Hurricane Francine paid us a visit. A quite memorable visit, I might add. I’ll provide more details later, but I wanted to let you know we are safe and things are getting back to normal.
The one good thing about hurricanes (if there is one) is you usually get several days’ notice so you can prepare for the oncoming storm. Three days before Francine hit, the shelves in the grocery stores were already being emptied and lines were growing at gas stations. That continued until the day of Francine’s arrival on Wednesday. Although we had a little rain during the day, the heavier rains didn’t arrive until about 3:00 PM. At around 5:00 PM, the winds picked up and we lost power. The eye of the storm hit landfall at a little after 6:00 PM. At this point, everything was proceeding as expected from this type of storm.
Then the abnormal happened. We have a small lake in front of our house. There is a street between our house and the lake itself, but we have an unimpeded view. The lake has slopping banks and the water level normally sits about 6 feet below the banks. With very heavy rains, suddenly the water level in the lake began to quickly rise. By 7:30 PM, water was out of its banks and the streets began to flood. This normally never happens as there are pumps that pump out excess water if the level in the lake gets too high, but for some reason, the water kept rising. Soon the houses along the lake had water up to their houses.
With the streets already flooded, the water level continued to grow, eventually covering our lawn, inching its way up the driveway and heading for our house. I opened the garage door to the house and found about 2 inches of water already in the garage. The door sills to our house are about 3 1/2 inches above the garage floor and the water was rising fast.
Someone in the neighborhood was smart enough to call the emergency hotline to let them know the lake was out of its banks and flooding the area. Even though we didn’t have power, we still had cell phone service. Someone discovered the pumps for the lake had been shut off, so instead of pumping excess water out of the lake and into the bayou, the level of the lake kept climbing until it was out of its banks. Once they got the pumps turned on, the water started slowly to recede. It was like a raging river running down our street and it took some time before the water receded from our house, but at least the water level was no longer rising. I opened the garage door to the house and found the water within 1/2 inch of the door sill. We had been saved just in the nick of time. God was watching out for us.
The winds got pretty strong near the eye of the hurricane, but we made it through. I had plenty of flashlights and extra batteries at the ready. I had purchased a fan that ran on rechargeable 24 volt batteries, since we had gardening tools that used that same battery, so we had plenty of fully charged back-ups at the ready. The fan came in handy overnight with power out and having to keep the windows closed.
The next morning, I went out to survey the damage. Our neighbor had a little damage to their house, but we were lucky and somehow got through unscathed. We had plenty of debris in the yard, plants blown down and mulch displaced from the flood waters, but beyond that, we were in pretty good shape. My next job was to hook up the generator.
Many people in our neighborhood have installed the permanent whole-house generators that will automatically come on and power up the whole house when power goes out. My son-in-law warned me that during Hurricane Ida a few years ago, many of the people with natural gas generators, like these permanent whole-house generators, had problems because of insufficient gas flow. The infrastructure isn’t capable of supplying enough consistent gas pressure to keep them running. Many additional people have installed these types of generators since Hurricane Ida which was only going to compound the problem. Following my son-in-laws’ sage advice, I purchased a portable generator that was capable of running on gasoline, natural gas and propane. That would give me plenty of fuel options. I even had a plumber come out and install the fittings on our natural gas line so it would be ready to plug our generator into natural gas if we ever needed it.
In all fairness, a permanent whole-house generator has many advantages as long as you have enough natural gas pressure to keep it running. Not only does it come on automatically, but everything in your house works, including tankless water heaters for taking nice warm showers. My portable unit can be hooked up to the whole house, but I hadn’t yet taken that step, so we were limited to running extension cords to the most important things like the refrigerator, portable air conditioner, etc. Using extension cords works fine for shorter outages, but if our outage was going to last for days, I’d be kicking myself for not having had an electrician hook up our generator to the main circuit panel.
So, once I had checked the house for damage, I was ready to set up our generator. I initially set it up to run on gasoline. I ran power to the refrigerator, to a portable air conditioning unit, to our internet router (we use a 5G internet provider) and a multi-outlet for charging phones, etc. While that was running, I ran flexible natural gas lines to the unit with the intention of running on natural gas, so I wouldn’t have to worry about gasoline supply if there were no gas stations open. After switching to natural gas, sure enough, the generator would run for a while, but suddenly drop out due to insufficient gas pressure. It would restart right away, but kept kicking out after a while. I finally switched back over to gasoline and ran it until we were ready for bed. I don’t keep the portable generator running when we go to bed. We just use battery-powered portable fans and flashlights.
At 1:00 AM this morning, power was restored in our area. There are still many parts of Thibodaux without power, but we were one of the lucky ones. Again, God was watching over us. Even though we had the portable generator, we still didn’t have our tankless water heater running, so my wife took a cold shower yesterday, but a hot one this morning. I didn’t even bother showering yesterday. I was too tired.
How did I do with the Myasthenia Gravis through all of this? As you can imagine, it was a very stressful time. As I previously mentioned, one of the benefits of a hurricane is you get quite a bit of time to prepare. One of the downfalls of a hurricane, besides the damage they cause, is you have quite a bit of time to worry. Worry = stress. With MG, stress = weakness. Let’s just say I was exhausted before Francine got here, was in bad shape when the flood waters started to rise, and pretty much collapsed into bed after a very eventful day. I didn’t sleep well not knowing what I would find in the morning, so I woke up tired. Thankfully, there was no damage, but ahead of me was the physical working of setting up the generator. I got it accomplished.
Last night, I was again exhausted and went to bed at around 7:30 PM. When the power was restored at 1:00 AM, it was a huge relief and I finally slept better the rest of the night.
I started this blog with the term “Back to Normal”. While there is a “Back to Normal” after a storm, is there really ever a “Back to Normal” for someone with Myasthenia Gravis?
Some people with MG can return to most normal things in life after suffering a bout of severe symptoms, but it may not be “normal” like someone’s “normal” without MG. A person with MG may not be experiencing many symptoms at the moment, but they’re always aware of what stress and physical activity can do.
We’re “Back to Normal” in terms of our house and lifestyle. I suspect it may take me a few days to get to feeling “Back to Normal” again.
Thanks so much to everyone who sent their thoughts and prayers for us during this time. You don’t know how much we appreciated them. God was watching over us….just like he always does.