Family Practitioner Honored for Post-Disaster Care

In fact, the tornado destroyed more than just the medical offices themselves. All of the patients' medical records were lost too.

"All the way up into Tennessee, people found pieces of records," Morrow says. The clinics also lost two X-ray machines, as well as the only bone density machine in the county.

"We're still trying to find a way to be able to replace that," Morrow says of the bone density machine. As for their complete blood count machine, "we still can't even find it," he says. "We don't know where it got blown to."

The Hackleburg clinic operated out of tents for several weeks, treating and counseling residents and clean-up workers and providing familiar faces to people who'd just lost everything.

"People didn't even have cars. Their cars were damaged and destroyed, and they'd come by to get insulin or Zocor or antibiotics," says Morrow. "So we were here initially just to treat anybody that needed treatment."

Then, a local Pepsi distributor donated an 18-wheeler trailer that he'd retrofitted into a makeshift doctor's office, complete with bench seating, an exam table, a nursing area for blood draws and shots, and six 4x4 cubicles for patient visits.

"It's actually been pretty miraculous, as far as we're concerned," Morrow says of the 53-foot-long trailer. "I have a wonderful staff?we've gotten closer, so to speak, because every time you move you bump into somebody."

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