I really haven't been doing a whole lot of blogging lately because I was busy preparing for some SUNDAY KNEE SURGERY BLOGGING!!!



Yeah I spent the better part of Tuesday at SCMC getting my left knee scoped. Dr. Coe (of The Center) fame did the meniscus repair and he did a wonderful job.

Of course, he's not to be confused with this Dr. Coe:

Charles Spencer Edwards was Bend's first doctor, arriving in 1902, but he left Bend to practice in Prineville in 1904.

But Edwards was soon replaced by Urling C. Coe, Bend's first licensed physician and for a year, the only doctor practicing in Bend.

Coe handled all manner of cases, and like other country doctors, traveled hundreds of miles by horse and buggy to reach patients at distant towns and homesteads, according to his book, "Frontier Doctor."
A smallpox outbreak in Shaniko and Prineville in 1903 touched Bend, though the fear was greater than the occurrence of disease in the town. The major diseases of Coe's early years in Bend were dysentery and typhoid, which killed children and babies, though few adults succumbed to the illnesses. Coe preached about sanitary conditions and screening homes against flies, which he believed helped spread the disease. He also exhorted the city government to pass health ordinances to lessen the severity of summer outbreaks.

In 1918, an outbreak of Spanish flu killed many and sickened many more. The Bend Amateur Athletic Club — now the Bend branch of the the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Oregon — transformed into a temporary hospital to care for flu patients.

Jacob Frederick settled in Redmond in 1906 to become the new town's first doctor, according to C.J. Rademacher in his history of Central Oregon physicians. Coe got a partner in 1906 when Bernard Ferrell started a medical practice.

Coe and Ferrell opened Bend's first hospital in August 1909. The hospital was on Oregon Street and included an operating room. The hospital closed in 1919.

Several other hospitals operated in Bend in the early 1900s. Dr. John Vandevert built a 16-room hospital on Wall Street in 1919, which was later operated as the Grove Hotel. The Brooks-Scanlon and Shevlin-Hixon lumber mills ran the Lumberman's Hospital on Broadway Street from 1922 until 1951.

But Bend's health care community would change drastically in 1918 with the arrival of five nuns with big plans.

Love they way thay put that. "...five nuns with big plans."