many patients. Finally at 1PM after feeling very agitated that I was basically standing around doing nothing, I came home for a few hours sleep figuring that all there docs would eventiually get tired and go home and they would need fresh people in the ER to stay up all night. While I walked home I couldn't believe that it was such a beautiful day. It seemed wrong, like it was too cruel a juxtaposition to have evidence of our divine gifts while experiencing such loss. When I went back to work at 8PM, nothing was much different. There was stil a lot of standing around. Occasionally some folks would go down to the site or to Chelsea piers where there's a triage center, but the people who came back said that there wasn't much for them to do there either. Surgeons slept on stretchers in the ambulance bay, there were so eager to save someone's life. I walked around in a daze. Thinking about how I used to look at the twin towers being built when we crossed the Brooklyn bridge when I was little. They finished one before the other. I don't remember which was which, but for a time, they were distinct for me. I started getting more and more sentimental about the firemen. They've suffered such huge losses. They mourned so hard when they lost that group of firefighter in Massachustts. Yesterday they lost hundreds. The docs who went down to the site said that the firefighter were superhuman. They would go and dig, get overwhelemed by smoke, come out, suck on some oxygen for a few minutes and, as soon as they felt better, go right back in. I thought about how they risk their lives without hesitation and what it really means to be a hero.
I feel like the entire day has been spent hoping that we'd get some patients, hoping that we could save some lives, thinking "with the death toll likely to be over 10,000, even if only 1% can be saved, we should be seeing a lot more people here." So we were a whole hospital with nothing to do, everyone was ready and willing (suddenly the laziest staff had a spring in their step), we just had so few patients and that was so horrible.
There were some people who came in who we probably saved, but it's such a small percentage. It's hard to comprehend the thoroughness of the destruction.
I'm going to watch some TV, eat breakfast and go to sleep. Love to you all.
| 9/11 | New York City | Ground Zero |
