314 Comments Posted by claudia

Older hospitals tend to have floor drains in areas that use fluids. We had them in the 2 suture rooms in the ER. They were nice. I can remember pouring bottle after bottle of sterile fluid over a guy that had tried to unplug a drain with a caustic product and when it didn't work, he pressurized the drain and the caustic fluid blew out and all over him. Nasty. Our rooms were tiled in that beautiful pale green.

Most specimans of this type would not be used to diagnosis contagious problems. They are used to check for tumors/drugs and other tissue level problems. This could be some pathologist's life work. These should be viewed with an eye toward discovery of the pathology of the patient. But they should have been dealt with when the place was closed. A trip to the incinerator would have taken care of this.

What if this was the central sterile area for the hospital. For nonhospital people that is where reusable supplies were taken and cleaned and sterilized. Maybe the long narrow space was for a cart loaded with instruments....... Doesn't look much like the one where I work, but different strokes. That would explain why access was denied.

boy, the more i look at, the more heartbreaking it is. it is too bad that these buildings on the site could have been saved and made into something of use. the grounds were beautiful. a nice apartment building would have been nice. everything gets destroyed. too bad - i had worked there

i am looking at these pics and just cant remember the hispital looking like this. i have a different pic in my head when i worked there. i left in 1971. the front doesnt look the same and i certaintly dont remember the terrace. help me.

what happen to this building and the contents. doesnt anyone care anymore. i worked there as an aide and it was a nice facility. what happened??? i loved the patients and their records should not be scattered around like that. please care and do the roght thing.

My nephew was an extra on that movie shoot and he loved the feel of this building.

The appearance of the area leads me to think the brackets held a fire extinguisher.
Red flag for stop like in an emergency.......

I don't think contagious is the word. Maybe familial. If you are concerned about your voices you should check with your Dr. I think the implications are fascinating. It may be the precursor of studies that proved the chemical inbalance in certain types of mental illness. Sure glad they weren't injecting the rat plasma into the humans...............

If you look toward the bottom of the middle one you will see the tap that you opened to allow the cooked food to flow into pans that fit the steam table. Brings back memories.

When I worked in the cafeteria while going to college we had these. My job was to make 5 gallons of pudding at a time. And it was cooked pudding not instant. These pots did a great job of cooking pudding.

In nurses training in 1970 my entire class was taken on a field trip to a looooovely facility called [name removed] in OH. It is closed now and may even be gone. The things I saw that day almost made me leave nursing. Patient's were strapped to beds or restrained in chairs. Some of them were not able to conmmunicate except by screaming. There were MR/DD and mentally ill all in the same areas. The ages were young children and up. The rooms were packed. Cribs by adult beds. I can't remember if this area was the ward or a day room. I am hoping in my mind that it was a day room where all ages mixed. Many of the patient's reached out to us and seemed hungry for human contact. It was and is the worst "medical housing" I have ever experienced. It felt like there were warehousing people.
But it was worse when they closed all of the facilites in my part of the state. There was very little provision made for most of the patients. They were mostly taken back to the county they originally were from and became a burden to the county. Many group homes were opened. Most of the MR/DD stayed in the homes. The mentally ill....not so much. I live in the county seat and many of the mentally ill stay in my town so they can walk to the offices that provide their benefits. So we have "crazy" people walking around town all of the time. Many of my neighbors are afraid of these people. The folks are not violent, but they act out and scare people.
The old way was bad and probably Very bad in many instances, but this new way is not better. The only difference is now there is no large hospital building for the state to support. The mentally ill are still underserved and abused, but now this happens because there is no where for them to go. They live on the streets, in garages with no plumbing, and anywhere they can find. They do not wish to be confined and with the current laws unless they are a danger to themselves or someone else there is no way to force them to stay anywhere. Some of them choose the street over the nice warm dry housing they were originally assigned. So do we have it right this time? My answer is NO. Do I have an idea that addresses all of the needs? NO, but I wish I did.
Getting down off the soap box now. Thanks for listening.
:)

I worked for a hospital that built a totally new building in the 70's. The colors of those chairs are the colors that were on the walls, the chairs, the carpets, and everything else you can think of when we moved into the new building in Aug 1977. So that would give some idea of the date for these chairs.

We also gave a 3H enema. Which stood for High, Hot and a Hell of a lot. The soap is used to irritate the lining of the lower bowel which stimulates the contractions. High meant to insert the tube further than normal.
And that is what 37+ years of nursing comes down to at the end of the day............LOL