Interesting day
Martha and I had a very interesting, emotional experience yesterday.
The Denver Children's Hospital has recently moved to the campus of the new U. of Colorado Medical School. The huge old building(s) were built piece-meal over many years and are a real maze to negotiate.
They moved much of the expensive larger equipment and many of the patient beds, but things like desks, chairs, computer monitors, bookcases, kitchen equipment, file cabinets, etc. were replace with new.
Yesterday and today they held a sale for the public. Martha (DD) and I went yesterday, spent nearly 7 hours scouring all the nooks and crannies of the buidlings for things we could use at our company which is still being run as a start-up.
We did find and buy quite a few small things but if we had known we had a truck available, we could have bought much more.
The most interesting part was to walk through the various wards, treatment rooms, labs, offices, etc. on six floors. Many, many drawers and cabinets had been cleaned out and the stuff moved to the new building. Some had not.
They had moved literally hundreds each of refrigerators (labeled as to whether food-safe or specimen), sofas, chairs, copiers, typewriters, printers, etc. to the first floor. We saw many hundreds of rockers and recliners that had been used by visiting parents.
Every floor evidently had two or three playrooms packed with toys and games which were being donated to an organization rather than sold. In addition, lots of mats and orthopedic equipment was left behind. We saw artificial legs, shoes, braces, crutches, helmets, back braces, splints, etc.
In the neonatal ICU all the monitors were beeping constantly because the devices they were attached to had been unplugged and moved. There were so many things we had never thought of, like negative pressurized contagious disease rooms, "clean rooms" for transplant patients, both pediatric and adolescent psychiatric wards, a dozen or more dental treatment rooms.
Two areas affected me most. In the burn unit with its debrasion tubs, I closed my eyes and imagined the pain and cries of the kids being treated there. In the morgue and autopsy area, where we were the only searchers, I imagined the unbearable pain of the parents whose children had not made it.
Evidently just after the actual patients were moved, families who had had children stay at the hospital were invited for "one last look". In many, many places families had left notes written on the walls in Magic Marker, saying things like "Samantha spent three months in this room in 1998. She is well and happy now. I (heart) Children's and all the wonderful staff." or "Alex lived here six weeks in 2005, from his birth to his death. We will never forget all the kindness we we were shown." There were hundreds of messages, many of which I guess won't be seen by the staff they were addressed to, but a wonderful tribute to the work done there.
As we walked along we talked about many things and laughed at some of what we saw and imagined, but it also gave me the opportunity to mention how fortunate I felt to have avoided serious illness for my children and so far for my grandson. It's the kind of thing you don't like to think about, but it was very evident the more we saw there. I feel truly grateful.
The Denver Children's Hospital has recently moved to the campus of the new U. of Colorado Medical School. The huge old building(s) were built piece-meal over many years and are a real maze to negotiate.
They moved much of the expensive larger equipment and many of the patient beds, but things like desks, chairs, computer monitors, bookcases, kitchen equipment, file cabinets, etc. were replace with new.
Yesterday and today they held a sale for the public. Martha (DD) and I went yesterday, spent nearly 7 hours scouring all the nooks and crannies of the buidlings for things we could use at our company which is still being run as a start-up.
We did find and buy quite a few small things but if we had known we had a truck available, we could have bought much more.
The most interesting part was to walk through the various wards, treatment rooms, labs, offices, etc. on six floors. Many, many drawers and cabinets had been cleaned out and the stuff moved to the new building. Some had not.
They had moved literally hundreds each of refrigerators (labeled as to whether food-safe or specimen), sofas, chairs, copiers, typewriters, printers, etc. to the first floor. We saw many hundreds of rockers and recliners that had been used by visiting parents.
Every floor evidently had two or three playrooms packed with toys and games which were being donated to an organization rather than sold. In addition, lots of mats and orthopedic equipment was left behind. We saw artificial legs, shoes, braces, crutches, helmets, back braces, splints, etc.
In the neonatal ICU all the monitors were beeping constantly because the devices they were attached to had been unplugged and moved. There were so many things we had never thought of, like negative pressurized contagious disease rooms, "clean rooms" for transplant patients, both pediatric and adolescent psychiatric wards, a dozen or more dental treatment rooms.
Two areas affected me most. In the burn unit with its debrasion tubs, I closed my eyes and imagined the pain and cries of the kids being treated there. In the morgue and autopsy area, where we were the only searchers, I imagined the unbearable pain of the parents whose children had not made it.
Evidently just after the actual patients were moved, families who had had children stay at the hospital were invited for "one last look". In many, many places families had left notes written on the walls in Magic Marker, saying things like "Samantha spent three months in this room in 1998. She is well and happy now. I (heart) Children's and all the wonderful staff." or "Alex lived here six weeks in 2005, from his birth to his death. We will never forget all the kindness we we were shown." There were hundreds of messages, many of which I guess won't be seen by the staff they were addressed to, but a wonderful tribute to the work done there.
As we walked along we talked about many things and laughed at some of what we saw and imagined, but it also gave me the opportunity to mention how fortunate I felt to have avoided serious illness for my children and so far for my grandson. It's the kind of thing you don't like to think about, but it was very evident the more we saw there. I feel truly grateful.