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We have thousands of patients and family members who are dealing with dual devastation, cancer and the hurricane.

I have lived through many major hurricanes during my lifetime: Camille, Frederic, and Ivan, to name just a very few. However, never have I seen destruction, panic, and fear on this massive scale.

Natural disasters are terrifying - that loss of control, this feeling that something is just going to randomly end your life for absolutely no reason is terrifying. But, what scares me is the human reaction to it and how people behave when the rules of civility and society are obliterated.

I grew up in the Northeast; I've seen hurricanes before and trees down and cars destroyed.

Never in our country's history have we witnessed a natural disaster that has impacted so many people in such a wide area. In fact, as of the writing of this column, millions of people along the Gulf Coast have been displaced from their homes in a period of only five days.

My heart goes out to victims and survivors of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy and to their families. This disaster will go down in history books as one of the largest natural disasters in U.S. history.

My last trip to New Orleans was for the fifth anniversary of Katrina, and I had the awesome opportunity to bring my family down. We all worked on a house together and met some of the families.

I'll never forget Hurricane Katrina - the mix of a natural and a man-made catastrophe that resulted in the death of over 1,500 of our neighbors. Millions of folks were marked by the tragedy.