![]() ![]() It destroyed most of our hospital, much of our city, and killed more than 140 people. That day one of the most powerful and deadliest tornados in the history of the United States struck our medical center. John’s Regional Medical Center in Joplin, Missouri, on Sunday, May 22, 2011. I was one of two Emergency Department (ED) physicians who were on duty at St. We had patients who’d undergone routine procedures, several patients who were postoperative.My name is Dr. We had patients who were demented or delirious. “Some of the medical records fell as far as, I think, Kansas City (160 miles to the north), from the air,” he explains. “The patients weren’t able to provide history,” he says. He wrote admission orders on 24 patients. It was so frantic, he says, that he was worried “if I even take time to talk to one patient. Balogh describes the patient influx as an “absolutely overwhelming” onslaught, with ambulances, cars, and pickup trucks that had rescued strangers on the roadside arriving seemingly nonstop. “When you’d examine them, there was a risk of your glove getting torn doing an exam.”ĭr. “We had patients who were covered in glass, and by covered I don’t mean they just had glass in their skin-they were covered with it,” he says. There were amputations, impalements, eviscerations. And I made a diligent effort to help the dying with low doses of pain medication to help them through.” “If somebody was dying and that was pretty obvious, it required us to rethink how we were going to approach things. They put in chest tubes, ventilated them, other procedures. If somebody could be saved, and it wasn’t going to require an effort that would jeopardize resources, they did everything they could to save people. ![]() “The initial trauma that came in was pretty fast and furious. “We were immediately put to work because there were just so many people coming in,” he says. He spent 10 hours there, first treating trauma patients. Persoff checked in at the ED of another hospital, Freeman Health System, and offered his help. At press time, the tornado had killed more than 150 and caused an estimated $3 billion in damage.ĭr. John’s Regional Medical Center, was destroyed, its roof ripped off, he learned. “We knew right then that the chase was over for us.” But I hoped that it would be very limited.”Īs he traveled along another road, he saw two dozen flipped-over semi-trucks. There were trees and twigs and leaves, so I knew that the destruction to Joplin had been significant. “There was Styrofoam insulation falling from the sky, papers, there was a Barbie doll in the middle of the road, but I have no idea where that came from. “We were dealing with a raining sky of debris,” he says. Persoff hoped that the damage wouldn’t be so devastating, despite the first ominous signs he saw along the highway. In the moments after the fast-forming storm, Dr. He and a “chase partner,” Robert Balogh, MD, an Oklahoma-based internist and former hospitalist, were able to rush to the scene and assist in the aftermath. ![]() Persoff was less than a mile from its path. When a monstrous twister with winds of more than 200 mph barreled through Joplin, Mo., on May 22, Dr. Persoff found himself in what might have been considered an inevitable situation: helping people injured in a tornado. This year, he put his doctor’s gear back on sooner than he expected.Īfter 20 years of chasing storms, Dr. “My wife jokingly calls it my ‘midlife crisis prevention program,’ ” says Dr. Every May, Mayo Clinic hospitalist Jason Persoff, MD, SFHM, sheds his doctor’s gear, grabs his camera and camcorder, and heads to the Midwest in search of ferocious weather for two weeks. ![]()
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