Paperwork Crypt

The contents of those boxes would make for some interesting reading.

Yeah, I could spend all day reading those files, even though most of them are probably mundane.

imagine the stories that lay inside all those boxes and they just sit there and rot

Don't they need those files? I mean, when they leave are they just like "Man, we have all these books of important critical information, let's just leave them here to root?"?

I could sit there all day and read each one!!!!!!!!!

Thought the same thing, jessica. I would think those files would be important to someone.

Na look at that big ghostley thing in the back room. I working in a hospital though do wonder about those records too.

I'd feel guilty if I read those, but I know I wouldn't be able to resist.

I would have guilty leaving them behind.

Dude, i would so have to read those! lol

Aren't those supposed to be kept confidential?

C'mon motts; what was some of the content? Even some labels you may have read from off the boxes. We're all itching to know.

morta ... means dead in portuguese

personaly....i would of read a few and takin a few to read later im not a thief but im very into old stuff like this so id call it being nosey!

hmm that's a dilemma.
i do a lot of exploration and of course the first rule is not to directly interfear with the place you explore.afterall we are not criminal's and really in context we are doing a good thing by recording site's that are living on borrowed time.
but it is hard to resist the temptation not to save stuff which of course would be theft.it is a shame that it is all just left to either be destroyed by wrecking crew's or for some dick head to set fire to,which has happened to alot of places i have been to.

just think each paper has a story.

you both have great points i mean yes it would be stealing if you got caught but at the same time you have what i would call silent or secret history!

I would like to buy one of these old buildings and then look through all the paper work, play with all the gagets, explore every nook and cranny and invite you all to join me :)

IN ten years, go back to your high school and ask for your transcripts. Watch what happens.

IN ten days after you've been referred to another DR..,and they ask you about your medical records and that they need them, Watch what MAY happen.

That happened to me. When my "Pain Management" doctors office closed, they were boxing up files left and right. I demanded mine and they said "no, they're going into storage"...THIS is probably what they meant. In a box to sit for decades and rot. Needless to say after some screaming, yelling and threatening, I got my files but I felt bad for all the older people whose lives were going to end up in a box somewhere. Very sad (but definitely interesting)

i work in the health care field and i know about not reading patient files, but it would be really hard for me not to in this case!! very interesting indeed!!

When I would get a new person on my caseload, I would request all of his/her records and complete a new comprehensive social history. For people who had been in the system for decades, this was boxes and boxes of info and hours--sometimes days--of work, but it was worth it. It was amazing to rediscover things that at one time had been known about the person but had been "lost" or "forgotten" in the intervening years, had come to be considered (and documented) as "unknown," but really it was there in the record all along. It just hadn't been brought forward appropriately, and then it became easier to assume that it was unknown than to search for it. Sometimes the lost information explained lots of aspects of a person's behaviors.(I have some compulsive tendencies and always wanted to know all there was to know about each person with whom I worked, so I dug until there was no digging left to do.)

why do they leave all this behind?.....Don't understand u would think it would all be forward somewhere

It could be these are not patient related but just day-to-day office records, purchase orders, paid bills, work/repair orders, payroll and employee records, reviews, things of that nature. Keep in mind that all the years before computers were practical (the mid 70's when mainframes were norm) everything was typed and a hard copy. IF they are indeed patient files than I think there should be some movement to archive them in a safe environment where they won't be destroyed by mold, water and vandals. Personally I would love to dedicate my life to doing such work and search the country for abondoned hospitals and the record rooms that may have been left behind. In the future it will be boxes and boxes of floppy disks, tape and CDs that are left behind.

wise words dme. what job do you have that your as lucky to go through files of people.

"First do no harm"...how appropriate in this situation. Preserve the past, but don't disturb it (though I swear I would be itching to get my hands on some of these artifacts!)...

I would be afraid to touch those papers anyhow because they might crumble in my hands like so much sand! That is how old they look!

AWESOME shot Motts, as usual!!! (Sorry for any typos--my bird Sunshine is pecking at my fingers as I am typing this!)

you'd need a tetnus shot afterwards