Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Ed Yeates ReportingKudos for Utah's oldest working full-time nurse. She turned eighty today and she's still on the job in Cottonwood Hospital's O.R., and as she says, "it ain't over yet."
Peggy Hansen: "I use to do lung surgery, and I would have to stay up the night before threading packets of needles."
She worked in barracks in the back of the old Salt Lake County Hospital that had been converted into wards for hundreds of polio victims. She remembers patients in iron lungs at LDS Hospital.
Peggy Hansen: "The cheerleader at East High School died in our hospital in an iron lung.
Bad times and good times, she's seen them all - and a bit of history too.
Peggy Hansen: "We're going to give the first penicillin shot to be given. It was dissolved in water so it had to be given every two hours."
Gracious, charming, but with that ingredient many seasoned nurses develop.
Reporter: "Are you a feisty nurse?"
Peggy Hansen: "Yes (laughs)"
One thing you don't want to do on Peggy's 80th birthday is ask her when she's going to retire.
Peggy Hansen: "No, no, I'm kind of saving up for my old age."
In fact, she told us to come back to the O.R. on her 90th birthday.
Though Peggy graduated in 1946, school never ended. Nursing, she says, has been a continual learning experience just to keep up with the technological advances in medicine.
