USD Magazine Spring 2006

[ b e f o r e ]

KIMBERLY BOSWELL (B.A.)

lives in New Orleans, and is finish-

ing up her first year at Tulane

Medical School. She says she is

enjoying the South, the culture

and the food and is looking for-

ward to her career, possibly as a

trauma surgeon. She expects to

graduate in May 2008, and hopes

to move back to California.

[ a f t e r ]

KIMBERLY BOSWELL (B.A.)

CLASS NOTES

is a second-year medical student

at Tulane Medical School, though

she attends classes at Baylor

University in Houston, due to an

arrangement between the schools

after Hurricane Katrina ripped

through New Orleans. She still

hopes to graduate in May 2008.

[ a f t e r m a t h ]

f course there's more to Kimberly Boswell's revised Class Note than O EYE OF THE STORM by Kelly Knufken

She and her classmates focused on getting patients sta- ble enough to move to a shelter and helping to determine which ones needed hospitalization or dialysis. They even helped peo- ple make contact with missing family members, facilitating some reunions in those chaotic times when phone service was hard to come by. After evacuating, she found out that her condo, about a mile from the Superdome, wasn’t damaged in the hurricane. But she didn’t come through unscathed — looters made off with some of her belongings.

Louisiana and Mississippi. A few days afterward, the group went to Baton Rouge, where they put their nascent medical training to the ultimate test. “I was in essentially a M.A.S.H. unit — that’s what it felt like and looked like,” she says, describing the makeshift medical facility set up in the basketball arena at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. “We were kind of doing everything — drawing blood, starting IVs and working with physicians to fill prescriptions.”

the broad brush strokes in the captions above. When Hurricane Katrina struck at the end of August, she was three weeks into her second year of medical school, and was winding down with fellow students from their first set of exams. She and her friends evacuated to Houston on Sunday, Aug. 28, the day before the hurricane made landfall in

C L A S S NOT E S C L A S S NOT E S C L A S S NOT E S C L A S S NOT E S C L A S S NOT E S C L A S S NOT E S C L A S S NOT E S

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