After the Hurricane

I was riding the bus to my exam destination and it first had to stop at Charity Hospital and drop off some candidates scheduled to complete their exam there. I looked up at its towering presence, aging cement walls with somewhat art deco designs on them. The harsh environment that was New Orleans was evident as I looked upon the enormous towering monolith. Dripping down from the top of the building was the blackened soil of years of urban smog, oil wells and decay. It covered the top of the building and streaking down probably one third of the upper part of the building in ever thinning streaks, like streaks of chocolate syrup on a sundae. Only this did not have the appeal of ice cream at all. I looked up at that building and it gave me the creeps. I was thankful that I did not have to go in it. Something about it just made me uncomfortable.

At the time, I had no idea what fate awaited Charity Hospital.

That was in 2004, the year I took my American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology Board oral exam, the final step in the process of becoming fully board certified. The process is a tedious process and the exam is only administered once or twice a year at one site at a time. Every candidate in the country is expected to fly in from wherever they are to the designated location for what is ultimately a one hour long exam. As far as exams go, it has been very criticised for being very subjective, with results varying on the willingness of the patient being interviewed by the candidate to cooperate, the nervousness of the candidate, the mood of the examiner, etc. It is indeed a very nerve wracking time for a board candidate.

The oral portion is in fact, being phased out, but I was one of the "lucky ones" that got to endure the torture of an exam that has a 45% failure rate. To be honest, I did not pass it my first time, or my second. I passed one portion, but not the other, both times. I needed to pass this time. By now, I had relocated to a job where I had more colleagues to help me practice and felt better about the exam going in, but still nervous.

Through the whole process, candidates are loaded into buses and shipped throughout the city to various hospitals and outpatient psychiatric centers where we examine a live patient as part of the exam process. The first stop my bus made was at Charity Hospital. I honestly did look up at the grimy towers of the hospital and the building gave me the creeps. Perhaps it was my nervousness, perhaps the knowledge that this was not a safe part of town, perhaps just the whole feeling that there was a lot of suffering going on in this part of the city that got to me. I was glad I was not taking my exam in that building. It just made me uncomfortable.

I did not know at the time that it was the only hospital in town that treated uninsured patients. I now know I judged the hospital unfairly.

It is not in a good area of town, sandwiched between two interstate on ramps and surrounded by decaying slums. Location wise, Charity Hospital is not really all that near Lake Pontchartrain and the area that was most noted to have been flooded so badly. It actually was closer to downtown and the French Quarter, so I would not have expected it to have taken the hit that it did. Just that fact that the facility was damaged as badly as it was is a testimonial to the extent of the flooding that occurred. Charity Hospital is further away from the lake than the Super Dome. It now sits, fenced off with chains to keep people from entering. The building is considered a total loss and is somewhere on the long list of buildings that are scheduled to be demolished. The sordid tales of doctors and nurses euthanizing patients who they felt would not survive the ordeal continue to plague this facility, but I do not believe them in the least. One more ghost to haunt this facility.

To this day, there is a part of me that feels like my initial dislike of the building somehow played a role in its eventual demise. Like if I had not thought that it looked creepy, somehow it would have survived the flooding. Of course, the logical side of me knows that this is ridiculous. The city was going to flood regardless and the building is very old and outdated. It would not have taken much to render the building unusable. I know I am not the only person to look upon the dripping grime and soil on the towers and feel uneasy. My husband felt the same way for one. I am sure there are others.

I paid Charity Hospital a visit this New Year's to pay homage to the once so important institution in this city's history. Partially to make peace with myself that I was not the cause of the demise of the facility but also to honor any institution that cared for so many who had so little. The closure of Charity Hospital left a lot of people out in the cold. The gaps are slowly getting filled but like the lower ninth ward, the gaps are still larger than the areas that have been repaired.

My hospital cares for the uninsured quite a bit itself. It puts a big financial strain on the system, but people need care and they are human beings, not numbers. Sometimes I look up at the white cement tower at the hospital here, and it looks a little creepy, too. I have learned to see past the grime and look at the people inside.