Introducing Connie Delaney - School of Nursing - University of ...

School of Nursing volunteers posed with colleagues in front of “the smallest clinic in the world”: front row,
center: Kevin Smith; third row, far right: Mary Roseanne Eschle, Wendy Looman and Mary Benbenek.
Other volunteers were Bonnie Bata-Jones, Andra Fjone, Nancy Grimsrud, Scott Harpin, Georgia Nygaard,
Linda Lindeke and Penny Kessler. Harpin returned to Louisiana in March for another round of duty.
Donald’s stark drawing. He wrote:
“People on top of houses.
And the water was flowing
below the people of the house.
And the people say, ‘Help me
Lord’ and the Lord lifted his
hand and said, ‘I will help you.’”
the clinic was a freestanding linen closet (they dubbed it “the
smallest clinic in the world”), in a church, in a Buddhist temple,
in public health facilities.
Ruth Lindquist, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs,
who organized the school’s effort, was impressed by the generosity
and caring. She said she received 68 calls offering help or support
within two days of the mission’s being announced.
Faculty who stayed behind helped, too, filling in for the volunteers
in their classrooms. Post-doctoral student Carolyn Garcia participated
in a “River of Relief” radiothon sponsored by the Minnesota
Broadcasters Association. The University hosted the event on a
pedestrian bridge on campus, which spans the Mississippi River
1,043 miles north of the disaster area. Garcia, who served in
previous relief efforts, described the experience on the air—the
stress, tension, long hours, sense of never doing enough, emotions,
the toll on the mental health of workers as well as victims. The
effort raised more than $700,000 for the American Red Cross.
CHILDREN: TRAUMATIZED AND STARVED FOR LOVE
In Lafayette, Looman, whose research involves social capital and
interactions of family and community with children with special
health care needs, focused on the children, who were traumatized and
hungry for love. To help them cope, she encouraged them to draw and
write about their experiences. (Her observations on using art to help
clinicians assess the children’s needs will be published in the March-
April Journal of Pediatric Health Care; find it at www.jpedhc.org.)
Their expressions are heart-rending. Five-year-old Angela drew
a sad-faced stick figure surrounded by a rainbow—a rainbow with
the color drained away. Justin, also 5, who drew himself smiling
and himself sad, said: “I’m sad because of the hurgercane. It wants
to break stuff down. It won’t break me down ‘cause I’m too big.”
“The world is different,” wrote a homeless teenager. “Friends
gone. Misplaced aggression for things that happened in the Super
Dome… Life feels so strange. All days are different now.”
As for the volunteers, the experience changed them, too.
“I came away feeling like a new person,” said Looman. “Many of
us did. I gained perspective on home and family and what’s
important. It was sad, really sad. But we came away realizing how
important it can be to be present, to listen and to focus on the
strength of the human spirit.”
For more about this story, go to www.nursing.umn.edu/Hurricane
spring 2006
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