Martha Schlotzhauer Venable Garnett

Slater, Missouri

I have always been a “farm girl.” I am also a cancer survivor. My mother had cancer and my late husband, Bob Garnett, who was a former member of the Board of Trustees at Fitzgibbon Hospital, did as well. I was blessed that I didn’t have to have treatments, but I am very concerned about those who do. The proposed Community Cancer Center at Fitzgibbon Hospital in Marshall will greatly benefit the residents of our area because they will no longer have to travel great distances – to and from Sedalia, Columbia or Kansas City – to get treatments.

I have a long history with Fitzgibbon Hospital. About 63 years ago, at the age of 16, I was taken to the old hospital for an emergency appendectomy. Then, during the summers of my junior and senior years in high school, I lived in the nurses’ house across the street from the hospital so I could work as a nurse’s aide at the hospital.

That experience has proven very useful to me all of my life; raising three children and helping to nurse my mother and father and two deceased husbands, as well as others. The experience I gained at the hospital in such duties as giving baths while the patients were in bed, changing sheets and so on, was very helpful. Nursing has always been a passion for me. I know first hand the discomfort and problems involved when someone’s health is failing.

I have always been a strong supporter of whatever Fitzgibbon Hospital has been involved in. The hospital has come a long way, and made many wonderful additions in their services and facilities, since the old days on Brunswick. Many people don’t remember what it was like back then. I remember … You walked in through the big front doors, and there was a big winding staircase leading to the second floor. The business office was right there in the lobby. All the lab work was done in the basement, and the cafeteria and patient rooms were in the basement as well. The surgery room and nursery were on the second floor, and that’s where the babies and moms were at as well. Things were a lot different then. We’ve come so far.

I believe the addition of a Cancer Treatment Center will be another great step in the right direction. I have been in hospital in Columbia, and I know the benefits of being in a hospital close to home and being treated for your illness by people who you are familiar with in familiar surroundings.

I strongly support the efforts of Fitzgibbon Hospital to make the Community Cancer Center a reality.