1,846 Comments for Linton State Hospital

Oh crap. Someone's gona beat me up & take my milk.

I asked for a Blood Light!

That's a traction bed. A very OLD traction bed.
Traction was used in patients with oseteopathic injuries. Bone fractures for use lay people.
Traction is applied to help straighten long bone injuries. (Femur, Humerous)
Traction is also used in the spinal injuries.
Before we really learned that many spinal injuries were paralyzing and that there was no (and is no) real way to reverse the damage. Patients were put in traction, to help realign the spine. Mostly to help keep the discs between the bones from calcifying, or deteriorating to the point where bone would rub on bone causing the patient more pain.

For many spinal cord patients. Traction was and still is torturous. You cannot move ANYTHING. There is no turning your head, moving your wrists..nada.
A very real idea of a traction patient is believe it or not.. In a movie. Born of the 4th of July has a scene in which Tom Cruise was in a VA hospital in traction..

While much of the other goings on around it were a bit fantastical. No nurses coming to help clean up vomit. No nurses coming in to care for the patient.
(Yes.. things like that did and do happen) but not because these nurses are being cruel or intentionally mean.
What people don't realize is that nurses, like other medical care workers have to put priorities on things. Sadly, cleaning up vomit is at the bottom of the list if you have a patient not breathing. Sorry.

Since the use of this particular kind of traction table (or bed) we have learned leaps and bounds on matters of long bone and spinal cord injuries.
Unfortunately, it did have to come at the expense of comfort of some people.

Remember.. Medicine is a Practice. It is not an absolute.

you thrust your torso out, you thrust your torso in, you thrust your torso out, and you shake it all around..and thats what its all about!

If the fridge is off, how do you keep the beer cold?

I have md and sleep in the smaller ones called port a lung. I did sleep in this kind at first. they are scarey at first. E-mail me and I can show this one. garfieldhen34@aol.com

or seemily, an insect swarm from the earlier lab escaped and suprised the patients by riping through the screen. and onto the patients like the riples on the floor... the last thing they've seen.

I can honestly say that I have never in all my days working in the health care field have i ever come in contact with something like that. Although i doubt many cardiac patients would need this type of device.

I bet that thing was heavy!!!!

wow, can you even think how messed up a person must have been to need that thing???
OMG.

yeh, uhhh like that

strange, I wonder what that thing cost.
very complicated, concidering that there was a human laying there, being pulled, (it looks like many directions at the same time, scary)...

and the leveling, cranks or levers.

hummm, guess there is not alot of nurses on here.

Yep, by the drop in temp you can figure out time of death.

((There were bellows in back where one could push and pull a handle to "breathe" for a person inside.))

we had the power go out. the generator took what seemed to be for ever to start up.
running from room to room, I had two, to bag the patients by had, was the most stressfull 6 minutes of my life. yeh, hold your breath for 45 or so seconds, two quick breaths, then hold for 45 seconds. that was me running from one room, into the next and back. they lived..