Home again; grim reminders

October 5, 2008


Why we should have fantasized that all that crap would be cleared up when we got home is a mystery for the psychologists. Mountains of debris still line most streets and even larger mountains of furniture, refrigerators and indescribable 'stuff' now are piled on every vacant space.

Our friends try to stay composed as they tell of giant jaws picking up the remains of their grand piano and dropping it in a huge dumpster.

I met with State Farm today for a benign debate over how much my car was worth. We were within a couple of hundred dollars of each other, so the debate had about as much lackluster enthusiasm as the first Presidential debate.

Only after we'd settled on a figure did the adjuster, who regularly works catastorphes, learned that I am a psychiatrist who volunteered with the Red Cross to help Katrina and Rita displaced persons. It turns out this woman was having her own share of problems with Galvestonians.

Galveston (excluding the very affluent West End) is a relatively old community. Lots of seniors. Lots of old folks who own their homes outright. Now think about it: If you don't have a mortgage, nobody is making you buy flood insurance. If you're on a limited fixed income, what a temptation it must have been to shrug off the exhorbitant premiums. So today I learned what a monumental impending problem we are about to face here. We are a town that has yet to acknowledge our new group of homeless - the elderly with homes sans mortgage and sans contents.

It is only a matter of time until many of the denizens of this island will begin to show the inevitable sequelae of this trauma. No doubt there will be a need for those who deal with infectious disease, minor traumae and tetanus shots. But I suspect the real morbidity is going to be associated with the mental stress of this ordeal. The PTSD issues will be less than that I saw among Katrina victims, but it will be significant. More troubliing is the likelihood of emerging medical issues tied to psychological stress. Heart patients, diabetics, those at risk for stroke -- look out.