Anderson: Old Page Hospital 'was like a family'

(Today, Penny Armstrong continues sharing her experience at the hospital Dr. Ones F. Page built in April 1907. Penny worked there as a volunteer and after finishing her nurses training she retuned home and worked at the old Farragut Hos-pital.)

“I remember the time I had my appendix out at the old Page. I recall walking down the stairs to the surgical room and crawling up on the table. After it was over, they did carry me back up to the second floor. That was on a Friday and Dr. Pete (Helen Peterson) did the surgery. After she finished she said, “There is nothing wrong with you so you go back to school on Monday.” She was ahead of her time and she started getting her patients up early. She was an excellent surgeon and I remember her saying, “You are not going to die while I am taking care of you.”

“I volunteered at the old Page Hospital until 1951. That was when we moved over to the Farragut building that had been floated down the lake from the Naval Training Center near Bayview. It was then they decided to pay me because I wasn’t going away. I am sure I was not paid very much but it was more than I had been getting, which was nothing. I worked there until I finished high school in 1954 and entered nurses training at Sacred Heart in Spokane.

“After finishing my nurses training, I came back to Sandpoint and started working at the old Farragut Hospital. At that time, I was the only Registered Nurse working the three to eleven shifts — all the rest were Licensed Practical Nurses. I had to run back and forth because the emergency room was on one end of the building and the patients were on the other end. That kept me on the move and I loved it.

“It seemed that we had blizzards all winter long and it got very cold. The hospital furnace would not come on until it reached a certain pre-set temperature. I decided that I was tired of being cold, and the patients were tired of being cold, so I went through the hospital and put ice bags on all the thermostats — we got real warm.

“Some of the doctors at the hospital were Dr. “Pete” Peterson, Dr. Bill Hayden, Dr. William Tyler, and Dr. Ethel Page Westwood. We had some good doctors at that time. They all made house calls and I think they charged $2 for an office visit and $3 for a house call. People did not have a lot of money and the doctors, and the hospital, would barter with them. If a person could not pay their bill the hospital would take produce or anything else that they could use.

“The Farragut Hospital was quite a deal and we felt we were in seventh heaven. There were private and semi-private rooms and we had an OB ward. In 1955, Bill Crouse opened the hospital’s first lab but before that each doctor did his/her own blood work. At first, there was no pharmacy in the hospital but each nurse’s station had a supply of needed drugs — painkillers, aspirin, and things like that.

“Not everyone shared our feelings about our new hospital and my mother was one of them. She was very upset that Bonner County was getting a new hospital to replace the Page. They felt the old hospital was like a family, they knew everyone, and they felt they got good care because the staff loved them.”

(Bobbie Brown Huguenin shared with me what happened to the old Page (Community) hospital beside the creek. She said that her father, Jim Brown, purchased the building and it sat behind their home, which was located nearby. Bobbie recalled her parents telling  her not to go near the place and, of course, she and her young friends would visit it at every opportunity. Some of the old hospital equipment and furniture was still in the building and this helped make the place delightfully spooky to the kids. Bobbie stated that the hoboes started coming to the building and for safety reasons, her father had it demolished.)