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Monday, October 03, 2005
Newfields resident back from South also helped in the tsunami recovery
Peggy Kimball's career as a nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital has taken her to far-off places.
Kimball recently returned from a trip to the South where she helped victims of Hurricane Katrina. The 51-year-old mother of three also used her 30 years' nursing experience earlier this year when she spent a month on a Navy medical ship on the coast of Indonesia after last December's tsunami.
'I love volunteering,' she said from her home in Newfields this past week. 'When you are able to give something you know, it's very fulfilling.'
In early September, she traveled with about 30 other medical clinicians from Massachusetts General Hospital to work on the USNS Comfort, a Navy medical ship docked in a shipyard on the coast of Pascagoula, Miss. The volunteers responded to an invitation from Project HOPE, an international organization that coordinated health professionals to provide medical aid to both victims of the hurricane and the tsunami.
Since local hospitals were operational at the time of her trip to Mississippi, many of the staff left the ship to try and set up health clinics, providing various medical aid and vaccines, she said.
Kimball assisted the American Red Cross, riding on an emergency-relief vehicle, or ERV. These vehicles went throughout devastated communities providing food and medical assistance, if needed. She said she checked on a few wounds, referred some patients to other doctors, spoke with the elderly, and provided medical advice.
Kimball recalled meeting an elderly man who was trying to help an elderly woman. The man was so concerned that he just kept saying, "Just make sure you check on this woman."
This was what she experienced throughout the communities left ravaged by the storm: neighbors and strangers working together to help one another.
"There was just that sense of community," she said. "Everyone pitching in to take care of their neighbors and looking out for each other."
She recalled driving along the waterfront and seeing the devastation from the tidal surge. Some homes were literally pushed right off their foundations, landing in neighbors’ lawns.
"There was so much work to be done down there," she said.
Just two months before her trip to the South, Kimball was recognized with 200 other volunteers by President George Bush at the White House. She was recognized for her work in Indonesia after the tsunami. She said all the volunteers and organizers of the project gathered on the South Lawn to hear the president.
It was February when she was aboard the USNS Mercy ship on the coast of Indonesia with about 100 other volunteers from throughout the country. This 900-foot Navy medical ship was essentially a floating hospital.
This volunteer effort was also established by Project HOPE. Kimball worked in the recovery room and the intensive-care unit.
"That experience was wonderful," she said. "I feel privileged that I was allowed to go over there and help out."
The ship was like a little functioning community, she said. The staff stayed on the ship and for one day she made it on land to work in another emergency room.
"We flew in halfway across the world and then took a helicopter to the ship," she recalled. "You could see the change in the (landscape). A lot of the shoreline was destroyed."
Kimball said the people in Indonesia were wonderful.
"They were the kindest, warmest people," she said. "Just wonderful to be in contact with."
She said medical staff managed to break the language barriers and really get to know the patients and their families.
"Aside from the language barrier and being on a ship, we were taking care of people, which is what nurses do," she said. "Everyone is treated as individuals."
Kimball said both experiences were very important. Both areas were, and still are, in need of help. Both areas were destroyed and the people devastated by the destruction around them. But they all seemed to pull through.
"I saw a lot of the community (members) getting together - a lot of family and friends getting together just trying to get back on their feet and move forward," she said. "I feel fortunate that I have a job that I’m able to do this, able to go out and help people. I think we need to give back for what we (have) and I’m pretty lucky (from) where I sit."
While she said others may not be as lucky as she is and have a job in which she can take time off to volunteer, both these areas need help, even if people can only donate money.
"If people have the time and energy that they could (volunteer), it’s just a wonderful thing to do," she said of volunteering. "But I also understand a lot of people’s time is valuable, so if you can’t give time, money is always good.
"These stories we heard about people just trying to put their lives together, it’s just going to take a long time before they can get back on their feet."
Source: Portsmouth Herald News - Portsmouth,NH,USA
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