Interviewer
We are about, we are about 55 years ago.
Don and Louise Wyman
Yes.
Interviewer
So what changes did you see in the League of Friends over 55 years?
Don and Louise Wyman
Well, from the beginning, our main intention was patients comfort. The money we raised was money for patients comfort. But when we moved into the hospital, and they gave us this lovely shop, and we started when we realised that we could make, raise a lot of money, and the hospital realised that, then they started asking us to buy essential equipment, which they couldn’t afford to buy because as you may know, from year one, the hospital has been in debt. If I can expand on that, is that when the hospital was built, I went to the first AGM of the Committee, and they were a million pounds in debt. And they said, oh, what are we going to do about it? Oh, we’re going to do this and we’re going to do that, and blah, blah.
Don and Louise Wyman
And I go in there the next year, and I say, “how did you get on”? It’s two million pounds of debt? And, so it increased every year, and reached the stage some years ago when they were so badly in debt that they had, didn’t have any money to pay the bills. They had to have emergency government help. But we have bought many, many essential equipment items, as an example, a camera, which can go down the throat, at that time cost 30,000 pounds. We were setting up two departments in King George. One was when a machine called Gideon, have you heard of it? Gideon machine? It’s, it’s to do with gas, well, to describe it, beforehand, if you had internal bleeding, you would have operations to try, and find out where it was.
Don and Louise Wyman
This invention was by Israeli and American doctor, but the patient swallows the camera, and as it went through the intestine, tested it, photographed on the belt the whole film, at the end of it, which would have taken about three hours before, the surgeon would then take off this film, and put it on a screen, and you can see exactly where the problem was. And at that time, going back now, perhaps 40 years it cost 25,000 pounds. And King George was the first hospital in London to have that machine. And when other hospitals found out that we had the machine, they were sending their patients to us, and we would charge them a thousand pounds. So within a month it was paying for itself.
Don and Louise Wyman
So that was one of the things that we did. I had a doctor come to me and he said, “I’m a vascular surgeon, and I would like to start up a vascular surgery here, but I need, at that time it was like 20,000 pound for instruments”. So, we gave him the money, and he was able to start a vascular surgery. And I could go back over the years, the various things that we bought, like a geriatric ward, we bought in special wheelchairs so that instead being stuck by their bed, they could go to the wheelchair, and they could come to the center of the room to eat and talk together, which they couldn’t do before. So we’ve done many good things, which to my mind, it makes it all worthwhile. You know, I mean, apart from all the little things like dozens of fans, and I could, I could go on, and on things that we bought in the past. But I think from what I’ve done, I think it’s well worth the effort.
