Community Hospital, a place of birth and death, is on life support

Hospitals are our lives’ starting point—more than 98 percent of Americans are born in a hospital. And, more often than not, they’re our journey’s end—more than 60 percent of Americans die in a hospital.

So, most of us have at least a glancing familiarity with medical centers. I’ve availed myself of a variety of them over the years: born at St. Mary, my wife and I had our two kids at Memorial and I’ve visited Community a number of times to sit with my mom, who was in and out of the hospital’s mental health ward from a series of botched or half-hearted suicide attempts, and my dad, whose long spiral into death included lengthy stays there.

Now Community Hospital is facing its own medical emergency. MemorialCare Health System, which operates the 94-year-old hospital, said last fall it wouldn’t bring the Community up to seismic code. The city has identified a potential new operator, but John Bishop, who oversees both Memorial and Community, has dismissed efforts to keep Community alive in the interim, depriving a large portion of the city’s east side of nearby care.

The hospital is now on life-support and its wobbly future will be discussed, if not determined, in Tuesday night’s City Council meeting.

Despite what would seem like unhappy memories of the place, Community has been my favorite Long Beach hospital. When I had a bit of a stroke at the office a couple of years ago, and the right side of my body stopped working well, my editor, Melissa Evans—she’s still my editor now in my new late-life career change—drove me to the emergency room.

St. Mary? One mile or six minutes away? No.

Memorial? 2.6 miles or 11 minutes away? No.

Instead we zig-zagged across town to Community.

It’s where I wanted to die, in the cool shade of the Spanish Colonial plaza, on the placid grounds blossoming with bougainvillea cascading over red-brick arcades and perched cozily atop an ancient earthquake fault.

For God’s sake, don’t ever do this sort of thing if you’re having a stroke. Get to the nearest hospital immediately. If you patterned your life after mine you’d be broke, dead or insane by now. But it’s what I wanted. Happily, I suffered no lasting harm and, after a sleepless night’s stay and a barrage of high-tech tests, including a CT Scan and a death-metal trip through MRI, I was home the next day with my superpowers restored and intact.

I’ve been back a few times since and as perverse as it sounds, have always enjoyed my visits as a patient at Community. As a place to stay, I’d put it somewhere between a Holiday Inn and the Hotel Maya.

I’m not alone in my fondness for the place.

Dave Daniel, a semi-retired sports writer, was born at Community 73 years ago, shortly after his entire extended family moved from Texas to Long Beach. In those years the hospital had a reputation for catering to the indigent. It was the only option for the poor outside of L.A.’s General Hospital.

The Daniel family in 1944. Baby Dave is being held by his mom.

“It was in 1944 and my father was in boot camp at Camp Roberts in Paso Robles,” said Daniel. “My mom was about to deliver, so my grandfather drove my mother to the hospital. Along the way, a policeman stopped him for speeding and my grandfather pointed to my mother and the cop escorted them to the hospital.

“My mother didn’t want to go to Community because she thought it was for ‘poor’ people,” said Daniel.

Nevertheless, it was the handiest hospital in an emergency, so that’s where she was taken. Because of wartime rationing, there was no rubber for bottle nipples, and no milk to be had. Happily, Mom came equipped with the necessary gear to nurture and feed newborn Dave.

The choice of Community Hospital was a no-brainer for Teresa Weber-Freeman when her daughter Zoe was born 25 years ago.

“We lived in an old house on Ransom Street just around the corner from Community,” she said.

“We paid cash for the birthing fee and planned on a ‘natural’ childbirth.

“At some point it got really painful,” she recalled. “When I asked for pain relief, I was offered an epidural. I started to say, ‘Go for it!’ but before I could, my ex turned to the nurse and asked her how much this pain relief would cost. She said ‘Oh, probably around $1,500…’ Immediately, he turned to me and said ‘You can do this without the epidural, right?’”

Teresa Freeman-Weber and her daughter Zoe in 2010.

And that is how an ex becomes an ex.

“Seriously though, I will be very sad to see Community Hospital go,” said Weber-Freeman. “It’s the only centrally located hospital in Long Beach and it serves a large portion of the Long Beach population. People who use this hospital will now have to travel 15 to 20 minutes farther to the nearest real emergency room. For patients with serious injuries or in the throes of unforeseen maladies, those few minutes could be the difference between life or death. What a bummer.”

Finally, there’s the whole circle-of-life thing that we discussed earlier, as recalled by Jon Gotz, who was born and raised in Long Beach.

“In late June 1989 my father was admitted to Community Hospital with pneumonia,” said Gotz. “He was getting better the first week and then his kidneys shut down. I was in that hospital every day but one for 51 days before he passed away.”

Cindy, Rebecca and Jonathan Gotz.

The only day he missed was so he could attend his niece’s bat mitzvah. The day of his father’s death, said Gotz, was “one of the worst days of my life.”

But then: “Shortly after that, on May 19, 1990, one of the happiest days of my life took place at Community Hospital, when my youngest daughter, Rebecca, was born there.”