3,181 Comments Posted by Lynne

"Just breathe in some nice fresh air a few more times and then push, Mrs. Smith. All 100 of us here in the large cavernous delivery room with the deluxe chandelier are breathing along with you and sharing in this deeply private experience."
8`-)

Serves 'em right to have uncomfortable seats while watching some poor woman giving birth. Their seating arrangements should be half as unpleasant as hers. ;-)

Just what I would envision as a pleasant and memorable birthing experience - a large number of strangers gaping at me while I am going through the thrilling and quite public process of delivery. 8`-)

From your intro I was unable to get a feel for the sort of hospital this was - was it exclusively psychiatric? I assume it was a private hospital?

I do love this picture. This alcove looks like where you would place a religious statue of some sort. Was there electric lighting inside the alcove or did they rely on natural lighting? Also, I can't get a feel for the dimensions of this - was it 3 feet high, 6 feet high, etc? Thanks.

It does put me in mind of the Miami art deco theme - 30s and 40s or so. I have admit it I get a kick out of the color scheme . . . I had an old tile bathroom like this in an older house in Indiana a few years back, but the color scheme was just black, white, and pink, nothing near this swell. :`-)
This shower curtain would have to go, however - it's not NEAR kitschy enough . . . Maybe flamingos and palm trees?

Hey Motts - do you read Braille? ;-)

I don't know why these colors work so well together, but they sure do . . .

A state training center in the US. But I hopscotch from state to state, working at different facilities.

This is a sling for a Hoyer lift.

This is an old mechanical hydraulic cradle lift - see at this site:
http://www.spectrummedicalinc.com/dme/lftpat/index.htm
You put the sling around the person, attach it to the lift, crank them up into the air using the hydraulic lift, move the lift to where ever you want the person to be, and position the person over where you want to place them - the bed, the bathtub, the toilet, their wheelchair, etc. You lower them, detach the sling, and voila! Here you are - not dropped and staff with no back problems!

Don't know when they started using plastic in refrigerators, but the first plastic was patented in 1907 by Leo Baekeland, who developed Bakelite, the first synthetic material of this type.

The majority of large residential facilities were designed to be far away from populated areas, as segregation from society was one of the main functions of these places. The more self-sufficient you could make a facility, the less it cost the state (and the less they were out of the glare of the public eye), so most places made and repaired their own clothes and shoes, ran farms and dairies, had their own laundries, and produced materials that were purchased by others (baskets, furniture, etc.). A power plant was part of the package. The state was always being pressed for spending money on the "unwanted" of society, and if they could break even by taking care of most of their own needs financially, they were under less pressure for even existing. Due to the fact that most of these places were pretty far away from town, that transportation was an issue when these were first built, and that working shifts were usually 12 hours at a stretch, they usually had living quarters for staff as well. In some cases they had cottages for married couples. They also paid extra money for staff who had musical skills so they could entertain the others (these are the days before radio, TV, and movies), and often the institution set up activities for staff, who had very little time off. These were truly small communities unto themselves, and were modeled after what was known as the "colony" model - they would truly be self-sufficient isolated colonies of the "unwanted," safely segregated from society.

Yeah! I don't know how I missed that other shower trolley. I think I was too busy looking at the "restraint thing," which I am guessing is a sling from an old Hoyer lift. These are mechanical lifts used to transfer people from place to place without having to use your backs to lift them. Safer for them, easier for you. You can lift folks out of their chairs, onto toilets, into bed, into the tub (or shower trolley!), etc.
http://www.dmeonline.com/PTLIFTS1.JPG
http://www.rehabmart.com/pimages2/pic113-D_en.jpg
http://www.rehabmart.com/2003/hoyers/Hoyer%20Lift%20Images/RM_Hoy18.jpg
http://www.edmond-wheelchair.com/thumbnails/Patient%20Lifts/Hoyer/70056%20sling.JPG

In days gone by it was realized that people whose bodies don't bend easily needed to be bathed somewhat differently than those whose bodies are more flexible. As noted above, filling an entire tub and cleaning it in between clients when you are supposed to bathe 20 people in a 2-hour period is difficult, if not impossible, to do thoroughly and safely. As well, there are safety issues with lifting people whose bodies don't bend easily into and out of deep tubs, both as far as potentially dropping the folks who are being lifted and with ruining the backs of the people doing the lifting. The compromise was what we now call a shower trolley or shower gurney (see http://www.landm.com.au/kh600.html and http://www.westonsinternet.co.uk/images/aa1760.jpg for examples of current equipment). However, when this equipment was first developed before they had all the swell light weight stuff we have these days, they used ceramic tubs, which, as I noted above, we still use in many facilities (such as the one where I am currently employed) and the staff call them "slab tubs" precisely because they resemble autopsy tables. We also have the more modern shower trolleys, but they aren't as stable, and this is important when you are trying to bathe someone who is 200+ pounds and can't assist you in bathing and who may have severe contractures and spasticity, making for a wild shower when they are soapy and you are supposed to prevent them from slipping out of your grasp and landing where they shouldn't. I humbly admit that there is something about a cart with wheels that makes one leery of using it for bathing large wiggly people. Therefore, we are sometimes reduced to using bizarre looking but much safer equipment, such as the slab tubs. Now, if you want to provide a service for people with disabilities and make a lot of money, this would be an excellent field to go into to produce newer, better, safer equipment . . .

However, I have to admit, it is much more exciting to think of this as a draining table than just a boring old tub . . .