DIY History | Transcribe | Iowa Women’s Lives: Letters and Diaries | Eve Drewelowe's journals, volumes II-III, 1950s

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Eve Drewelowe's journals, volumes II-III, 1950s

Page 067

the tub consistently had to be scrubbed before we could draw the water. This is the community bath rooms. The rooms were furnished with antiquated wash towels and pitchers but no depository for waste water. As a patient I have had to take a bath without a towel and drip myself dry on a chill winter morning, despite ringing for some service which never came. Gospel truth! No wonder I had several small colds while hospitalized.
As usual, I was put upon a Sippy diet - that is four ounces of milk and cream every hour, with antacids and medications in between. My second morning I was wheelchaired to the laboratory on the fourth floor and began a series of eight lavages. Ordinarily I chose to walk when I was able, but I had to see whether the wheelchair rode like a rickashaw. It was not nearly so exciting!
We were taken to the laboratory without breakfast, lay on individual cots about the room and swallowed macaroni sized tubes. The technician drained first the gastric juices poured in weak solution of silver-nitrate into the stomach through the tube, rotated me a certain number of minutes then pumped and syphoned the solutions out. This was followed by a saline wash which again was syphoned out. The technician was very careful to get the stomach free from waste in each instance. The technicians - I may add - are always proficient.

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the tub consistently had to be scrubbed before we could draw the water. This is the community bath rooms. The rooms were furnished with antiquated wash towels and pitchers but no depository for waste water. As a patient I have had to take a bath without a towel and drip myself dry on a chill winter morning, despite ringing for some service which never came. Gospel truth! No wonder I had several small colds while hospitalized. As usual, I was put upon a Sippy diet - that is four ounces of milk and cream every hour, with antacids and medications in between. My second morning I was wheelchaired to the laboratory on the fourth floor and began a series of eight lavages. Ordinarily I chose to walk when I was able, but I had to see whether the wheelchair rode like a rickashaw. It was not nearly so exciting! We were taken to the laboratory without breakfast, lay on individual cots about the room and swallowed macaroni sized tubes. The technician drained first the gastric juices poured in weak solution of silver-nitrate into the stomach through the tube, rotated me a certain number of minutes then pumped and syphoned the solutions out. This was followed by a saline wash which again was syphoned out. The technician was very careful to get the stomach free from waste in each instance. The technicians - I may add - are always proficient.