Day 3 - Wednesday
We wake up not knowing we're on generator power, until people start moving and using the potty - only to find out the automatic toilet doesn't flush on aux power. Awesome. Definitely calls for coffee, so A and I head to Southport.
Grabbed the biggest styrofoam cups we could find and loaded up. She chose to eat breakfast, I decided to go back to camp and make my oatmeal. We get back to camp, I get oatmeal ready, go to nuke it and that's when I remember we're operating on generator power. This is where I learn the beauty of the red outlets. All the red outlets were the emergency outlets, the ones we needed to do work. Unfortunately, that didn't help my cold oatmeal. I headed over to Southport to see if any of those microwaves work, no dice. I drain most of the water out of my oatmeal, add my sunflower butter and flax seed and eat that mush.
Since we were on generator power, a lot of the restricted zones that you need to swipe your badge for access were on lockdown. To enter the NICU, you had to force the doors open. The stairs weren't accessible due to them being restricted on the 10th floor (NICU floor) so randos can't steal critical care babies...Side note: I don't know why you'd want to steal a NICU kiddo...sure some of them are pocket sized, but removed from their equipment and they die pretty quick. So unless you plan on stealing a ventilator as well, stealing a NICU baby isn't a good idea.
So the elevators...were slow. Some of the public elevators weren't even working, so everyone was using the service elevators. Being on the 10th floor and not being able to access the stairs - my usual routine - I was forced to use the elevators. Waited about 5 minutes to figure out the public ones weren't working. Waiting for the service ones...after 5 minutes in I started feeling very anxious. I did not want to be stuck on the 10th floor. It's not that I didn't like my unit, I just didn't like the idea of being stuck. As soon as the elevator came, I pushed 9 and got off one floor later. I was not about to be stuck in a crappy service elevator, I'd take my chances on the stairs.
The stairs were...wet. There are no windows in the stairwell or exposed pipes or anything that would make you assume where the water came from...but a few flights were quite wet with water flowing to the next flight. Quite an interesting day...
Lunch was spaghetti in Southport with A and then back to the cancer center to chart. Our computers at our nursing station at camp didn't work, so we were at the reception area charting and printing our assessments. Due to generator power, the network would go down, yay for electronic medical records! [insert sarcasm here]
I decided to nap while she worked out. Dinner was a sandwich I bummed from K because she had the supplies and she wanted to eat the thanksgiving dinner that was being served in Southport. There was rumor that the 6:30pm meeting was about releasing us the next morning. Rumor was confirmed that evening with an email - we immediately started texting B Team and then conference called our Chief Clinical RD who was at home during the storm.
We were informed we could leave Thursday once B Team arrived. There was a curfew in place until 6am Thursday am, so we let them all know they should be ready to hit the door by 6am because we were ready to get out.
Grabbed the biggest styrofoam cups we could find and loaded up. She chose to eat breakfast, I decided to go back to camp and make my oatmeal. We get back to camp, I get oatmeal ready, go to nuke it and that's when I remember we're operating on generator power. This is where I learn the beauty of the red outlets. All the red outlets were the emergency outlets, the ones we needed to do work. Unfortunately, that didn't help my cold oatmeal. I headed over to Southport to see if any of those microwaves work, no dice. I drain most of the water out of my oatmeal, add my sunflower butter and flax seed and eat that mush.
Since we were on generator power, a lot of the restricted zones that you need to swipe your badge for access were on lockdown. To enter the NICU, you had to force the doors open. The stairs weren't accessible due to them being restricted on the 10th floor (NICU floor) so randos can't steal critical care babies...Side note: I don't know why you'd want to steal a NICU kiddo...sure some of them are pocket sized, but removed from their equipment and they die pretty quick. So unless you plan on stealing a ventilator as well, stealing a NICU baby isn't a good idea.
So the elevators...were slow. Some of the public elevators weren't even working, so everyone was using the service elevators. Being on the 10th floor and not being able to access the stairs - my usual routine - I was forced to use the elevators. Waited about 5 minutes to figure out the public ones weren't working. Waiting for the service ones...after 5 minutes in I started feeling very anxious. I did not want to be stuck on the 10th floor. It's not that I didn't like my unit, I just didn't like the idea of being stuck. As soon as the elevator came, I pushed 9 and got off one floor later. I was not about to be stuck in a crappy service elevator, I'd take my chances on the stairs.
The stairs were...wet. There are no windows in the stairwell or exposed pipes or anything that would make you assume where the water came from...but a few flights were quite wet with water flowing to the next flight. Quite an interesting day...
Lunch was spaghetti in Southport with A and then back to the cancer center to chart. Our computers at our nursing station at camp didn't work, so we were at the reception area charting and printing our assessments. Due to generator power, the network would go down, yay for electronic medical records! [insert sarcasm here]
I decided to nap while she worked out. Dinner was a sandwich I bummed from K because she had the supplies and she wanted to eat the thanksgiving dinner that was being served in Southport. There was rumor that the 6:30pm meeting was about releasing us the next morning. Rumor was confirmed that evening with an email - we immediately started texting B Team and then conference called our Chief Clinical RD who was at home during the storm.
We were informed we could leave Thursday once B Team arrived. There was a curfew in place until 6am Thursday am, so we let them all know they should be ready to hit the door by 6am because we were ready to get out.
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