In 1915, Lassen County voters passed a bond measure to approve the construction of a new courthouse and hospital. The old hospital located along the Susan River was sold in a property exchange and in 1916 the new Lassen County Hospital was completed near Richmond Road. In 1960, it became known as the “annex” as a new facility was built next it. Both hospital buildings has since been abandoned when Banner Lassen was constructed north of Lassen College.
I would love to know as much history of the buildings and events that happened at this location.
My mom got her gallbladder removed there, so that’s an event that happened at this location.
The summer after I graduated high school in 2001, and again the following summer, I worked on the maintenance crew at the hospital. Our office/shop was in the basement boiler room of the annex. We called the annex “The SNF” (pronounced sniff) Skilled Nursing Facility. I did a variety of tasks inside and outside all the buildings on the compound. Mostly, it was a cool job, and the men I worked for taught me a lot about handyman work and adult life. They are/were great human beings. I saw my former boss yesterday and had a great chat with him.
Anyway, my routine involved checking the SNF residents’ call buttons to ensure they worked. This situation was stressful because I often had to reach over or under their sleeping bodies to find the call buttons. I hated this part of the job. Sometimes they’d wake up terrified. Regardless if they were waking from sleep or not, many residents were suffering from cognitive decline conditions, and they were confused and thought I was an intruder in their home and they’d freak out on me. One lady even threw her tv remote at me. Some thought I was their son, grandson, or even their husband and would call me by that name. Many of these experiences were emotional and made me sad. As an 18-19-year-old, being in a place where people were lonely, confused, suffering, and close to death was a profound experience for me. Many residents I made friends with died, and those days were always hard.
Most of the residents in the SNF were friendly, and I got to know many of them quite well. However, there were some “memorable” people and incidents. There were two residents in particular, and I still remember their names.
One guy would drink cheap can beer in his room all day and cuss at everybody. He was super creepy toward female staff. I thought it was strange they let him drink all day, but he was paying rent, so whatever. He wasn’t that old. He was like 65-70 and seemed to be cognitively with it. Physical injuries put him in the facility. My boss told me his kids dropped him off and never came back. I thought it was sad, but I could see why they did it because he was an insufferable jerk and a perv. I eventually refused to check his call button because he was so rude. I figured it was good if it broke because he only used it to call in nurses to harass them. Plus, he would yell into the hall all day, so it’s not like he needed a call button to get anybody’s attention.
The craziest thing that happened there was when I was a new employee. An old lady, let’s call her Pearl, was sitting in the hallway in her wheelchair. I happened to have a brick in my right hand because I was engaged in a meaningless “brick relocating project.” I had seen her before, and she always had a life-sized baby doll in her lap that she would cuddle and talk to. She started calling me over in a sweet grandma’s voice. “Oh, sweetheart, young man, please come here. I need some help.” When I got close enough, she lunged forward, grabbed my left wrist with a death grip, and started growling at me, cussing and threatening to kill me. It was like something from a scary movie. The instinctual lizard brain reaction kicking off in my head was to smack her in the face with the brick, but instead of committing manslaughter, I took a deep breath, dropped the brick, and tried to pry her hand off. (If the beer-drinking perv had grabbed me, I probably would have given him the brick treatment.)I pried her hand off, but she grabbed my wrist with her other hand. So, I snatched her baby doll off her lap, held it upside down by its feet, and told her I would smack its head into the wall if she didn’t let go of me. (I had no issue committing manslaughter on her toy baby. )She immediately let go, I gave her the baby doll, and she cut loose with hysterical laughter as I walked away.
When I returned to the grown men I worked for, I was all shaken up and explained what had happened. My buddy’s dad, Sam, was one of my supervisors. He goes, “Got too close to Pearl, did ya? Bet you won’t do that again.” Then he laughed hysterically.
My parents were medical employees at the main hospital, but they knew the SNF patients. When I got home, I told my mom what happened, and she was like, “I bet you won’t get close to Pearl again! Hahaha!”
Several times after that incident, Pearl tried her sweet little, Oh young man; please come here” B.S. on me. I always gave her a, “Yeah, right, Pearl. Screw you and your baby. You’re high if you think I’m getting near you again. You may have forgotten me, but I’ll never forget you.”
I was only 18, but that was the closest I’ve been to having a heart attack. It was also the closest I’ve been to smacking a 90-year-old lady in the face with a brick.
So, that’s an event that happened at this location.
R.I.P. Pearl. Thanks for the lifetime of nightmares.
I worked at the hospital, but our office was In the SNF upstairs. I didn’t particularly like being up there on the night shift.
Mary …Mike’s mom
I tore up my knee playing football in 1976. The subsequent surgery was in Reno, but the rehab was with a physical therapist in the old Lassen County Hospital building. I remember the other patients as very old, ghostly white, in wheelchairs and generally non-speaking. Their physical therapy seemed to consist mostly of trying to lift their arms. We patients were spread throughout the first floor, which was dark except for shafts of light coming through the windows. A reel-to-reel tape player sat in the middle of the floor, blasting big-band music — everyone but the physical therapist and I were deaf or close to it. It was a weird scene, but I left with an appreciation for Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Jimmy Dorsey and Duke Ellington. I might have been the only 16-year-old in Susanville going to the library and checking out their records. So that’s an event that happened at this location.
Ooops! It was 1977, and I was 17. It wouldn’t matter, but this is a history blog, so I should keep my facts straight. Ankle in 1976, knee in 1977.
We had mix of experiences with the old hospital. 1. Our youngest son and his friend (ages about 9) ran into one another while riding their dirt bikes. Our son got the short end (broken femur) but triage visit to the hospital was highlighted by landline call to hospital from friend to let us know that they had our older son and to not fret since we were off to Reno via ambulance. Son spent month in comic-book traction and another month in a body cast!) All ended well. 2. One of our dogs was diagnosed with diabetes. Vet drew blood sample with instructions to take the sample to the hospital lab for analysis/confirmation…which as positive. Only in a small town.
Our experiences were early 1980s.
I was born there on May 10th of 1981.
Three of my children were born there in 1989, 1990 & 1998. I am saddened to see it today. It was a good hospital. Better than Banner in my opinion.