WAVELAND, Miss. – Lloyd Higgins was in bad shape when he arrived at the temporary hospital in this coastal city shortly after Hurricane Katrina.

Not only was his house destroyed by a surging wave that swallowed the structure whole, but Higgins also had missed several days of his diabetes medication after losing it in the storm.

He later would learn how dangerously high his blood sugar level had climbed after being treated at the tented military hospital, now staffed by members of the Maine Air National Guard’s 101st Medical Group.

Higgins returned Monday to the field clinic, which is temporarily replacing the damaged county hospital, to restock his medication and check in with Lt. Col. Rich Leidinger of Rockport. The Waveland resident, who moved to the area two years ago from Oregon, also suffered infected lacerations from scraping his knees on the canoe he paddled to get back to his crumbling house.

“I don’t know what we would do without their help,” Higgins said Friday, sitting on a cot next to his wife, Sherri Higgins, inside the white tarps that made up his makeshift hospital room.

“Probably the best I’ve ever been [cared for]. I didn’t want to leave.”

Leidinger, who works as a urologist while not deployed with the Guard, handed Higgins two packets of pills and instructed him on the proper dosage. The high-carbohydrate MREs, or “meals ready to eat” typically distributed to military personnel, that Higgins has been eating are far from ideal, doctor and patient agreed.

“MREs are not the best thing for a diabetic,” Leidinger said, chatting with the couple before returning to his rounds.

Leidinger is one of 11 members of the Medical Group who arrived two weeks ago to this bustling network of tents to treat patients with a variety of illnesses, from infected wounds to chain saw injuries. The work is similar to what the team of doctors, nurses, medics and public health experts see in regular practice, but for the higher number of infections, Leidinger said.

A bacterial infection often associated with people who handle shellfish, including Maine lobstermen, has increased as a result of the coastal surge that flooded the city, he said.

“These people were wading through some of this water that was inoculated with this bacteria” from shrimp and crawfish, he said.

Though the temporary hospital stays busy with routine infection and wound treatment, the staff and facility are capable of handling major surgery, dental care, pharmaceutical refills and limited medical testing.

On Monday morning, members of the Maine team treated a man with a golf ball-sized cyst on his knee, a patient who complained of chest pain and a Mississippi Army Guard soldier who injured his back.

Working with fewer disposable tools, the medical workers use a portable autoclave to sanitize their equipment, producing less waste than a typical hospital.

Some of the equipment from the county hospital, Hancock Medical Center, was salvaged after 4 feet of water flooded the first floor. A stack of wheelchairs stamped with “HMC” sat outside the tented waiting room, where they were to be used until the center reopens in November.

The hallway and rooms of the air-conditioned field hospital both looked and smelled clean. Medical staff bustled in and out of rooms, most wearing military fatigues though some sported scrubs, while outside others ate MREs under the shade of a tree.

Breakfast and dinner are trucked in from the Combat Readiness Training Center in nearby Gulfport, where members of the Maine Air National Guard’s Security Forces Squadron are deployed. The food is distributed at a field kitchen in the parking lot and is brought in on trays for patients, Master Sgt. Greg Niland of Sebec said Monday.

The staff has heard numerous heart-wrenching stories as they feed and treat the area’s sick and injured, from people whose relatives died to parents still searching for missing children, Niland said.

In some ways it’s harder than the four months he and Leidinger spent together staffing a field hospital in Iraq, Niland said.

“At least we’re not getting shot at,” he said, standing in the doorway of the hospital ward. “Here we’re helping Americans get back on their feet. This hits home.”

Though he desperately wants to return to Maine in time for moose-hunting season, Niland said he will volunteer to stay on past his deployment, scheduled to end in two weeks, if he’s still needed in this devastated city.

“You really feel privileged to be able to come down here to help,” he said.

Bangor Daily News reporter Jackie Farwell is on assignment with the Maine Air National Guard in Mississippi.