USNS Comfort

[AVGWarhawk]

She might have slept right though it. Her last email last night she stated she was utterly exhausted and was headed to bed. Probably slept like a rock.

[SteamWake]

Its possible that alot of the crew were un aware of the incident.

It happened while they were underway and enroute.

[AVGWarhawk]

No mention by Erika. I'm guessing fire control is damn good then.

[AVGWarhawk]

Haitian babies getting aid on the Comfort:

Hey everyone,

Here are a couple of pics from my ward. Baby Esther is the 33 weeker
(as you can tell from the box). The other picture is a totally cute
little 2 month old named Felix. He smiles and coos at me when I talk to
him. My friend Karen took these pics today.

E

[AVGWarhawk]

Today was really really hard. I thought yesterday was the hardest, but
> today was worse. I'm afraid for tomorrow. Yesterday, I was on the ward
> writing orders until after midnight. I was SO TIRED!! I'm on my feet
> ALL day. It doesn't feel like I am, but they hurt so bad. I woke up at
> 4:30 am with a migraine (from being so damn tired), and never really
> fell back asleep. I ended up taking imitrex, motrin and Tylenol to get
> rid of it. I ate my breakfast, and then went to my morning meeting to
> get my doxycycline (we have to take it every day for malaria
> prophylaxis, which is really funny given that I never go outside except
> for MAYBE 2 minutes in the morning). I was late, so someone gave me
> hers tucked into a tissue. I had forgotten my water bottle (that big
> Thermos bottle has been my best friend), so I ran around looking for it.
> Doxy can get stuck in your esophagus and give you a big painful ulcer if
> you don't take it with lots of water, for some reason. I guess it's
> sticky. Then realized I needed to change into scrubs. Then ran around
> looking for scrubs ("running around" usually involves at least 3 floors
> worth of stairs in each direction, FYI). When I changed out of my
> uniform, I couldn't figure out why I had a tissue in my pocket so I
> threw it away. Long story short, it ended up being a long time between
> taking my doxy (which can make you nauseous if you don't take it with
> food) and my breakfast. I finally got one from the ward and took it,
> and as soon as it hit my system about 30 minutes later, I got
> overwhelmingly nauseous. So I went up 3 flights of stair to sick bay
> for some Zofran. One of the chiefs suggested that I might also like an
> IV fluid bolus. It occurred to me then that I hadn't hardly peed the
> day before. I ended up getting 2 liters of fluid and IV zofran and
> still peed something the color of apple juice. I cannot get back on
> track with my water. The ship is really hot, because it's so hot in
> Haiti, and it's all the AC can do to keep up. Yesterday, I had this
> sore eye and went to optometry where I had some random corneal
> occlusions (ship eye, according to one of the nurses). I felt somewhat
> better, but the ward was really busy. Then someone decided to dump all
> the patients on the Bataan AND the Carl Vinson on us at the same time.
> We got 15 patients in an hour. They weren't stopping at casualty
> receiving, because they were overwhelmed, so they came downstairs
> without admission orders or a note. It was insane!! There were 4
> doctors and 2 nurse practitioners and it was all we could do to keep up.
> The nurses were frantically trying to find bed space as well as give
> pain meds. In the middle of that, this histrionic and very loudly vocal
> 16 year old came back from the OR screaming about how she had to pee but
> didn't want a bed pan. Now, she was having a revision of her foot
> amputation, but her big issue was her pee. She's a big healthy girl and
> doesn't help you, so it takes like 4 or 5 people to get her to the
> bathroom. I finally stole the bedside commode from a little boy who was
> using it for a chair to watch a moving (Beauty and the Beast in
> Spanish); they moved her out to the elevator lobby and put her on the
> commode there. We couldn't get her gurney to the bathroom because the
> TV was in the way. She kept carrying on after a very very healthy dose
> of multiple pain meds, so I finally just gave her some Ativan (same
> family as Valium) to shut her up. I hate that it came to that.
> Internists do that ****, not pediatricians. When things quieted down, I
> was trying to talk in French to the boys watching the movie. I was
> telling them that I like Gaston more than Beauty or the Beast and then I
> started singing the Gaston song. They got a BIG laugh out of that. I'm
> sure they think I am a foolish American doctor, but I made them smile.
> Later in the day, I ran around trying to make a picture of the preemie
> to hang at her mom's bedside in the ICU, so she could see her daughter
> when she wakes up. I finally went down to the office where the
> journalists hang out and got the guy from Getty Images who was in the OR
> when she was born to make himself useful and print out one of his pics.
> He was very nice about it. I ended up eating a protein bar for lunch.
> I must have looked bad by dinnertime, because people kept patting my
> back and looking worried. Whatever. Anyway, I'm going to bed. I'm
> POOPED!!! Can you forward to everyone? I'm too lazy. Thanks.
>
> E

[Jimbuna]

Cute baby

Is that Erika?

[Platapus]

I honour her service to not only her country, but to humanity.

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

Cute baby

Is that Erika?

Yes. She is a daughter of one of my mom friends. I never met her. She forwards what is going on to my mom and I get it from my mom.

[Torvald Von Mansee]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

Cute baby

Is that Erika?

Wow. It's absolutely astonishing that she is both a newborn baby AND a physician!!!!