Further Reading
Stories from the Field
The collection houses notes from the interviews Lantis conducted with hospital staff, correspondence with families seeking information about their hospitalized family members, and publications from the Tuberculosis Hospital Study.
The collection’s correspondence between Lantis and patient family members and Lantis’s correspondence with public service agencies and hospital staff on behalf of patients reveal some of the patients’ prevailing concerns. Parents sought information about their young children, while adults expressed anxieties about the welfare of their families left behind.
Story 1
The following is a letter excerpt from Lantis to a young patient’s parents in Akiachuk, Alaska dated July 26, 1957. “M” is substituted for the patient’s name.
M does not have pain; that is, she does not hurt much. Of course, the doctors gave her medicine so that she slept a lot and did not hurt. Now she does not need so much medicine to make her sleep. She is in a room by herself, right next to the nurses’ desk, so the nurses can take good care of her. She can look from the window by her bed and see out over the water of Cook Inlet. It is like looking far across the Kuskokwim. I gave M the money, and a woman at the hospital who goes shopping for the patients will buy what M wants. She has comic books to look at. She said she would like some dried fish. The doctor says it will be all right if you send her a little smoked fish. Don’t worry about M. She is getting along very well. She would enjoy a letter from you, and probably soon she will write to you.
Story 2
It was not uncommon for patients to be transferred from a temporary facility in Anchorage to a Seattle hospital without their family’s knowledge of the transfer.
Timely communication between the public service agency and family members was thwarted by slow correspondence between the central office in Juneau and the Anchorage temporary facility, the lack of standardized surname usage among the native Alaskans, and rapid mass patient transfers dictated by airline transport restrictions and weather conditions.
The following is a letter excerpt from a family from Barrow, Alaska to a pediatric social worker at Firland Hospital in 1956:
Sure was glad to hear that my little girl is all right. This is the first time we hear from her since she left and we would like to know how she really is and how her condition is soon as possible. If she want anything be sure let me know. I will send you some money because I am working right now. I always wanted to hear how she is but no word came, so we got worried and we expected to hear, when they told us that she is going to stay in Anchorage and now we would like to know how she got to Seattle by plane or by train, so keep writing us and let us know. If you people take her picture we would like to have one. I must close now, with all my love to her, and please take good care of her. We didn’t expect to hear that she is so far away in Seattle. Her brother say hello to her.
Patient Interview Notes
Lantis and a co-researcher interviewed 50 of the 233 patients hospitalized in three Seattle sanatoria in 1956. The collection includes her patient interview notes, as well as subsequent analysis. At the time, the dislocation of native Alaskans was considered justified by the gravity of TB mortality rates; however Lantis dedicates significant portions of her study publications depicting the burden of change on these patients. Separation from home, acceptance of inactivity and dependency, fear of treatments and surgery in wholly unfamiliar environments, and health care provision across language and cultural barriers are recurring themes in her study publications.
The following patient interview notes excerpts appear in a 1956 TB Hospital Study publication.
Patient 1
A young man, unmarried, was from a remote village where a traditional Eskimo way of life was still lived. He had had little schooling and spoke little English. His reaction in the hospital was complete inhibition of expression of his fears. He would not talk about his family, especially said nothing about tuberculosis in other members. He denied feeling sick while at home. At first he was weak, had headaches and hemorrhages, was very afraid, and could not concentrate on schoolwork or occupational therapy. He simply closed up and managed to survive, improving slowly until he could have surgery.
Patient 2
About 40 years old, she had left a husband and five children in a poor tundra village. Being at first weak, tired, and lonely, and extremely anxious to get well enough to return to her family, she simply lay flat in bed, afraid to move. She would accept any recommended treatment, even though she did not understand it. Knowing almost no English and unable to express her anxieties about her family, she received companionship and support from other women from her area who were ambulatory.
Patient 3
Arriving in 1956, after the Alaskans were well established at Firland, this man in his late 20s had left a wife and infant in a village with her relatives. His first two months at Firland were hard because of worry concerning his family. This was well concealed until a researcher’s background questions about his family triggered a burst of uncontrollable weeping. He was very ashamed by this loss of control. Once word had been received from Alaska that his wife was getting Aid to Dependent Children, he was thereafter able to talk about her calmly. Having worked in a hospital in Alaska for several years, he found nothing disconcerting in the hospital procedures, and he felt considerable responsibility for helping other less acculturated patients.
