Anna Pou and Dan Nuss

Dan Nuss and Anna Pou were linked first by their work in head and neck surgery and then, after Hurricane Katrina, by Nuss’s efforts to defend her professionally and support her legal defense. Their relationship moved from the operating room to the public dispute over the Memorial investigation: Nuss acted as Pou’s department chairman and advocate, while acknowledging no direct knowledge of the events under investigation.

Departmental and Surgical Collaboration

Nuss chaired Pou’s department, and their professional relationship was active in the care of James O’Bryant, a patient Pou had treated before Katrina. When O’Bryant’s cancer grew back behind his left eye, he hesitated over another extensive operation. Nuss believed he could remove the tumor, and O’Bryant agreed to proceed. On July 6, Pou worked alongside Nuss, reconstructing O’Bryant’s face as the surgeons removed tissue and assessed it for cancer. The operation lasted about twenty hours. They found that the tumor had invaded bone around a previously removed blood vessel, an extent the scan had not shown; removing all of it would have required opening O’Bryant’s skull, which the surgeons believed he could not withstand. They closed his face as best they could, leaving part of the tumor in place.

The collaboration continued in the demanding care that followed. After O’Bryant’s pain worsened and he suffered severe bleeding, Pou prepared for another operation and called Nuss to come in on a Sunday night. He joined the surgical team, which operated through the night. At Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, where the department was working because its New Orleans hospitals had not reopened, Pou also convened staff to explain O’Bryant’s procedures and the delicate care his reconstructed face required. The episode shows the practical basis of their working relationship: Nuss took part in the surgery, while Pou coordinated the patient’s care and explained its specific requirements to the staff.

Confidence and the Limits of His Knowledge

As the investigation advanced in July 2006, Nuss became an important source of professional support. Through him, Pou and her attorney, Rick Simmons, learned that Attorney General Charles Foti was likely to release investigative findings unfavorable to Pou. A request from the attorney general’s office for Pou’s address added to their concern. Nuss thus helped convey developments that informed Pou’s and Simmons’s response, though the evidence does not present him as an investigator or as someone who witnessed what occurred at Memorial.

Nuss’s defense of Pou was rooted in his long professional acquaintance with her. He regarded her as a dedicated, ethical physician and considered it impossible that she had harmed patients. He extended the same confidence to Cheri Landry and Lori Budo, whom he had also known through work. In his view, the accusation that the three had formed a group acting against patients was incompatible with their personalities and professional lives. He suspected that their accusers were resentful professionals who had disagreed with decisions during the disaster. Those were Nuss’s judgments, not findings based on firsthand observation: Pou had told him little about what happened after Katrina, and he had not been at Memorial.

That distinction matters to the shape of his advocacy. Nuss’s certainty about Pou’s character coexisted with a limited view of the events at the center of the case. His support testified to the trust she commanded among colleagues, but it could not itself resolve the disputed evidence. The account places his loyalty alongside the investigation rather than treating his confidence as independent proof of what happened.

Defense Fund and Public Advocacy

After Pou’s arrest, Nuss was flooded with calls and offers of assistance from former colleagues and doctors who had never met her. He discussed those offers with Simmons and used his position as a Louisiana State University department chairman to organize a defense fund through his university office. His appeal presented Pou as a respected colleague who had worked under desperate conditions after Katrina and argued that her professional reputation and personal assets were at risk because criminal allegations were not covered by malpractice insurance.

The appeal also framed the case as a warning to physicians who might be on call in a future disaster. Nuss’s concern was therefore both personal and professional: he wanted to defend Pou, and he feared that the consequences of the prosecution could reach other medical workers facing emergencies. Department secretaries helped circulate letters and emails outside working hours. Within a week, the Anna Pou MD Defense Fund had collected about $30,000, intended for both her legal defense and the defense of her reputation.

Support and Its Consequences

Nuss’s intervention transformed private confidence into an organized campaign. He recruited institutional standing, professional relationships, and donations at a moment when Pou faced public accusation and a costly defense. His backing was consequential precisely because it was not detached: he was her chairman, colleague, and staunch believer in her ethical character. The book also describes how supporters emphasized Pou’s heroic professional image while allegations were denied or pushed from discussion. Nuss’s fund and appeal belonged to that wider effort to defend her, even as the underlying facts remained contested.

The relationship therefore carries two connected meanings. It records a practical partnership in patient care, from the long operation on O’Bryant to his later emergency surgery, and a powerful institutional response to Pou’s prosecution. It also makes visible the limits of professional loyalty as evidence: Nuss could describe the physician he knew and mobilize substantial support for her, but he could not supply firsthand testimony about the crisis at Memorial.