The Big Guy With the Clipboard

Well I can tell you already this is not going to be like Rita! The activity level here is intense - the pace frenetic, (a word which here means wildly excited or frantic). We had a meeting in the cafeteria at 11:15 to brief visitors and family members on their responsibilities while they are visitors here, and it was a little overwhelming seeing how many of them there are! Something like 500 visitors, and going up!

We have plenty of staff in house for the patients, plenty of supplies and plenty of food, but too many extra people! Oh, and pets! Do not get me started on pets. We have a warehouse in our heart hospital that is filled from one end to the other with pets in kennels. We had to assign extra staff members to sit outside the kennel to check people in and out, get information about what pet belongs to whom, etc… You know the folk wisdom which says animals can sense when a storm is coming? Well this whole warehouse sounds like it’s full of anxious pets before a hurricane is about to make landfall.

We’re watching – you probably are too – the live footage of the storm surge in Galveston. It is strange to recognize all the landmarks they show, and stranger still to think my boys were playing on those beaches two weeks ago. It is also important to note that the eye of the storm is still 160 miles out and the hurricane force winds have not yet made it to Galveston. They are going to get nailed.

30 minutes ago I went outside for the first time since 6am this morning, and it had gotten noticeably cooler and the wind was gusting. But I think I’ve played golf in stronger wind than that when we lived in Amarillo, so I not ready to say the conditions are “deteriorating”.

Highlight of the storm so far: the nurse manager and nurse supervisor who stopped me this morning in the lobby to tell me all about their first ever helicopter trip, escorting patients to a hospital on the far west side of Houston. They were like kids who had just gotten off a ride at the Kemah Boardwalk!