Walter Reed’s last days

As you may know, Walter Reed was a casualty of the latest round of BRAC realignments of military facilities worldwide and the 102-year-old hospital and research center is being relocated to Bethesda to co-locate with the Naval Hospital while part of Walter reed will move to Fort Belvoir, VA. The Stars & Stripes/McClatchy says;

Over the last century, the famous and powerful have come to Walter Reed. It’s a tradition for presidents to visit wounded soldiers. Winston Churchill and other foreign heads of state were treated there. Presidents Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon were patients, as were Gens. Douglas MacArthur and John Pershing.
Bob Hope was a regular visitor for four decades, and Oprah Winfrey dropped by recently.

The campus was also the site of a brief Civil War battle in 1864, and a marker lies where Confederate sharpshooters climbed a tulip tree and almost killed President Abraham Lincoln. Historians say the sharpshooters hit a surgeon next to Lincoln, prompting a Union officer _ as legend has it, the future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes _ to call Lincoln a “damned fool” and urge him to take cover.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been treated at Walter Reed.

Most of my major surgeries have happened in that building, my wife was a nurse there for more than five years, we’ve both had some great times with wounded warriors while Concrete Bob barbequed our meals.

I make my last visit tomorrow, for an appointment and to stand for the last time with my FReeper friends who’ve stood at the front gate welcoming home the wounded for more than six years.

Uncle Jimbo was there yesterday for the casing of the colors.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually glad to see them move. The doctors and taechnicians are the best in the world. Like I tell them, they kept Strom Thurmond alive until he was a hundred and as soon as he moved back to South Carolina and away from Walter Reed’s doctors, he died. Coincidence? I think not.

The problem with Walter Reed has never been the level of medical care…it’s always been the administrative monkeys who were supposed to make life easier for patients and troops passing through, but always did their level best to make life harder for their clientele. Moving from North West DC to trendy Bethesda might have an influence on that aspect of the care for warriors.

For instance, my latest complaint has been about the pharmacy – it used to be to get your prescriptions filled, you took a number from a machine and sat down and waited for your number to be called. Simple, right? Last year or so, they changed it – three ladies, each with their own computer, stand between the patient and the number-dispensing machine.

After you show your ID card to each of the clerks, they look up your name on their computer and hand you back your ID card and the last lady tears your number from the machine and hands it to you. So what used to be accomplished by a machine has been made more intricate by adding three pinheads.

I think I wrote about the Walter Reed armed gate guards who had a shootout at the Main Gate over a woman a few years back.

Apparently there was a shake up at Walter Reed several months back when they started checking the qualifications of the administrative employees and found most to be vastly under-qualified for their jobs and since they couldn’t fire the federal employees, they had to make up monkey work jobs for them. The move will unburden the Army of the derelicts.

Anyway, i’ll have photos up tomorrow night of the Free Republic’s “Last Stand” at Walter Reed, and if I’m silent tomorrow, you know why.

I forgot to mention that Walter Reed was the place I met my crush girl, Tankerbabe/Parachutecutie.

Category: Walter Reed