“The storm is expected to make landfall by 9:00 p.m. here near Duck, NC. Hurricane Isabelle is currently a category 3 hurricane with 125 mph winds,” the weatherman from Virginia Beach announced. He was standing in the blowing rain on the boardwalk in Duck, NC so that he could keep the Hampton Roads area apprised of the status and location of the storm. I had begun packing away our valuables and pictures to store in the unit that we were renting at Uncle Bob’s Storage units up on Military Highway as you come into Woodshire Mobile Home Park where we lived. I was also waiting for Kevin to get home from school. We were planning on staying with friends as the news was advising full evacuation if you lived in a mobile home. I loaded up the car and drove down to the storage unit. I had to move some of the boxes around so that I could get the new boxes in. I picked up a box to move it and had to put my right hand underneath for extra support as the box was heavy but not as sturdy as it should have been. As I went to set the box down, I moved my hand across the bottom and felt a stinging sensation on my hand below my thumb. I really thought I had just scratched it. When I pulled my hand out I had an inch and half long and an inch deep gash in my hand just above my thumb and it was bleeding. I am really surprised that I was not totally freaking out about the cut but I was relatively calm. I searched one handed through boxes to find something that I could put on the cut and realized that I still had to bring the stuff out of the car and put in the storage unit. I finally found a kitchen towel in a box and wrapped it around my hand and then looked under the box and found a dime sized chunk of glass stuck in the tape on the bottom of the box and tinged with blood. Now bear in mind that I am right handed and that would be the one that was injured. I unloaded the boxes and closed up the storage unit and drove back to my trailer, picked up Kevin and drove to a friend’s just down the street. Kevin wanted to stay at Jo’s with Jo's kids Chris, Sarah and Alisha while Jo went with me to the emergency room at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital. I had changed the towel to a clean washrag and drove myself to the emergency room. I only had to wait about 25 minutes to be seen. They put in 4 stitches and gave me a tetanus shot and prescription for Lortab for pain and sent me home with instructions not to get the wound wet and change the bandage every day. I drove back home, dropped off Jo and picked up Kevin and packed up clothes and headed to a friend’s house to ride the storm out. We managed to weather the storm with no damage to our mobile home and only minor inconveniences of having to leave and go to a safer location and wait until it was over. Several of our neighbors were not so lucky. One double wide had a tree trunk lengthwise in the middle of their home, others had skirting or roof shingles missing. Most of the damage from the storm was minor in our area. I had lived in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia for about eleven and half years and the only time I ever evacuated for a hurricane. To live on the east coast where hurricane season goes from June 1st to November 30th requires a certain amount of patience. Patience to ride out hurricanes, deal with tornados that are a result of said hurricanes and dealing with all this as a single acting parent. My husband John is in the Navy and is away most of the time. At the time of Isabelle John was stationed in Great Lakes IL for a class that he needed before reporting to his next ship. Did I mention that patience is not one of the virtues I possess? I finished what I was doing, then drove myself to the hospital, and back home, packed what I could and left my home not knowing if it would be still standing after the storm passed. We survived and the only real reminder is a scar on my right hand and the memories of our last hurricane in Virginia.
*Note: This is a memory as I recall it from Fall 2004 and all of the weather info may not be exact. Hey it was a hurricane and very stressful, so deal with it. That's my story and I am sticking to it.
