ECOT Alum Reports from Boston
If there’s one thing Juliana Merhaut knows how to do, it’s how to overcome hardship and pain. It’s something she hopes her city can now do.
The 2005 ECOT graduate now lives in Boston, working at the Boston Medical Center. She spoke with ECOT News about being at the epicenter of the largest terrorist attack on native soil since 9/11. Luckily, Merhaut wasn’t in the vicinity when the blasts occurred at the Boston Marathon. “I was actually on my way to a doctor’s appointment, but had to turn around because public transportation was shut down,” she said. The next day, she arrived to work at the medical center, where she performs clinical research in the department of surgery. Approximately 28 victims were in the hospital, in desperate need of care. While security was normally tight, it was now at a fever pitch. “They were stalking everyone who came in to check their ID badges,” she recalled. The surgical department was in constant motion, with surgeons being called in and schedules being shuffled around. “We had seven amputations just in our hospital,” she said. “We’re probably about a mile or two from the Copley area (where the blast occurred), which means we were one of the first hospitals people went to.” She described the whole scene as “surreal” and admitted having trouble even grasping the words to accurately paint a picture. “That whole week, we didn’t know who the bomber was, we didn’t know if more bombs would go off, we were just treating people and it was like a war zone,” she recounted. She described the elevated police presence and National Guard roaming the streets, reminding people of images from Iraq and Afghanistan. “It was an eerie feeling,” she said. The Boston transplant talked about how she was inspired by i ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????qA????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????e???????????????????
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