This week I looked through what was once the main entrance to Brodstone Memorial Hospital but it didn’t look the same. I didn’t see a Gray Lady sitting in the hall welcoming visitors and giving directions. Neither of the Jeans were in the office.
When I first started visiting the hospital, Gene Steele was probably the only woman working in the office, a position she held for 25 years. Later Jean Linn shared office duties. I think my advisor was pulling my leg but I remember being told that to work in the Brodstone office one had to be named Jean. (He probably didn’t realize one spelled her name with a G and one with a J.
Continuing down the orginal hospital entry to the right was the quarters where the nurses stayed. It may also have been the hallway I went down with my uncles when I was two years old to see a newborn cousin. I’ve since gone to the hospital to take pictures of new born babies in a room with their mother but that is the only time I have gone to the hospital to see a newborn in the nursery.
A few years later, the hospital adopted a rule that said youngsters under the age of 12 were not permitted in the patient rooms. But an exception was later made for me.
When Dr. Mason learned I was not being permitted to see my grandmother, he said he would see that was changed. Grandmother was in her last weeks and she wanted to regularly see her grandson.
I wasn’t present to hear him argue my case at Brodstone but I was when argued my case at Kansas State University. I was undergraduate student applying for graduate school and required to have a physical from my family physican. My family physician had always been Dr. Mason. However, he had closed his office and was working in the KSU Student Health Center. I went to student health and was told I couldn’t complete the physical at the health center but perhaps Dr. Mason would do it at his home.
I was allowed to go to his office and ask about a home physical. Dr. Mason didn’t think the physical was necessary and stormed out of the office. He cornered the health center director and a heated conversation ensured. When Dr. Mason returned, he told me I would not need a physical.
I may be the only KSU student to be admitted to graduate school without a physical.
One night before the Brodstone visitation exception was made, I sat on the lawn below grandmother’s room, hopefully in a place where she could look out the window and see me writing her a letter about what had gone on that day at school. It was a special night to be sitting on the hospital lawn for a bright white planet, probably Venus, was visible near the moon.
Some days, when I went upstairs in the old hospital to visit a patient, all the rooms were filled and there were beds in the halls. Remember, when Grandfather Wrench was assigned to the sunroom. It was a room at the south end of the hospital with several beds and lots of windows.
The surgical room was at the north end of the second floor. Remember seeing the lights on and wondering who was having emergency surgery at that time of night.
Visitor parking was close to the hospital. It was along the north side of Tenth Street. Doc and Jo Miller (relatives of mine) had built and lived in the first house south of the hospital. I suspect they feared somebody leaving the parking stalls would back into their house, And so the north side of the yard was lined with short utility poles. The poles have out lasted the parking, but after more than 60 years I suspect they wouldn’t do much to stop an automobile that plowed into them.
To access the emergency room, one drove in the driveway along the back side of the hospital. I suspect patients entered the hospital through the same room that my father entered when he wasdelivering garden produce and ice to the hospital kitchen. Before delivering ice, Miss Grandy, the hospital’s administrator, had to inspect it. She only accepted clear ice.
The hospital I saw on a tour Saturday morning is much different than the one I remember.
Over the years there have been some marvelous changes since the southweing was constructed in 1967. In some cases, I wonder why the change didn’t happen sooner. One of those is the emergency room. No longer is it necessary to set up a tent outside to wash off someone contaminated with chemicals. No longer is it necessary to unload patients in the rain. One night I helped the mortuary’s ambulance service deliver patients to Brodstone. We unloaded outside, east of the original hospital and had to carry the cot to the hospital door. The drive was paved but apparently to rough to roll the cot.
No longer do nurses have to walk down a long hall to a central station to complete their reports. Between every two rooms there are work stations for the nurses. And there are windows so the nurse may sit at her desk, do her work and monitor the patients in two rooms
If you want to stay with a loved one, there are comfortable accommodations in each room. I didn’t see any low cots stashed under a hospital bed.
Hospital security has also changed. Access is controlled and visitors can’t roam as freely as they once did.
One night, when I had stayed late with my mother, I had walked to the hospital and was taking a shortcut out through a side door. On my way, I encountered a man who said he was lost and asked how he could get out. I thought it best to not show him the way I had planned to exit but took him to the south entrance which was then the main entrance.
In the 1950s, after The Express was printed late Thursday afternoon, Herb Atkins, a longtime newspaper employee, would take a bundle of papers and walk the patient floor giving papers to each resident. Today, Superior Pharmacy purchases a paper for each patient and I dropped the bundle off about 8 a.m. outside the south entrance door for a staff member to distribute to the patients.
Before I close these entries for this week, I must mention the elevator that came with the 1967 addition. I avoided the elevator. It travelled so slow I was afraid visiting hours would end before I reached the patient floor. I had heard the new elevator was faster and when I had an opportunity to ride it during Saturday’s open house, I jumped at the chance. Turned out I was the only one in my tour group to do so. But it was fast. In the future, I will probably pick the elevator over the stairs.
Brodstone hospital has come a longway since it opened nearly one hundred years ago. It is a facility to be proud of.
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