Interview with Estelle Walker

SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES

ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #

WALKER, ESTELLE

WALKER, ESTELLE (19-)

Nursing student

At UW:

Interviewed: 2020

Interviewer: Faith Hoffmeyer

Index by:

Transcribed by: Teresa Bergen

Length: 103 minutes

First Interview Session (April 7, 2020): Digital File

00:00:00

FH: Hey. Today is Tuesday, April 7, 2020. My name is Faith Hoffmeyer and this is a phone interview for the Madison General Hospital School of Nursing Oral History Project with Estelle Walker. Estelle, can you please spell your first and last name for an audio check, please?

EW: My first name is Estelle. That's E-s-t-e-l-l-e. And the last name is Walker, W-a-l-k-e-r.

FH: Thank you so much. To start, do you mind talking a bit about your background and where you grew up?

EW: Yes. I grew up one of three children in Stoughton, Wisconsin, which is just thirty miles south of here. My mother was a homemaker and my father was a barber. And I grew up with a grade school called West Side Elementary School and then went into the Stoughton Junior High and High School and I graduated in 1951.

FH: And was there anything in your background that guided you towards a nursing education?

EW: Yes. Two or three things. One, my father, as I told you, was a barber. And when I was little, and I want to say maybe between the ages of five and seven, someplace in there, he would have to go to people's homes and cut their hair or shave them because they were too sick to come into the barber shop. So he would do this in the early evening or on Saturday and even Sunday. And he let me go with him. And my job was to watch them, but I was the one that put the hot towels on the old men's cheeks, you know, the warm towel warmed up their face and then my dad could shave them. And I was so impressed. I thought my goodness. 00:02:00The first time I'd seen an old man in bed that wasn't well.

And probably my second experience was when I worked in the grocery store as a teenager, I didn't like the lady who was the owner of the store because she was real, oh, like a hawk. She was just kind of like on your back all the time. And I told my mother, "I don't like that lady."She said, "Well, you could quit, then."

So I quit and I went to the Stoughton Hospital and I worked as an aide. And I learned how to give my first bed bath with the instructions of the aide that was teaching me. She did one and I watched her and she said, "Okay, the next one's yours." And that's how I learned how to bathe a patient.

And so then I said to my mother, "I don't want to be a teacher. I don't want to work in the store. I think I would like to be a nurse." So that's how come I went into nursing.

FH: Wow. Was nursing a popular career choice in your community?

00:03:05

EW: Well, it was either that or a teacher. And I didn't really like to be a teacher, and I didn't like to be a stenographer, you know, like working in an office. And I didn't know what I could do until I realized sick people need taking care of. So it just sort of was a natural thing that I grew into.

FH: And did you have any perceptions of nursing school before attending that either lived up to your expectations or didn't?

EW: I had a cousin who was older than I was. And my Aunt Eva took me to Milwaukee to visit her. I can't remember the name of the hospital. I think it was something like Deaconess Hospital, if there was one in Milwaukee. Because I remember she had on a striped blue and white dress, and then on top of that was a white pinafore. And I was so impressed. I thought, you get to wear a uniform and you kind of look like, I mean, she looked like she knew what she was doing 00:04:00even though she was a student. And I thought well if she can do it, I guess I can do it. So that was one cousin that kind of influenced my life a little bit.

FH: Yeah. So did you attend nursing school in 1951 when you graduated?

EW: Yes. Fall of '51.

FH: And what prompted you to attend Madison General, specifically?

EW: I really don't know specifically. I think it might be because there were six of us that went into nursing from Stoughton. And maybe our counselor directed us that way. I'm not sure. Because the only hospitals I knew of were the four in Madison. And I didn't, [glitch] or Methodist and the UW at that time was a BS degree, four years. And Madison General was a three-year diploma. And that's why 00:05:00I took that one. So it was probably a combination of the counselor guiding us, my friend also went into it and I went into it.

FH: So you were friends with all six of the other people that entered Madison General?

EW: Pardon me. I couldn't hear you.

FH: Sorry. You were friends with the six others that entered Madison General Hospital?

EW: Yeah. All six of us went in at the same time.

FH: And I know that the hospital required a physical examination before admittance to the program.

EW: Yes.

FH: Can you talk a bit about that?

EW: Well, I had a mild scoliosis at the time. And they weren't going to admit me unless an orthopedic doctor checked me out. And I had prior orthopedic checkups, but that was at the UW. So I had to have a Madison General orthopedic check me. And his name was Dr. Rogers. And he looked at my scoliosis and he said, "She's 00:06:00fine. She can do it. No problem." So if it hadn't have been for Dr. Rogers, I probably wouldn't have made it. And my mother then also had to sign a waiver that I wouldn't sue the hospital for any back injuries.

FH: Mm hmm. Do you remember how large your class was?

00:06:18

EW: The nursing class?

FH: Yes.

EW: I'm trying to think. It was fifty? I believe it was fifty-two, one or two, something like that.

FH: Were there any men in your class?

EW: Pardon? No. No men, uh uh.

FH: And what were your first impressions when you got to Madison?

EW: Well, the house that we were assigned to, the house was like an old house. It's no longer there. Right now it's in the parking lot. But the house was a three-story house and it looked old and it looked like you know, it could have bats in the attic or something. (laughter) But however, Janice, my roommate and 00:07:00I, we got I think the best rooms in the house. We were on the first floor. And there was only two girls on the first floor, Janice and myself. And on the second floor, there was about eight. And on the third floor, which was way up on the top, was the remainder. And Janice and I could share one bathroom. And the girls on the second floor had to share a bath with the girls on the third floor. And there was a half a, like a bath and a half up there. So it was like Janice and I had a private suite as partners. But we had separate rooms, but a bathroom right across the hall. We were on the same floor as the entrance and the housemother.

FH: And did you live in, was this McConnell Hall?

EW: No, this was called 918 Mound Street.

FH: I see.

EW: They tore it down. Remember, years and years ago they built the addition, the tower building, and then they made a parking lot. And the parking lot would 00:08:00be Mound Street. As you go up Mound Street, the building was torn down and the parking lot was put up. And the western, I don't know, maybe it's the northern end of the building was expanded. That's where the emergency room is. But if you look at Mound Street, how it runs right into the driveway that goes into the hospital lobby area, that would have been the street that would have had the dormitory.

The other dormitories were Rest Harrow, which was across the street right next to McConnell Hall. And McConnell Hall was there. And it's still there today.

FH: Did you--

EW: They assigned, excuse me, they assigned the Stoughton girls, the six of us, and some Madison girls and two girls from Portage to that particular house, 918. And they sent the other girls to Rest Harrow. And the only ones that were in 00:09:00McConnell Hall at the time were rotating students or graduate students or Ida Mae Collins and Miss Evans lived there, which were directors.

FH: Can you talk a bit about your experience in 918? Did you enjoy living in the dorms?

00:09:18

EW: Well, I think there was about thirteen of us there. And we enjoyed ourselves because we became very close, because we shared everything. And whenever we were studying, somebody would come up [glitch] o'clock at night and say, "Who wants to go to Sam's?" And we'd all say, "Oh, we do." So we would all gather and we'd go down to Sam's Drugstore, which was right at the corner of Park and Mound and go have a Coke. And then talk about the events of the day. So we bonded, especially the girls at 918 because we were so few and we did things together.

Sometimes if we didn't go to Sam's, then we would go all the way down to Bancroft Dairy, which was on South Park Street right near Saint Mary's. And down 00:10:00there, we sometimes ran into Saint Mary's group, which were doing the same thing. But we didn't talk to them. It was like they stayed on their side of the dining room and we stayed on the other side and we didn't even communicate. (laughs) And we knew we were all students, because we were doing the same thing. But that would be like on a hot, humid night, we would go down to Bancroft's. Otherwise we were always at Sam's. And when we did things together, we did it you know, who's available to go someplace.

Or another time, it rained real, real bad, and there was a flood on South Park Street where they still flood today. And there was a restaurant down there called Jimmy's Spaghetti House. And we knew that Jimmy's Spaghetti House 00:11:00wouldn't have any customers, because everybody stayed home in the rain. But we went out. We put on bathing suits and we all had the same kind of plastic red raincoat. So we went down to Jimmy's Spaghetti and all of us ordered spaghetti dinner. It was like a big party. And we were the only people in the whole building, other than the cooks. So I mean, we did things together. And we walked to school to the university together as a group and come back. And we all complained about the same things, you know, that sort of thing.

FH: What types of things did you complain about?

00:11:24

EW: Well, everything. (laughter) A lot of things that were going on at the hospital. We complained about our instructors. You know, we thought they were weird or something. We'd complain about anything you want to talk about. Or we'd talk about our boyfriends or who's going to go out to have a party or whatever. So we just, in other words, the 918 girls, we call ourselves 918 because that was the name of the street, the house, the number of the house, so that's why we called ourselves 918. The other girls were just called the Rest Harrow girls, or the other ones were called the 1010 McConnell Hall girls. So. It was a nice 00:12:00group. And to this day.

FH: What were some of the other social or recreational activities that you and the 1918 girls would participate in?

EW: Well, sometimes we'd go to the Union. And you could get that 3.0 beer, you know? And we'd sit in there or we'd sit out on the deck. We'd look at Lake Mendota. Or we would go to, not too often, but there was another place called, I'm trying to think of what, it was sort of where the military men hung out. It was on University Avenue, up a way. I can't remember the name of it. But it was a tavern. And one of our girls met, we'd call them fly boys. They were people that were in the military probably during the Korean War because that's what we were in at that time. And they were called the fly boys. And she ended up 00:13:00marrying that one guy.

FH: Wow.

EW: And they were married forever, you know, until she died. Other than that, and then a lot of the Italian restaurants on Park Street. There was Amato's, that was real good for Italian food and lasagna. And there was another one, starts with, Rhode's Restaurant. That was kind of a nice place, because they had a candle on each table. It was like booths. And if you were with your boyfriend there, you could sit and have spaghetti dinner with an Italian candle burning. That was kind of touching. I thought that was very nice.

So other than right around Park Street, we didn't go anyplace.

FH: And what about the foods? The food in the dorms? Or did you eat in the hospital?

EW: We ate in the hospital dormitory. And we had Italian cooks. Because years ago, they used to call it the Bush. It's still called the Bush today. But it was 00:14:00called Green Bush neighborhood. So they said these Italian women lived in the Bush. And they were the cooks at the hospital, and they were the ladies that served us. And all the ladies would talk to themselves, each other. And when we were going down the aisle to get our food, they put a lot of food on our plate, and telling us to clean up our plates and eat. And the food was very good. So I had no problems.

And then eventually they closed out one dining room and they made the newer cafeteria. And that, we thought, was really fancy. But I can still see the Italian woman behind the counter dishing out our stuff. And you know, you'd take that entrée of the day and salad and fruit and milk and stuff. And you were expected to eat it. They didn't want you to be too thin.

But compared to Chicago, that's where we got our eyes opened up about the food. 00:15:00So Madison General food was very good.

FH: And what about some of the rules, living in the dorms?

00:15:14

EW: The rules were strict. We had to be in every night. If you went to Sam's Drugstore, for instance. That's why we went around eight o'clock. You had to be in your room at ten o'clock every night of the week, except two nights out of the month you were allowed, they called it twelve o'clocks. You could go out until twelve o'clock midnight. And if you broke your infractions of the rules, you got punished. So they were strict rules.

For instance, our uniforms, you know, they were laundered by the hospital. And we were expected to have a clean uniform, clean body. And that meant even your shoestrings and your shoes. Your shoes could not have dirt on them. Your shoestrings had to be scrubbed by hand. You had to have your hair above your 00:16:00collar. You couldn't wear anything bright and shiny in your hair, and absolutely no perfume. And no rings, unless it was just a band. You couldn't have any stone type ring, like a gem type stone.

So the rules were strict. And you had to obey them. Because if not, you had to talk to Miss Collins about it. That was the director of nursing. And you were always afraid of being expelled if you didn't behave yourself.

And they would expel you on attitude. One girl that came from, I don't know if it was Kenosha or someplace, Racine, something over there. She didn't want to become a nurse but somehow she got into nursing. I think her family wanted her to be and she didn't want to. She had a bad attitude and we all knew it. She either quit or was asked to leave. So I mean, we knew that if we didn't behave or broke a rule, you could be kicked out.

FH: And I know that in 1952, one of your high school classmates was getting married?

EW: Oh, yeah.

FH: Were you able to attend and--

EW: You see, in Stoughton, we grew up in a small town. And we knew everybody in town. And so in elementary school, they became your first friends, and all the way through high school, they're your friends. So when Shirley, that's her name that got married, she was getting married on Valentine's Day. And it was, they call it a candlelight ceremony. And I had used up all my twelve o'clocks. And I really wanted to go, because she's one of my friends that I grew up with from kindergarten on. So Janice was going to go, my roommate. But she said, "We'll have David take us down and we'll just sneak back in." Because Janice had a twelve o'clock. She was allowed to leave. But I wasn't.

So we went to the wedding. We snuck out in all our fancy wedding clothes. And the wedding happened to be a Valentine's wedding, and the bridesmaids had red velvet dresses on. They were absolutely gorgeous. And Shirley was in her little white dress, you know, the gown. Candlelight ceremony.

So we got home at close to midnight. I want to say 11:30 or something. It was not late. And I ran quickly to the basement. And Janice went into my room, got my pajamas, threw them down the basement stairs. I changed clothes real quick. Ran up the stairs, jumped in my bed, and Janice was still talking to David in the hallway.

And Harky, Mrs. Harker, came to my room and she said, "Miss Sperloen, do you always go to bed with your earrings on?" So she caught me. (FH laughs) And I thought how did I forget my earrings? Because I don't normally wear earrings. You didn't wear earrings for training.

So the next day, and the reason I signed in and out, I had Beverly, another friend of mine, sign me in on the book. We had to sign in and out on the sign book. And Harky, you know, we called her Eagle Eye Harky, she must have realized that Beverly signed me in. Because she made inspections on our rooms. And Beverly was on the second floor.

So Beverly and I both got called in to Miss Collins' office the next morning. And we were told that we could not leave the campus for six weeks.

FH: Wow.

00:19:38

EW: And Beverly was accused of being a forger. And she remembers it to this day that she was accused of being a forger. And I was accused of sneaking out at night without permission. So we both got restricted. We couldn't go home for six weeks. So in the meantime, one of Beverly's boyfriends, whom she married later, 00:20:00he had a friend who played a guitar. So they came up to our dormitory and sat in the living room and they serenaded us with some western songs. (laughter) So that was our only entertainment. Otherwise, you know, we could go to Sam's. But we couldn't leave our room or the hospital or the university when we weren't in school. So that's how strict they were.

FH: Why did you call her Eagle Eye Harky?

EW: Because she was always checking on us. When we would go to the hospital or to the university, she would go in our rooms. And if you didn't have your bed made, if you didn't have your shoes properly lined up under your dresser, if you had a mess on your dresser, she would write you a note saying, "Miss Sperloen, your shoes are untidy." Or, "Miss Sperloen, you left something on your bed." Or, "Miss Sperloen, you left something on your dresser." So she was always checking 00:21:00up on us. And we felt it. So we really didn't like her. But that was her job, you know. She must have been a widow lady and that was a good job for her.

FH: I see. So in terms of your education, what was your, I understand that your first preclinical period, the class was on probationary status?

EW: Yeah. We called ourselves probies.

FH: Really? (laughs) Can you explain what that meant?

EW: It meant that you're sort of like on trial. You had to produce your grades. You had to have a proper attitude. You had to attend class. You couldn't get sick. You had to follow all the rules for nine months. And if you qualified, then you could become a student nurse and get off the probie state.

FH: How did you get on probie state?

EW: Everybody is. That's what you do when you get there.

FH: Oh, you're automatically. Oh.

EW: You're automatically reviewed. And if they don't like you, you're out. Or if you don't like it, you're out. Or if you flunk out, you're out. Or anything. But it's the probationary. In other words, I think the parents pay X amount of dollars when you start. And after the probationary, if you fulfil all the requirements, then the parents pay the second half of the tuition.

FH: Okay.

00:22:33

EW: I think that's probably a payment thing. In other words, are you going to be qualified to be a nurse or not?

FH: Can you talk a bit about some of the nursing art skills that you guys learned?

EW: Well we had what you call a book. I can't remember now what's the name of that book. But it was just a book where you had all of the procedures. Procedure book, that's what it was called. So we had all kinds of classes. I'm trying to 00:23:00find, I have it in my autobiography here. You start out with nursing arts. And the first thing you learn how to do is how to clean a bed. And I talk to my granddaughter about, I said, "You ever clean a unit?"

She looked at me like I was weird. She said, "Grandmother, you call maintenance for that."

So that was the first thing we learned was how to make a bed, or wash a bed. And then the second thing was how to make a bed. So we had multiple procedures from that upward to something more difficult as you went through the three years.

FH: And what were some other things that were part of nursing arts, besides learning to make beds?

EW: Well, the university classes were a big part of it. You know, that was the first year. And that's where you had to go for chemistry, anatomy and physiology, microbiology, English. You know, the basic things like that. That 00:24:00was the first year.

FH: Did you enjoy those classes?

EW: Yeah. Well, all of them. They were interesting, they were new, and it was different. Because coming from a high school to a university is a big step. And for instance, like microscopes. In our chemistry class, the professor, not the professor, but the teacher in high school would just bring up one boy to the front and have them do something. And the girls on the chemistry set just sat in their chairs. So I never learned how to even adjust the microscope until I was in microbiology. I didn't know much about the bones, you know, like anatomy and physiology. I didn't know anything about that kind of stuff. So it was just a big eye opener. Plus we had to walk from Mound Street all the way down to the 00:25:00university, all kinds of weather, which meant snow and rain.

FH: And so, did you and your classmates ever practice on each other after you learned certain techniques?

EW: Did we ever what?

FH: Practice on one another.

EW: Talk to someone other?

FH: Practice on each other.

00:25:26

EW: Oh, practice. Oh, yeah. We had to practice how to give a shot. That was the big one. The first thing we did was practice on an orange, just a plain old kitchen orange. And then Janice gave me a shot and I had to give Janice a shot. And the other procedure we had to do, we had to give each other an enema. And it was a whole classroom. I want to say in that particular class, there may have been ten to twelve, fifteen kids. And everybody was giving enemas at the same time and we only had two toilets. So it was like stand at the end of the 00:26:00bathroom area and wait until somebody got out of the bathroom till you could get in. So that was kind of dangerous. And then we thought, oh my lord, I hope we don't have to do something worse. We were thinking like catheterization or even douches. We thought, are we going to have to do that? But we didn't. We didn't have to, so those were the only two things that we had to do to ourselves. Each other, rather.

FH: I see. And besides classes at the university, what were classes at Madison General like?

EW: Well, we had several different instructors. Our main instructor was Mabel Zablocki. And she was excellent as far as teaching you proper skills and technique. However, she was sort of a disciplinarian and intimidating on the ward. In other words, you learned how to do the procedure. For instance, make a bed, on the classroom. And you practiced. And then when you go into the 00:27:00hospital, if you didn't make your bed properly, with a proper square corner and it wasn't tight enough, she would come behind you and rip it out. Or if you had a bathwater that wasn't exactly 110 degrees, she'd dip her finger into your pan of water and she could tell 110 degrees. And she'd either say, "Your water's too cold." And you had to stop and change it. She didn't like it if you had your patient draped and it wasn't draped properly. In other words, if a foot was sticking out or something. You had to have everything covered up. You had to have your washcloth folded on your hand so that there were no ends sticking out, so that a cold end wouldn't irritate the patient. You also had to bathe the top of the patient first, from the head down to the hip area. And then you had to change your water, and it had to be 110 degrees again, and put the foot in. And 00:28:00then you washed from the foot up to the hip. And then you'd tell the patient to wash, we called it possible. So in other words, we washed down as far as possible, we washed up as far as possible. And the patient had to wash possible. It was sort of a standing joke.

And then, of course, there was always the back care. You had to bathe the back. That was before you did the feet, of course. And then you had an alcohol rub and then a dusting of powder on top. And you were supposed to massage the back a certain way, where you go up the center of the spine and then on the outside with your thumbs and down, and make a rotation all the way up and down, up and down, up and down. And that was on every patient in the hospital for HS care.

And besides anatomy, or nursing arts at the hospital, the other classes were by 00:29:00other teachers. I remember one teacher, Miss Cheney, she was really excellent. She taught us the lymphatic system. And she drew a model on the bulletin board. And the way she drew the body was like in loops and stuff. And it was just very, very good. I thought boy, she's talented. And she was one of our favorites.

And when you had to have something checked off, like say you knew how to do a procedure, before you did it, you had to have your instructor come with you and she had to observe you doing it. For instance, if you're going to cath a lady, you had to have your equipment properly done on the tray. Take it to the room. Find the right meatus. Because when you're young, you don't know where to go. And then catheterize. And if you made any contamination, she'd make you stop and you'd have to go get a whole new setup and do it all over again. And you 00:30:00couldn't get past until you completed her requirements. And it was that way on all procedures, no matter from the very little thing. Like say, giving the shots to ourselves was one thing, but giving it to a patient, we had had have the instructor watch us the first time. And then we were able to do it.

00:30:27

FH: Hmm. And were there any other faculty that played a really important role in your education?

EW: Well, the head nurses on the floors, they sort of supervised us when we were there without our instructors. And some of those ladies were extremely good. There was a Miss Anderson on the sixth floor, sixth tower. She's one that I really admired because she followed all the rules like being clean, neat and tidy and exactly in her work, but she was very pleasant and you felt comfortable with her. There was a lady in OB, it was one of our classmates' mother. So when 00:31:00we were with her, it was like being with your own mother, because she was really, really good. She taught us OB. There was another one on the urology floor. And I admired her because I thought she ran the ward good. She was very organized and very efficient. So your head nurses on the floors were quite an impression on you. Plus your instructors. But they knew what we were taught and they knew the proper way. So if you had a question, you could always ask the head nurse.

Because at that time, when you sat in the charting desk, and if a doctor came, you had to stand up. And that head nurse would always go with the doctor to his patients that were on the ward. And he'd ask her questions about the patient's condition, and she'd always give him whatever answers she could for the 00:32:00patient's care. So I just thought all the head nurses were quite good.

FH: And what was your relationship like with the doctors at the hospital?

00:32:15

EW: They were standoffish. We didn't get friendly with the doctors. It was more like, they were like an older male image. And we were just young kids. And you know, we didn't know too much at that time. So you didn't, you really had to kind of either not say anything and let the head nurse do all the talking, and you just stood there and listened. So they were different. You couldn't go to the doctor nowadays and say things like you probably do it nowadays. As a student, that is.

FH: Were there any particularly challenging aspects of your education?

EW: Well, Cook County was a challenge, but we learned a lot. That was mainly 00:33:00because of the city and the environment and the type of patients were totally different. Every affiliation was different and we had to adjust to their particular things. Like Mendota would be mental. Cook County was kind of disastrous. So you just have to learn how to adjust and how to go with the flow. And that's what you do in your griping sessions when you have your friends, you know, when you go to each other's room and talk. You can gripe about something.

FH: You mentioned Cook County being disastrous. Why would you say that?

EW: (laughs) Well first of all, we weren't, you know, they'd just tell you when you have to go, when it's your time to go. And we went in different groups. So that's when we split up from some of our other classmates. Some girls were at a different place. Like some stayed at Madison General, some went to Mendota. 00:34:00Well, when I went to Chicago, we were told to pack a trunk--not a suitcase, but a trunk--and grab the train in Stoughton and get on the train, end up in Chicago, and our luggage would be delivered to the dormitory. Now I don't think I had been to Chicago but once in my lifetime, because that was just before World War Two. And during that time, you didn't go anyplace.

So when you got to Chicago, there was all these big buildings. Everything was kind of grayish looking. There weren't a lot of trees around like you had at Madison General or Madison. And it looked big and kind of frightening.

And the dormitories were right across the street from the hospital. And in the hospital they had all kinds of patients. From very, very poor people to criminals. And we were there for contage and pediatrics. So in contage we saw a 00:35:00lot of baby diarrhea. And the patients would bring in their child, or not the patients, the parents would bring in their child on a Friday and leave them there for the weekend with diarrhea, and then pick them up on Monday. And it was sort of like, it was just a weekend dump off place.

We also saw a lot of burn cases that were pediatric house burns. And these children were horribly, I just think so uncomfortable. They had plaster casts on their arms holding their arms out straight. And the screens had holes in them and the flies would come in. And the flies would land on the kids' wounds and get through their dressings and they'd lay maggots. And we had never, ever seen cockroaches and maggots at Madison General. And we saw cockroaches in the kitchen and we saw maggots in the wounds. And that really opened our eyes up.

And the ideas of prisoners escaping, which one did when we were there. And they were looking for him through the tunnel. And the tunnel was a route that you could take from the hospital dorm to the hospital. And in the tunnel you passed the morgue. So Janice and another girl were walking through the morgue, coming back to the dorm, and they ran into policemen with tommy guns. And another group was coming out the front door of the hospital and there were policemen with tommy guns.

Now I didn't run into policemen. But the only trouble I had is when I was on night duty once at Cook County, we were supposed to stop for our coffee break about three o'clock in the morning and go together. Well, I happened to be busy at that time and I couldn't leave, so I left maybe fifteen minutes later. And I walked across the street from the hospital to the dormitory. And there were 00:37:00streetlights on. And I got to the dormitory door and the guard met me at the door and he said, "Young lady, what are you doing out here?"

And I said, "Well, I just came back for a coffee break."

He said, "Don't you ever do that again."

And I didn't realize that you couldn't walk out at three o'clock in the morning. You know, you might get shot. It never occurred to me. Because at Madison, you could walk anyplace at night and there was no danger. So we opened up our eyes.

The food there was atrocious. It was like, we called it a prison cafeteria. Because you'd go down there, this long soup line. And the people behind the counter would throw the food on your plate. And it was like mashed potatoes that were too soupy, or something you couldn't identify. And that was your supper. One time I had a bowl of soup that looked like hot water. And I looked at it and I picked up a huge bone--a huge bone. And I said to somebody at the table, I 00:38:00said, "What is this bone?" It had no meat on it. It was just bone.

And somebody said, "Oh, that's oxtail." It's the first time I'd ever had oxtail soup. And it tasted like plain water with maybe a little bit of broth in it. And this bone with no meat on it. And I said, that's soup? You know, it's not like the Italian soup that we got up at Madison General. Or the soup we got at home that was homemade. You know, chicken or beef soup.

So all of these experiences, so they opened our eyes. We saw people, I mean, I remember one girl that was a patient and she died of TB. I don't know if it was meningitis or if it was in the lungs. Anyway, I know it was TB. And she died. And she was young, maybe in her twenties. And we had, everything there was zephiran chloride. That was their disinfectant. Everything, if it was 00:39:00contaminated, you soaked it in zephiran chloride. Well they put a zephiran chloride moist gauze on her face because of her contamination. And I thought oh, how awful. What a way to die. You know, she was dead at the time. But I thought, how horrible. Because our care of the dead, you know, we had to be so respectful and tie the toe with the note, you know. And put the potion in a shroud type thing. But down there, they just put her in this wet zephiran chloride gauze. I just got sick to my stomach. I thought--anyway, we learned a lot.

And we survived with Ovaltine. Because that's what my mother sent me down with. We wouldn't eat very well. So our mothers would send us down, we called it charity packages. So whenever anybody got a box from home, we'd meet in the day room and we'd share it. And it's usually cookies or something like that. Cookies 00:40:00or brownies. So we'd all eat.

And some of the girls got sick because they got thin. They couldn't eat well. And the only way Janice and I stayed well is that my mother sent me down with a can of Ovaltine. And we'd put the Ovaltine in a can of milk and shook it up, you know, like a malted. And they we drank that practically every night. And Janice and I stayed healthy.

There was also a rumor in the dormitory that a nurse got killed in the dormitory. But we didn't know for sure if it was a rumor or if it was true. But we talked about it at reunions later on and they said it was true, somebody was murdered in the dormitory.

In our dormitory, we had to lock our door and we had to lock our closets. So when the cleaning lady came in, she could vacuum our floors and dust our tables and make our bed, but she couldn't go into the closet. Because that was supposed 00:41:00to be for your valuables. But we didn't have any valuables. We had very little money. Nobody had any jewelry. And the biggest thing you had was a hair ribbon or something. And so we thought, you have to lock stuff up around here, you know? At Madison General and at Mendota, we did not lock our doors. And everybody could come if they wanted to, say how you doing, you know? But at Cook County, you had to have a key. So it was quite different.

FH: Did they ever find out who allegedly murdered the nurse?

EW: No. But it was a graduate nurse. And she was a girl that probably was a Chicago native, a Chicago Cook County nurse that lived there. Because some of the staff lived there.

FH: So during your--

EW: Because--

FH: Oh, sorry.

EW: Anyway, they say it's true. But I can't prove that. That's what kind of 00:42:00scared us about Chicago. And you know, you didn't want to walk anyplace. One time I, there was a department store called Wieboldt's. And I went down to Wieboldt's because nobody was around. Everything's either working or sleeping from night duty. And I had the day off. And I thought well, I'm just going to go down to Wieboldt's by myself. And it was a department store similar to what you'd call Macy's or Marshall Fields or Boston Store, something like that. Or Penney's. Just a department store. So I went down there. And I just browed around, just kind of wasting time. And then I was going to go home. And I went out the door. And I went the wrong direction. And I ended up on skid row. And I thought, I didn't know where I was. So I looked at the skyline and I saw the hospital buildings. So I had to turn around and go back. But that's the life in Chicago.

And we also at one time in Chicago, we're invited to go to, what do you call it? 00:43:00Pacific Garden Missions, it was called. It was a charity place for street people to come. And they would come in for all kinds of conditions. Some of them, well, I was assigned to thermometers and Janice was assigned to foot soaks. So she had to soak a person's foot, and I had to take their temperature. And one of the ladies came in from the street crying and crying and crying. And one of the doctors that worked in the place, he had to take her to a separate room and counsel her, because you could hear her crying. So that's what we got exposed to. We never saw anything like that in Madison. I had never seen street people up close. You know, you'd heard about them, but you'd never seen them and worked with them. So that was just one evening.

And then there was also a little bar down there that people went to. And we learned how to drink oh, what is it, tomato juice and something you put in 00:44:00tomato juice. And wine. And in Madison, all we had was beer. Beer from State Street. What do you call that drink that you put--

FH: A bloody Mary?

00:44:15

EW: A bloody Mary. That's what it is. See, I don't drink that drink. But that's what was new to us in Chicago. So bloody Marys and wine were new. And then in the same place came people from other hospitals such as the dental area and the chiropractor area and the med students. Nobody messed up with anybody, but they were there. But we didn't go there very often. So basically we stayed home because it was too dangerous to go anyplace. And we didn't have the time, anyway. You were either working or you were studying.

FH: How do you think this experience informed your training and your career as a nurse?

EW: Oh, it really broadened us. We felt different coming back from Chicago. We 00:45:00felt more wise to the world. We felt more intelligent, more mature. It changed me, anyway. I think it changed all of us. Because every reunion we've been to ever since then, and we had them every five years, we always talked about remember when in Cook County. We all had the same kind of memories. So it was a learning experience. We learned good contagion, we learned good pediatrics. But the patients were difficult because they were not the usual thing that you see in a different kind of hospital.

FH: And what was your experience like at Mendota Mental Hospital?

EW: Well Mendota, that wasn't so bad. The food was better, for one thing. We had buildings that we stayed in. And we stayed with girls from other cities, such as 00:46:00Janesville, Methodist Hospital here in Madison, and us. So we got to learn about different schools and different girls, we got to get to know them.

The patients, well, I had never seen mentally ill patients. I had never done, I never even knew about insulin therapy. I knew about seizures, but I never saw so many at once. I couldn't quite understand hydrotherapy, how it worked. And I originally, when I was just starting nursing, I thought psychiatric nursing would be kind of nice to learn and go into. However, when I got there, if you've seen the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, where Jack Nicholson is the patient, and there's a nurse called Nurse Ratchet, that's exactly what Mendota was like. You had to, patients had to line up for their pills. They didn't have 00:47:00any wristbands on, so you didn't know their names. The attendant had to tell you who they were. And I had never seen, when they did our first demonstration on how to give electric shock therapy, I had never seen twelve or fourteen people having a shock at once. And it was just kind of overwhelming.

We also had to do music therapy, which meant dancing with the patients. And we had to dance with these patients. You have to remember, some of these were sociopaths, some of them were psychopaths, sex behavior problems, schizophrenic. And we were all seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old. More like eighteen or nineteen. But we weren't afraid because we were in a big group. But we had to dance with them. And then they had art therapy.

My case study at Mendota was interesting. We were each assigned to one patient. And they assigned me to a lady, maybe middle-aged, that was paranoid-schiz. That was her diagnosis And I thought well, when I was working with her, I had to work with her every day for a week. And take her to the canteen and give her Coke or something to drink. So I thought all the time, there's nothing wrong with this lady. She looks like just a very shy, nice lady. And she seems kind of quiet and maybe a little depressed. It wasn't until the last day that she said to me, "You know, out of that radiator there's some people," or voices or whatever it was, spirits or whatever she had, coming through that radiator and they're going right into her body. And I thought, mm hmm. You are paranoid-schiz. And we had 00:49:00to write up a case study. So my story about here was telling about what a nice lady she was and da da da da da, you know, that kind of stuff. And then my last ending of the story but then she told me the story about the spirits coming through the radiator into her body. And then I realized she was schiz.

And another lady I had, my assignment was to take her downstairs to the kitchen and have her make a sandwich. Because she was manic and she was underweight. And I thought well that will be a quick thing. You'll just be down and back in a few minutes. Well, I got down there and she was all over the kitchen. One cupboard, opening the door and shutting it and opening another cupboard. She was all over the kitchen like a butterfly sliding all over the place. It took her a half an hour to spread a piece of bread and put on some jelly and peanut butter or something and make a sandwich. And I thought, that's what a manic is.

We also saw catatonic schiz. How they just don't wake up. And one time I went into a room by myself. They call them the side rooms. And I thought this man needs to have somebody to talk to. So I was going to cheer him up or something. And an attendant came in and got me. He said, "Young lady, get out of there."

I got out and I said, "What's the matter? He's just a nice man."

He said, "He's a sex offender. Get out of there. Don't go in."

And another thing was the medicines. The medicines, all we had was Thorazine and vitamin B. That was our only psych meds.

FH: Really?

00:50:37

EW: That's what everybody got. And nowadays I don't think you even hear about Thorazine. And they didn't have wristbands on, so like I told you before, I had to have an attendant go with me to say, "This is John Doe, and give him that one. And then this is John Smith, give him that one." And I thought boy, this isn't right. Because at Madison General, you had to really check the wristband and you had to identify the bottle when you took it out of the cupboard and all 00:51:00that kind of stuff. We had strict procedure on how to pour a pill into a glass. And there it was just like, I hope this is the right guy that's getting this Thorazine. But we didn't pass meds very often. But I guess we each had to take a turn or something like that. So, it was just like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

And watching hydrotherapy, I was afraid to death that they would stick their toe in the hole, you know, the tub hole, the drain. Because what they would do, they'd try to commit suicide. And they'd plug their toe in the hole and then they'd scoot under the canvas. And you had to be sure that they didn't do that. So you had to sit there while they had their fifteen-minute shower, or the bath, and take their temporal pulses every fifteen minutes and their respirations. So we had to sit there practically six inches from their head. And if they did dip 00:52:00under the covers, then you had to pull them out, call for help.

And insulin therapy scared me half to death. Because we had to give regular insulin to people, each patient had a certain amount according to their weight. And say you were giving a dose of regular and you're supposed to bring them out at a certain point before they go into shock. And if you didn't get them out, then the nurse that was in charge would have to put a tube down and throw some juice down it to get them out of their little coma that they're going into. So I thought this was dangerous. So I decided I didn't want to go into psych.

FH: I can imagine. And you also, you also went to the Veterans Administration Hospital?

00:52:54

EW: Yeah. Now that food was the best of all besides Madison General. Because their patients were all TB. This is when the Korean vets and some of the old 00:53:00World War Two boys came back from the South Pacific. And they all had TB at either mild, moderate or advanced degrees. And it was a whole different type of hospital. Because everybody had the same disease and everybody had to be isolated. So in a regular hospital, you have one gown and one mask [unclear] for one patient. At the VA, you had one gown for all of the patients. And you only changed when you got soiled or your mask got moist or you were done with whatever care you were giving. Like say you were giving a bed bath or something like that, then you'd change your gown. In other words, it was called open isolation. Whereas in a hospital, they get closed isolation. In other words, you're closed to that particular room. In open isolation, you've got the whole ward. In other words, you can pass meds with the same gown on from patient to 00:54:00patient all the way up the hall. So that was different.

But their technique was so good and their aides were so well trained. And the hospital was brand new. It was just dedicated a few years, I think it was dedicated in '51. And I was there '54, I believe, before I graduated. And the instructor was extremely good. She educated us on the TB bacillus. And we knew where things were contaminated, we knew where things were clean and we knew that everybody followed the same rules. So in all those rules, and I later worked there for six years in TB, I never changed my Mantoux test. I'm still negative to this day. And that's mainly because they had such excellent technique.

And they fed them high-calorie diet because that was one of the things to cure TB at the time. They had three drugs: there was isoniazid, erythromycin, I think 00:55:00it was called, or something like that, and PAS, which is para-aminosalicylic acid. They call it PAS. And streptomycin. Oh, that was big, streptomycin. Now when we gave streptomycin, we went with the streptomycin girl, or nurse, I should say. And we've have cap, gown and mask on and gloves. Because you can get sensitized to streptomycin. And we'd have to give all the patients on all the wards streptomycin. And it was given IM, usually on two days a week, like Monday and Friday, or Thursday, rather, or Tuesday and Friday. And you had to be very careful on your technique. And you had to be careful on your shot. Because they got these shots twice a week for maybe a year. So their butts get kind of sore. So it was interesting.

So I liked it, and that's why I went back there. Because I liked their 00:56:00orderliness. I liked their cleanliness. They had Friday inspections. Because of the TB, you had to clean everything. On Thursday was your cleaning day. You had to clean everything. You know the mayo tables, they have a little handle that screws up and down for the height of the table, we had to take a Q-tip soaked in alcohol and clean those little areas where the handle goes up and down. That's how clean they were. And the janitors called down if they didn't have their windowsills spotless. Or they had curtains, curtains had to be laundered. So they were very high on inspection and cleanliness.

And the people who were diagnosed mild were there for a year. The moderates were there for maybe a year to a year and a half. Plus they may have had thoracic surgery at the time to redo a segment of lung. And the far advanced either got better to they had a pneumonectomy or they died. And we had the different kinds 00:57:00of TB, such as kidney and spinal. So it was a good education. I know my TB. To this day, I can do it in my memory.

And I've carried that technique through all of my nursing years. Even like in this virus that we're going through now. You know, don't put your hand in your face, or don't put a pencil that you're writing with in your mouth. Those are habits that people have. And I learned that in the TB days, that you don't put anything near your mouth. And that TB is an airborne disease, just like this virus that we're going through today is an airborne virus. And if your mask, now the hospital was not air-conditioned at that time. And so if you were hot and humid and you had moisture on your upper lip, you had to change your mask. And in a hot day when it was 90 degree humidity, you had to take your mask off every half hour or less.

00:58:00

FH: Wow.

EW: Because you're sweating. And it wasn't till years later that somebody complained and Kastenmeier got air conditioning at the VA. So I liked the VA very much. The patients were really good.

FH: What was it like in the post-World War Two period as a nursing student? And how did working in this context inform your training and work?

EW: Well World War One, or Two, rather, was when I was in elementary school. And I had ideas at that age. So basically the people that had TB that were World War Two were like people who were diagnosed later. Not necessarily service-connected. But they got the TB someplace. But they were veterans, so they qualified.

But the majority came from the Korean War because they were in the South Pacific. And there was a lot of jungle rot on their feet. And I remember when I 00:59:00was working there later, I had one man who had survived the Bataan Death March. But he was there for something other than TB. And I remember another patient that was in a German prison camp that was tortured. Because he had a flashback right in front of me. And that was something to go through. So, some of these patients had some pretty bad experiences.

And some of them were alcoholics because of the trauma that they couldn't accept when they came back to the States on any of the wars. Because their wife either left them or they didn't have a job or they didn't have a family and they were lost. Because the military life and the civilian life is quite an adjustment. So they were alcoholics.

We didn't have the rich people in the later years of the VA. We had the people who couldn't afford Madison General or the UW. But they could get free care at 01:00:00the VA. And I call them the nuts and bolts of society, because they were the guys that know how to fix things and work. You could tell by their hands. Some were farmers. Some were extremely devoted men to their wives. So there's a whole variety of type of men.

But the thing about the VA, if you have a patient on one side of the hall that's brand new today and he's got just something simple, well, not simple. But I remember for sure I had a heart bypass guy, and he was going to have heart bypass. Well, across the hall was another guy that I knew that was in the army and he'd just gotten through a bypass and was recovering and ready for discharge.

So I said, "Why don't you come over here and I'll show you Mr. So and So?" So I took him across the hall. And then suddenly they start talking like they've been friends for all their life. Because that's what they do. These army people, they bond. You know, where did you serve? What did you do? Where did you go? And all 01:01:00that kind of stuff. And that's the thing about the VA is the people. They're different. Whereas in a general hospital, you have to work around relatives or parents or rich people that sometimes think they own the place, you know? It's a different attitude. But that's getting beyond my student years.

FH: Well what was your experience, your first surgical experience like?

EW: My what?

FH: Your first surgical experience. When you were on the surgical floor?

01:01:43

EW: Oh, the very first one, the very, very first one was just a tonsillectomy. But that didn't turn out so good because I was supposed to come on duty at eleven. It was an eleven to seven shift. And usually they would send you right off the lunch. Because lunch was anytime from eleven on. And instead, I had to 01:02:00scrub in on this hos-, on this tonsillectomy. And I also got Dr. Brinley. And he was kind of a short little Napoleon type guy who liked to give orders and wasn't at all friendly. And I thought oh, lord. So I had to go in.

And all of a sudden, in a tonsillectomy you get a lot of blood. And this is my first surgical [unclear] and first time sticking my anything in anybody's throat. And he kept saying, "Suck it out, suck it out," because the patient was bleeding. And I was trying to suck it out. And the smell of the blood, I had never smelled such warm blood before, coming up hit me in the nose.

And suddenly I got kind of dizzy. My instructor saw it. And she said, she excused me. She said, "Step down. I'll take your place." And she said, "You better go to lunch." So I did. So that was my first experience. After that, it was no problem, because I knew I had to be properly fed.

And then when I got in my senior year, we had to be on call once in a while for surgery. And the time when I was on call, it was for a neurosurgeon, Dr. 01:03:00Suckle. Now he since transferred to California. He's probably dead by now. But this was years ago. And all I was told is that it's a decompressed skull fracture coming from upper Wisconsin. They called it up north.

So I had to go to bed early because the patient wasn't going to get down here till like one o'clock in the morning. So my housemother, I remember she had to wake me up. And I got dressed and went over to the hospital. And Dr. Suckle, and I was his only scrub nurse, he said, "I want you to hand me the instruments like this." And he showed me. And I said okay.

So we got into the surgery and I had no problem. And it was a skull fracture. There wasn't much blood but you know, it's a skull. And we got through it just fine and the patient survived. And I thought, wow, what a way, that's [unclear] And that's how you accomplish things from year one to year three. That's how you 01:04:00advance. So I thought I can do anything. If I can do a skull fracture, I can do a tonsillectomy again, you know?

FH: And what about your relationship with patients? Or do you have any notable memories with patients during your time as a student?

01:04:23

EW: Well, I don't know if it was when I was a student or just a brand new grad. It was at Madison General. I remember we had, you remember the east wing had four beds in it. And I remember it was bed three. And it was a Chinese man who had some abdominal surgery, and he was on my area that I was supposed to work in. And all of a sudden he got out of bed in a frightened look, and he had drainage coming down his legs from his wound. And I thought oh my God, you know, what is this?

So somebody else came in, like the head nurse, probably, and recognized it was a wound perforation And he was Chinese and he could not speak the language. And I 01:05:00thought wow, what is she going to do now? This is where you look at your head nurse to do something. She called the doctor, of course. But then they eventually got a man from the Chinese laundry, which was on Washington Avenue, he had to come down and translate. Because they had to tell the patient his wound opened up, he had to go back to surgery. And I thought wow, what a thing. You know, that was really a day. So that was one huge experience.

Another lady I know that had a multiple car accident, or multiple fractures from car accidents. She had broken bones both left and right leg. And I don't know about her arm or not. But she was there a long, long time. And I remember her just because she was so fun to take care of and stuff. Pleasant lady.

I remember sixth tower, because everybody had private rooms there. And it was sort of a quiet area because it wasn't a lot of external noises going on up 01:06:00there. And everybody had a private room, so that was kind of neat.

Pediatrics was okay, but children got so sick so fast. I found them difficult to take care of. So that wasn't my favorite thing to do. Whereas my daughter, now she went into pediatrics. That was her favorite. So everybody has different ideas what they like to do. But I seem to end up liking general surgery best. I love to do the dressing part, where you go in and the doctor's changing a wound. Whether it's a leg stump or if it's abdominal or something or other, thoracic. I love to set out the towel and put out all the required instruments, like the [unclear] the four by fours and stuff and the doctor puts it all, cleans it all up and nice new bandage on it. And that makes you feel like you got something all cleaned up. It was a dirty old wound and now it's all clean again and the patient's getting better. So I guess I liked surgery better. Post-op.

FH: Are there any practices or methods you learned which would be considered unusual today?

EW: Practices?

FH: Or methods that you learned at Madison General.

EW: Well, a lot of things. You don't do stuff like we used to. Like we did abdominal stoops to the abdomen. And the young people don't even know what you're talking about. It's where you had to get a, just a flannel type rag, like almost the size of a towel. And you had to soak it in hot water and then wring it out in the stoop wringer and then carry it on your tray to the patient's room. Put it on the abdomen and then cover it with oil soak and then cover it with a binder. And that was just to relieve abdominal distension.

We had gompko suction. We didn't have wall suctions like you have today. Our oxygen we had to carry down the hall was great big tanks. And you had to crack the tank before you went into the room because, they said to get the dust out. 01:08:00In other words, you'd go into the storage room, find a canister of oxygen, turn the handle, and it would go, a huge, loud noise. Scare you half to death. And then you'd walk down the hall and have this big old oxygen tank. You know, it's just like big as a lampshade, or big as a lamp, a floor lamp, at the bedside. It's unattractive looking. To give the patient oxygen. We had to put the oxygen in the nose with a catheter, whereas nowadays you just have the little cannulas that go to the tip of the nose.

We never did poultices, that wasn't even there. We weren't allowed to give IVs. If anybody had to have an IV, they had to call the IV nurse. Or a doctor had to do it. We were not allowed to cath men. We could only cath ladies. And the syringes, of course, the syringes were rinsed, let's say you had a dirty 01:09:00syringe and needle. You'd go to a sink and you'd rinse it out with tap water. Then you'd separate the needle from the syringe. Put the syringe and needle in alcohol solution. And it would have to sit there until the next time somebody else wanted to use the needle and the syringe. They'd pick it out of the alcohol, rinse it in a canister of, like a little tray thing of water, and that would dilute the alcohol from the syringe. And then you'd have to dilute your morphine. And you only had, I think it was one-sixth grain at that time. And if you need a smaller dose, you had to calculate it so you'd know the correct amount of solution to bring up in your syringe. Whereas nowadays, you just go to the cupboard and you get your narcotic that you need and it's all set. And it's in milligrams. So they changed from metric to, what do you call it, I want to 01:10:00say decimal, but that's not the right word. Anyway, it's changed. A lot of things. Medicine has changed. We didn't have very many medicines.

We didn't have intensive cares. If you had a sick patient, they would just move closer to the desk. If a patient had heart attack and you could see it, because I was in on one where a lady was coding. And the doctor was right there. And he told me, "Run and get some morphine. Get morphine ten. Quick." So I got the morphine. And that's what you did. You gave them morphine and they died. Whereas nowadays you'd say, "Code blue," and you'd bring the crash cart. And the patient might survive. So this lady was post-op. It was probably a pulmonary emboli, is what it was. You could see it coming.

So everything has changed. Because I've talked to my granddaughters about it. And I say, "You spend more time assessing." Because my granddaughter, she 01:11:00reports on and makes rounds with her going off nurse. And I said, "Well, how many patients do you have?" She said oh, four or six. I just about croaked. I said, "You know, we had about thirty at a time." Huge difference. And then they have to assess. I said, "Well, we assessed on our feet. As you walked down the hall, you assessed the patients that you looked in the doorways. You could assess if they were good or bad." So it's a huge difference in assessing and documentation. Our charting was in black ink or red ink. We had to go black ink from seven AM to seven PM, and red ink from seven PM to seven AM. And they had to be printed, not written. You could not write. Whereas nowadays, everything's on the computer. And you know all of that's instantly.

We weren't familiar with labs, because it wasn't our job. We weren't supposed to 01:12:00know, I think Like if a patient has a temperature and they said to you, "What's my temperature?" And it could be somebody who was knowledgeable about it. You say, "Well, I can't tell you. You have to ask your doctor." I mean nowadays, patient teaching is so strong. And in those days, the only patient teaching that was done was seemed to be by the doctors. Or they didn't tell them much. It wasn't until probably World War Two that people said "cancer" out loud. Before, it was like a forbidden word to use.

So, everything has changed. I couldn't go back and do what I did now because of all the computer work and all the things that the girls do now. They have to be very, very talented.

1:12:50

FH: And what about your life after graduation? What did you do? You went to the Veterans, the VA Hospital?

EW: Yeah. I stayed at the VA for six years. And in the meantime, I had gotten 01:13:00married and I had a child. Once came back again. And then I worked at the VA again. A little bit at Madison General, but that was just kind of like a fill in till I could get back to the VA. And it was always in pre and post-op surgery. That was my favorite. Because at that time, the VA was accepting, they call it general medical and surgical now. TB had been eliminated. And we were getting anything from eye surgery to heart surgery. We had everything. And our ward that I worked in for most of my life, I want to say twenty-seven years or so, was everything from like I say, cataracts to hernias to gall bladders.

Oh, that was another thing, the gall bladders. When early days they would cut this side of the patient, a huge incision to get the gall bladder out. And now they do it by laparoscopy. And the pain level is totally different. When the 01:14:00patient had the kind of gall bladder that you made the incision, they had to go on Dilaudid, because they were so painful, because they cut all those muscles. And then the laparoscopy, our first patient, the doctor said, "Let me know what you need to have for pain." And we ended up giving him ibuprofen, you know, it was such a difference in the patient's recovery. So I thought that was a big step.

But anyway, getting back to VA, then we eventually got in heart patients. So we had pre and post-op hearts. Peripheral vascular. A lot of urology. Everything you can imagine. Anything that could be operated on, we did. And we had these doctors from the university, residents, most of the time. They were the ones that we called. We had resident doctors, but they were more like teaching doctors to the residents at the UW. So we had excellent doctors there. You'd 01:15:00call them for something, no matter what it is, and they'd come over from the UW and write your order or check the patient or whatever they had to do. So.

I remember one time on VA, it was a patient that was going to have surgery, but he was also schizophrenic. In fact, there are two of them that are terribly silly. The patient, what he had done, he was in Tomah. And you know, Tomah's a mentally ill place for veterans. He had swallowed something and he had a bowel obstruction. So he came to the VA and he had his surgery. And post-op, the guy from Tomah, the doctor called me and said, "What did you find in his abdomen?"

I said, "Well, we found a red checker. Are you missing any one to your checker set?" And he laughed. But the patient also swallowed tin foil and bones, like chicken bones and things like that. So they found a lot of debris in his bowel. 01:16:00But it's the checker that blew him up.

Anyway, one night Rosie was on one end and I was on the other end. Rosie was another nurse. She was walking down the hall. And this was her quarter to twelve rounds. This was the last rounds before you go home. Checking IVs and stuff. And Elbert stood in the doorway and he threw her colostomy bag right at her.

FH: Oh my God.

1:16:24

EW: And she got colostomy fluid all the way down her side. She had to go to surgery and get a scrub dress. I think she threw her uniform away. So that was, I mean, that was a surgical patient mixed in with schizophrenic.

And we had another patient that was in another, we call it the Dutch storeroom. It's where only half a door shuts. And this patient was taking a Coke bottle, or Pepsi bottle, one of those cans, and throwing it at the wall and making all kinds of racket. And throwing leftover Pepsi juice all over the place.

So I had to call the doctor for some Haldol. And he came over. He said, "Oh, I'll take care of it. He doesn't need Haldol. He'll be all right. I'll just go 01:17:00talk to him."

So he went in the room and talked to him. And I was standing in the Dutch door watching. And the patient pulled open the doctor's bottom pants, because they had those elastic pants with, scrub pants. And he poured some Pepsi down his pants. I just about died. He said, "Give the guy some goddamned Haldol." (laughter) So we had it all ready for him.

But those are the kind of things that made the VA interesting. Because you got all kinds of patients. All kinds of diseases and mental conditions, too.

And we had a lot of paraplegics. I liked working with paraplegics because some of them were really good and some of them were pretty disastrous. But we got through it. So.

FH: And I know that the first organ transplant was a kidney in 1954. Do you remember this new--

EW: Well I remember, I remember the first one that we had was a liver. And that was on a para, not a paraplegic, but a man who was an alcoholic. He was a young guy. But he had been through a lot in Vietnam. And I had to go in the room with the doctor because he had to explain the whole procedure and the permit to the mother. Because this guy wasn't married. And I had to sit through it for almost an hour. And I thought oh, I have so much work to do, I haven't got time to sit through it. But it was the first liver transplant that we had there.

I was in on kidneys later. But mostly it was stones or prostate problems. I didn't have kidney transplants, at least when I was there. I didn't have--

FH: What was it like--sorry.

EW: Go ahead.

FH: What was it like with this new, revolutionary type of care?

EW: For paraplegics? Or for the liver transplant?

FH: Yeah, in general, for people to--

EW: Yeah. Well, first of all, the paraplegics were on what we call, oh, now I can't remember the name of it. It's a bed that has air in it. Oh, there's a certain name to it. It's a real great big bed. So the care was easier. People didn't get [unclear] And the first liver transplant, you know, they keep them in intensive care for a certain amount of time. And then when they're recovered, stable, they come back down. So then it was just like any other surgical patient that had abdominal surgery. So that wasn't difficult.

But when we started doing hearts, years ago, they did the kind, like say you had coronary artery bypass. They would slit the chest open from stem to stern, you know, and open the rib cage with spreaders. And depending on how many vessels, they always took an hour to open, an hour to close, and an hour per vessel. So 01:20:00those with three vessel, you knew it was going to be a five-hour operation.

Then they went to intensive care. And then we took care of them on the floor later on. They sometimes got infections in their chest wound or right by their kneecap, by their knee area where the joint moves. Because the skin would stretch and they'd get it opened and it would get infected. So you had to kind of watch those. Like nowadays, they don't do the heart valves that way. They do it through the TAVR [transcatheter aortic valve replacement] procedure, where they go through the femoral artery straight up to the aorta and put the cow valve. We did pig valves for heart valves. And heart valves were always more risky. I think they called them 5 percent. Whereas the bypasses were usually 3 percent mortality. So valves were always a little more tricky. But we didn't 01:21:00lose anybody as far as, at least on our ward. You know, they could have in intensive care. But on our ward, all of our hearts recovered and they went on.

We had the first heart bypass, by the way. Or first heart transplant, I should say. And that was by one of our aide's fathers. That was at the UW. And he was dying. And whoever the surgeon was was talking to the family. And they said, "Well, we can do a heart transplant now, but we've never done one. This is going to be the first one."

And the daughter said, "I want it. I want it for my father." So it was her father who had it at the UW, the first heart replacement. So I went through a lot of first things.

1:21:58

FH: How did this change the way care was administered to patients who were braindead and could be viable organ donors?

EW: I don't remember getting that problem. The people on my ward, well, they died, but not very often. And donating articles or, you know, parts of body wasn't that prominent. So I really wasn't, our men were usually older that died, anyway. And they hadn't signed anything saying they wanted to donate their eyes or their kidneys or something like that. So that really wasn't a big issue that we even thought much about.

FH: Beyond these six years at the VA, did you work at any other hospitals?

EW: No, it's six years at the VA, that's it. It was forty hours a week. And they didn't want you to do anything else. Because you had to keep up your own immune system so that you didn't catch TB. So you weren't allowed to work anyplace else.

FH: And what did you do after the six years?

EW: Well, we moved to Milwaukee and then I worked in a general hospital. And I really felt the difference when I first got there. Because at the VA, we didn't have to charge patients for a shot or something. And I got to West Allis and I had to sign a form every time I gave a Dilaudid or a Demerol to somebody. And I'd think oh, I have to remember to write that form out. It was a bookkeeping thing that we had to do on the floor. And I wasn't used to that.

And then I eventually moved to Michigan. My husband got transferred. And by that time, we had three kids. And I worked with the profoundly retarded children. And there I really learned a lot about profound children, how they are. Because I had never seen so many retarded children in one place at one time. The day that 01:24:00she interviewed me, because I wanted to do something different for a while and I wanted to work part time because of the three kids. So I thought well, I'll try that. That sounds like that should be nice and easy to do. So I went there and she showed me, they called it the A building, which is the administration building. And she took me to all of the floors. And all the floors had multiple profoundly retarded children in it. Children that were expected to, well, some of them were terminal.

Anyway, we got done with the tour and she said to me back in the office, "Would you like a cup of coffee?"

And I said, "I don't think so." I thought, if I have a cup of coffee, I'm going to throw up. It was just overwhelming.

But later, when I was assigned to my own floor, or actually a building, I had two hundred children. Some were Downs, and they were more friendly little ones. And then we had the older ones, like small children, like ages four, five, six, 01:25:00seven, all the way up to maybe twenty. And we had a couple of older ones. And we had different types of profound mental, what do you want to call it. Not mentally ill. Profoundly retarded. I guess I'm getting tired. And you get really attached to these children. Because if a child gets sick, then you go to the aide on that floor and you say, "Do you have any children that are sick tonight?"

And she'll say, "Yes. So and so over here's got a temperature."

So you review what the temperature is. And if the temperature is such and so, you have to give aspirin. And then you give the aspirin dose according to the child's weight. So for a little child, it's a little dose, and a bigger child you can give up to five milligrams.

We had a bunch of microcephalics and hydrocephalics. We had thalidomide twins. Thalidomide was a drug that women in World War Two had in Germany. It was supposed to be for morning sickness. However, it made their children profoundly retarded. And this was a twin boy and girl. And by the time I was taking care of them, they were about thirteen years old, and they were big kids. And frisky, you know. But profoundly retarded. So, I mean, I saw a whole bunch of stuff.

And in our classes, we had to have classes for learning how to care for them, the question was asked, why do these children exist in the first place? Why did God give you this problem? And the reason was, they gave you children like this so you'd know if you have a healthy child, you are blessed. That you have this 01:27:00blessing of a child. And the child that is retarded, you learn from how to give kindness and care. And I thought that was impressive. Because you wonder, why are these children born? And nowadays when they have all this in vitro testing, you can test for things and either fix it or not fix it. Even surgery. Heart surgery on a child in the uterus. You didn't have that years ago. And people abort now if they don't want a Downs syndrome, for instance. Or they take them home and they keep them. These children were discarded from their families. There were hardly any visitors. And the visitors that we had were people that were local and could have the time to come.

There was one lady, I'll never forget her. She had three children that were profound and she had two that were normal. The two that were normal were in between. So the first, third and fifth child were microcephalics. And she would 01:28:00come in every Sunday and sit with one of the children. And then the next Sunday, she would sit with the other child. And she did that for years. And it was one of her children, he was about eighteen at the time, the oldest one, what those little kids did is they developed bowel intussusception. And you don't know it except, because they can't tell you. You only know it, that a child is sick, by the way they move. And if they move a certain way all the time, that's normal. If they change that movement, or maybe even cry out a little bit, then you know there's something wrong and you take a temperature. That's the first thing you do. And then you look at the body. And this little kid had, you know, abdominal distention. He was taken to the A building. That's where they took the bad ones. And I think he died. Because these children can't swallow properly and they 01:29:00can't chew. So when you put food in their mouth, you have to go above the tongue and get back your spoon in the back. And then he'd gulp it, and they'd gulp it down. That's for the profound.

For the little Downs ones, they were cute little kids. They would run up and hug you and stuff. Those little children would be better. They couldn't talk or anything, but at least they could walk. But they were typical Downs. We also learned that a fourth of the Downs had cardiac problems. Three-fourths were okay. And the Downs children can live to be old people. And they do today. But a lot of these children didn't have family that came back to visit them. They were sort of discarded. So I learned a lot from that place about childhood and compassion.

FH: And did you work anywhere else after that?

01:30:07

EW: Well, I worked at Madison General for a while. I also worked in the state of Oregon at one time, but that was very briefly. We didn't like out in Oregon. But I worked a pediatric and neurosurgery. I worked with paraplegics. These were lumberjacks that were in lumberjack truck accidents. And they were paralyzed. And that was horrible. Because these huge, muscular type A men were now bedridden, taken care of by a little nurse that was in her twenties. And you know, taking out fecal impactions. So that was a horrible thing to go through for those guys.

And I didn't like pediatrics because these children got so sick so fast. And I remember someplace along, I think it was in West Ellis. I took care of a guy that was on a motorcycle crash. And he was going to die. But I didn't know exactly all the details on him. And the doctor came in and he said that he had 01:31:00damaged his right frontal lobe. And he said to me, "And he didn't need it anyway." In other words, he's dying. He said he didn't need his brain anyway. Or didn't use his brain right away. But that patient, before he died, he threw up all over me. And I had beer and pizza all over my uniform. But that was, they call them donors, people that are in motorcycle accidents. They're the ones that are usually young, strong and healthy and can donate a heart or kidney or something.

But I've had a huge amount of experiences. All kinds of stuff that has happened.

FH: Were there any notable challenges that you faced during your career?

01:31:55

EW: Well, fatigue. You're tired. I know at the VA sometimes I was the only nurse and two aides, or LPNs, whichever I had. Sometimes a combination. And we had up 01:32:00to thirty-eight patients. And those were with IVs and hyper-alimentation. Blood running. All kinds of stuff. And I had two aides that were excellent because they were trained well in their classes and I depended on them. It was a big challenge. And I'd go home and I'd be so tired. And I'd think oh, I wish I could have done more for so and so or whatever. But that was just no staffing, you know? Can you imagine working a PM shift, thirty-eight patients. Blood running, IVs running, telephones ringing, visitors coming and two aides. And that's all I had. So it was rough. Towards the end before I retired, my legs were giving out. I was just tired.

But the challenge is, I'd just say, is the work, the volume you have to take. The patients, I enjoyed. There are all kinds of patients, and you accept people 01:33:00for what they are. Whether they're rich or poor or like the paranoid-schiz guys, they can say something and you just let it run over your head, because they don't mean it.

Most of the men I worked with were extremely polite. I never had any problems, and neither did my staff, with behavior on men. There was no sexual problems at all. We had one, but that guy was a little squirrely to begin with. But that, I told the LPN to not do him and I'd take care of him. So she was a young, pretty little girl and he had problems and I just had her stay away from him. But otherwise, the general run of the mill, there was absolutely no problems of sexual behavior on all of the years at the VA. And I never heard of anybody that did. So.

FH: What do you think makes a good nurse?

EW: You have to really want to do it, I think. Because if you'd rather be a teacher, you'd better go to be a teacher. If you want to go into a secretarial or like I have a granddaughter in electrical engineering. Everybody's got different choices now. You have to really want to do it. Otherwise, you won't make it. You'll quit.

FH: Are there any other memorable moments in your career that you'd like to talk about?

EW: Well, there's a lot of things that are kind of sad. You know, you can't be home for Christmas because you have to work. Or you can't be home for Easter or you can't be home for Thanksgiving. There's many times I had people at my house at Thanksgiving and I said, "Well, I've got to go now." And my kids ended up doing the dishes for me. Or my relatives. So you have to give up stuff, but you get rewarded, too. You either have to like it or you shouldn't go into it. Because it's not easy. And I'm sure my granddaughter right now, she's working in 01:35:00Jacksonville. And she's at a hospital that's called the Mayo of Jacksonville. It's just like the Mayo up in Rochester in Minnesota. But she's in the thick of it. And I worry about her and her husband. My daughter's working at Saint Mary's now. She's another one. She's in the thick of it. I have a niece who's at UW. I have two nieces at UW. One's a grand-niece and one's a regular niece.

So the girls now today are going through a tragedy that we went through when we were kids because we had polio. And the polio now has been hopefully taken care of except that cluster that was in New York for some stupid reason. They didn't have shots. But now you have immunizations that we didn't have. And there will be an immunization for this coronavirus. But it's going to take a while for the doctors and scientists to work on it and to discover the right thing that works 01:36:00for the people. So it's trying for the girls today, but in a different way than my trials were during the TB days or the polio as a child. I didn't have the polio, but it was in our neighborhood. And we were isolated, just like you guys are today. You can't go out, you can't go to a movie, you can't meet with friends. You have to just talk on the telephone. We called it polio season. And people died from it, you know.

Years ago, there was smallpox. Think of the plagues that went through Europe. I've done genealogy study and I study Norwegian and there were three plagues that went through Norway. And I thought, how did my ancestors survive? They must have not been in a big city. They must have been out, or isolated somehow. How did they survive the wars and the disease? So there's always challenges. But you 01:37:00just have to work your way through them and hope you survive.

So the young girls, think of those people that you see on television that are in cap, gown and mask and those heavy contaminated articles or things that they have to wear. They're scared to death because they've got families at home. And they may not make it. So.

But every generation's got--my parents went through the Depression. My grandpa went through the 1917 flu epidemic. I was a child during World War Two. I was an adult, a young adult, during the Korean War. There's always something going on that you have to be grateful that you are healthy.

01:37:56

FH: What do you think are important things to remember during times when we have to persevere during hardship?

EW: Repeat that. What did you say?

FH: What are things that are important to remember during these challenging times?

EW: I think you just have to have hope. And you have to remember that this too shall pass and we'll be better for it. Like I think if people are learning now, especially my young people in my family, they haven't been through tragedies. They're beyond the Korean War, they're beyond the Vietnamese War. And they've had wars, but they've been other places. They've never had disease and famine. They've always had groceries. They've always had a house over their head. And I think now that they'll realize how difficult other people in the past have had it. And I think they'll become a little bit softer and more compassionate. And not so negative. You know, like some of these things in government are so negative. And it really shouldn't be. So I think people are going to learn. But everybody's going to learn something different. But let's hope they learn the best.

FH: Yeah. Is there any advice that you would give to future nursing students?

EW: Future nurses? I would say good luck. I hope you make it. I hope you enjoy it. And do the best you can.

FH: Well, Estelle, is there anything else you'd like to include in this interview? I have asked all my questions.

01:39:39

EW: I don't think so. It's interesting. I enjoy genealogy so I'm glad that you are recording this. Because the things that I learned are so different than what my grandchild's learning and my daughter learned.

FH: Yeah.

EW: And if you go back further generations, I took care of a nurse once that was from World War One. And she was a very nice lady. She was extremely intelligent. And she had worked in Europe during World War One. And I asked her about the 01:40:00disease factor. I said, "How did you keep from having all these infections?" Because it was before penicillin was available.

And she said, "We had cleanliness. And we did the best we can." And she said some of them didn't survive. Some got infected. But they cleaned them like with certain solutions, like boric acid or some other kind of solution they cleaned them with. Peroxide or whatever. But she said what she did while she was a nurse during that time and her hospital was some monastery in France. And she said that one time, apparently some wounded men came in from the field. And they had maggots in their wounds. And there were some nurses on one floor that were from the [glitch] And they refused to touch them because they had maggots crawling 01:41:00all over. So he called up to the Wisconsin floor and he said, "Have you got any Wisconsin nurses there that can come down and take care of these patients who've got maggots in them?" And she said yes and so she sent them down. And that's what she did. And I thought well, good for you. So she rose to the cause and took care. And this is during World War One. And this is a France monastery. And it was a hospital, made into a hospital. She had men coming in from the battle. And I thought boy, that's what I'd like to do. I'd like to be like on MASH or something where they had bullets flying over the tents and stuff. (laughs)

In fact, my son even said to me just the other day. He said, "Mother, I bet you wish you were a nurse and you'd be right in that corona stuff, wouldn't you?"

And I said, "Yes, Gregory, I would." So you know, you either like it or you don't. So good luck to the young girls.

FH: Yeah. It's been really, really amazing to hear all these stories and compile them together.

EW: Yeah, I know. There's a lot of stories that other people have got a whole bunch of other stories, I'll bet. It would be interesting to see.

FH: Oh, yeah. Well, if that's all, thank you so much, Estelle.

EW: You're welcome.

FH: I'm going to shut the recorder off, but then I have a couple of things to mention to you. And then you're all finished.

EW: Sure.

FH: Thank you so much.

01:42:36

End First Interview Session