The first building that is Columbia Hospital, built in 1909. My office is in this building, just on the other side on the fourth floor. The Columbia College of Nursing is in the background.
Ariel view of Columbia Hospital from the 1950's. The original 1909 building is in the upper right corner.I have mentioned a few times in this blog about my place of occupation, Columbia Hospital, or as it is currently known, Columbia St. Mary's Hospital, or CSM for short. I began work at Columbia Hospital on January 22, 1990 after being hired directly from MATC's pharmacy technician program. I had completed my clinicals at the in-house pharmacy and was very lucky to have landed a full-time job even before I finished school. I didn't know yet if I was going to stay there, but I knew that for the first time in my life I had a full-time job, more money than I had ever earned in my life and was getting married in six months.
21 years later, I have to say good-bye to the place that's been a second home (let's face it, 21 years of full-time work makes you feel like it's a second home) for me and like a home there have been good times and bad. I have a tendency in my life to form attachments to odd, inanimate things and as the move date for my office approaches on Monday Aug. 9th, I find that the prospect of leaving CH makes me sad and a little depressed. By Oct. 11th 2010, the new hospital building will be open and that will be Columbia St. Mary's Milwaukee Campus. I will have no problem referring to that building as CSM because it will have never been anything else. And, I would put a Vegas bet on the fact that at some point in the near future the word "Columbia" will be carved out of the name. How can you have "Columbia" when "Columbia" doesn't exist anymore? UW Milwaukee is set to buy the property as of this writing for 20 million dollars. They need the space and want to build a sports arena. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Columbia will be razed to make way for the progress of sports. And that, will be the end of Columbia Hospital's history in Milwaukee.
The Columbia College of Nursing at the corner of Newport and Maryland.When I joined Columbia's staff in 1990, we were prosperous (as hospitals go), had a reputation for being THE place to go for excellent care, had management that was at least interested in what the employees had to say, and, like all other places of occupation had it's share of problems too. But, in 1995, when I got a letter at home that Columbia and St. Mary's hospitals would be "joining together to form a working partnership" I just knew at that point that the end of Columbia was going to happen. When the full merger happened in the early 2000's (funny how I can't remember that date) it was as if the "family" had suffered a death and would never be the same again. Things happen in life that fundamentally change our surroundings, even though we may not change. This was one event for me that left me feeling like an outsider in my own work space.
The ER side of Columbia Hospital. The parking structure is to the left and the main hospital is to the right and behind the ER dept.
I left for a year to work as a pharmacy technician at CSM owned Mequon Park Pharmacy and was sorry immediately. After seven years in the in-house pharmacy I was looking for a change, the commute was certainly shorter, and I needed some new experiences. Unfortunately, it was a mistake that I knew I had made the same day I started. But, I gave it a year and when the opportunity to move back to Columbia and become a billing coordinator for Newport Pharmacy came up, I jumped at the chance. I got the job and for the next 13 years (and counting) have had that job molded into what I'm doing today. One pharmacy has become three, and even though I don't enjoy the actual work, it's not the worst job in the world. But being back at the place where I started feels right to me, and I know I'm going to never feel like I "own" the place my office is in again. Maybe it's because where I'm moving to I no longer have an office. I have space carved out in the Riverwoods Outpatient Hospital in-house pharmacy. No office with windows, privacy, or even space that is the retail pharmacies space. It is the in-house pharmacy's space; this is akin to the DMV moving into the Courthouse. They are both government agencies, but very different depts.
So far all I've listed are complaints and gripes. I've had good times too, and that's what I'm going to miss the most. I met one of my best friends there (Hi Kathie!), met several friends there, when I was on second shift, Dennis, Jim and I made our way to the roof where we watched the July 3rd Milwaukee fireworks with a small group of other employees who had sneaked up there too, and then on July 4th made our way to the roof again to watch a 360 degree view of all the surrounding neighborhood's fireworks. Eight floors up on top of the roof watching fireworks with nothing but a thin guard rail is a fun experience if you don't have a problem with heights. Finding secret passageways and becoming so familiar with the floor plan that instant short cuts made getting meds to a dept in a hurry a valuable asset, being in a building 100 years old and knowing that there are fixtures and decor that are original to the building, and working in a living history of collective lives that will take the new hospital generations to begin to hint at.
As I pack up and contemplate my new space, I can't help but feel that a huge chapter of my life is over and so far I feel like I'm in the "crappy first draft" as my Eng 102 teacher once had us read a chapter on. It's where you put everything down on paper that comes into your head and then you can sort it out once you've got everything in print. Maybe it's because I'm now working part time at the Lakeview Library in Random Lake, and have dropped to point 6 at Columbia? This is a transition time for school too because I only have three semesters (part-time) left at Sheboygan, and although that may sound like a huge amount of time, it isn't. I need to decided if I really want to pursue an IR degree, if I really want to transfer to UW Milwaukee, or if I should be happy with my Associate's degree and work at both jobs until I figure out what direction I want to take. My parents would have said I'm fence sitting, and I really understand the analogy now. I have one foot in the past and one kinda in the future. I feel the closing of Columbia should represent something to me, a clue to me that I need to decide something and to try and not have both worlds.
The original building on right with the additions going left. This is the corner of Maryland and Hartford.So, good-bye Columbia, thanks for the job, the memories, the friends, the good times, the history, the impact on our patient's lives, and for half my life a security that allowed me to live a life better than what I expected.
