Part of: Lynn Hudson oral history (4 objects)
Lynn Hudson oral history
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- Q: All right, so I’m -- we’ll just start with what is your name?
- A: Lynn Hudson. Q: And I’m Arianna, I’m interviewing her
- for my memoir project. When and where were you born?
- A: I was born in the spring of 1945, March, in Ottumwa, Iowa. My father was in flight
- training, he had graduated from the Naval Academy and then was going through flight
- training. And it happened to use corn fields in Iowa for airfields for the Navy flying
- team, so that’s why I ended up in Iowa. I only stayed six weeks.
- Q: Okay, where did you move to after Iowa? A: I’m really not sure, my parents were
- in the military, and they moved all up and down the Eastern Seaboard. I think after that
- trip they moved to Cape May, New Jersey, but we have lived in Pensa-- typical Navy towns
- -- Pensacola, Florida; Norfolk, Virginia; Newport, Rhode Island; California, Long Beach,
- different places in California. So, I’ve moved often, but mostly up and down the Eastern
- and Western Seaboard. Q: Okay, what kind of education did you get?
- A: I went to a three-year nursing diploma program at a hospital in Washington, DC called
- Washington Hospital Center, and in those y-- in the 1960s and at that time it was very
- common to have nursing education be at a hospital and it was considered a diploma, you actually
- lived at the hospital, you worked at the hospital, and you took your nursing courses there. After
- I graduated from that nursing school I had several jobs, did many different kinds of
- things, but in the ’70s I moved to Austin and I registered as a student older than after
- at UT School of Nursing. And, I actually took a lot of undergraduate courses and then placed
- out of almost all of the nursing courses. They don’t have a bridge program or they
- didn’t at that time, but I was able to use my nursing experience to place out, and then
- got a BSN degree in I think 1976. No, no, it was later than that, ’78. I had already
- become a nurse practitioner. Q: Okay.
- A: I’d forgotten. Q: So, then you moved to Austin when you started
- going to UT. How long did you stay in Austin? A: I moved in 1970 and I didn’t leave, really,
- until 2015. There was one tour of duty, or one time, when I went out to Texas Tech and
- lived out there five years and worked at the health science center out there, but then
- returned to Austin. So, for to finish education, after my BSN and I had a -- I went to a certificate
- program in California at UCLA to be a women’s healthcare nurse practitioner. And then later
- on in the ’80s, I went to University of Texas Health Science Center, with an adjunct
- program at San Antonio and got a Master’s in Public Health.
- Q: Oh, okay. So, once you got the -- are you -- as you got your degrees what did you do
- with them? A: Well, for several years as a nurse, I worked
- in critical care situations, ER or intensive care units, worked at a student health center
- for a couple of years, and then I began to be more community based and worked over in
- East Austin at a public health clinic doing maternal and child health. And then after
- I became a nurse practitioner, I worked for many years at Planned Parenthood, doing reproductive
- health. So I became a community-based nurse. What prompted me to want to study to be a
- Master’s of Public Health is the idea of taking care of populations of people, not
- just individuals. So, my emphasis has been on population health, [now?].
- Q: So, can you speak a little more on what prompted you to care more about population
- health? A: Well, I really believe that eventually
- the way medicine is going to be practiced in this country, and the world probably, is
- you’re always going to have hospital-based care for emergency and trauma, but other than
- that the rest of the care is going to usually be providing people’s communities and basically
- home -- with a lot of home health provision, you’re going to have home-based care. I
- just believe that if you have an impact and you can deal with populations, that you have
- made almost more of a stronger contribution in terms of changing people’s health status
- and their outcomes, from a population-based perspective.
- Q: All right, so let’s go back to the ’70s and what you were kind of doing then with
- health at, like, Planned Parenthood or -- A: Well, I had moved to Texas in 1970 after
- getting out of the Army Nurse Corps, and just found, kind of, get-by jobs, also getting
- the GI Bill, going to school part-time at UT, so I began to work with a strong commitment
- towards -- I started out, basically, doing childbirth education classes as a volunteer
- over in east Austin, thinking that if I could help people get more better prepared for labor
- and delivery, low income, low social status -- met women that it would be a better outcome
- for them than having to be heavily medicated and be kind of unaware during their labor
- and delivery. So, I taught childbirth education classes and then that led me to wanting to
- be involved in maternal and child health. And, between -- I used to volunteer at People’s
- Community Clinic which was kind of an activist -- at that time it was an underground clinic
- in the basement of a church on the drag. So, I’ve always had a commitment towards working
- with families, women and children and families that are lower socioeconomic status, trying
- to make some kind of an improvement in their outcomes.
- Q: Okay, can you maybe elaborate on this People’s Community Clinic? What was it, how did it
- get started? A: You know, the history of it, you’re probably
- some of your classmates are going to interview somebody that’s got more history, it just
- started as a people’s clinic, care was free, volunteer nurses and doctors worked there.
- They saw lineups of folks who couldn’t access any of the public health clinics and there
- were very few in Austin. And so, they did maternal and child health, they did family
- planning, they did a lot of STDs, and it was just, you know, kind of first come, first
- serve. We worked in the evenings, it was in a basement; people would line up for hours
- but it was a really wonderful team because it was made up also of social workers, counselors,
- and so it was a real team approach towards caring for people. Everything was volunteers;
- the medications we dispensed were all donated, so it was kind of a grassroots approach to
- healthcare. People’s Community Clinic now is a huge, million-dollar concern, you know,
- it’s got several clinics, it’s got grants and it’s well funded, but it started out
- in a very humble way. Q: Do you know how it got to the point where
- it got so many grants and got so big? A: Oh, it just -- it eventually had stronger
- leadership, a board that oversaw it, and then actually hired employees, it wasn’t just
- volunteers, and those hired employees then were, you know, charged with seeking grant
- money and being of a more professional direction. It fills a huge healthcare hole here in Austin.
- Q: Were there others like it throughout Austin or was that the only one?
- A: No, we don’t know of any others. Working at Planned Parenthood, we saw women of lower
- socioeconomic status and I really believe that when you care for a woman in a community,
- then in the end you actually care for her family, too. So, although we might have been
- doing, [quote?], just family planning, we were doing well women checkups, you know,
- disease prevention, wellness teaching, and then also doing health teaching in terms of
- advising her, you know, immunizations for her children, well baby checkups for her children,
- resources where they could get healthcare. So you really treat more than just a woman.
- Q: So, can you tell me how did you become a nurse practitioner for the Vietnam War?
- A: Well, in Vietnam I was just an Army Nurse, and I worked in basically what was a MASH
- hospital, it was an evacuation --freshly cas-- fresh casualties would be evacuated or bought
- in to us, and then you would do kind of immediate-level, more-than-first-aid, triage surgery, but you
- didn’t take care of the wounded for long periods of time after you did the immediate
- care, then they would be evacuated to more stable environments and more safe environments,
- like to Hawaii or Japan. Sometimes the United States, sometimes to Germany, but large air--
- you know, planes with -- that would evacuate your casualties out. And then, you’d take
- in a fresh level of new, fresh casualties in. But, I did that for two years.
- Q: So, obviously these are two very different medical roles. Did Vietnam influence your
- decision to go into family care, or? A: That’s a good question, Arianna. I would
- say probably in a very gentle way. After being in country for about four months, we experienced
- something called Tet, which was a huge overrun of the country by the North Vietnamese and
- the Viet Cong and that created a huge time of protest back here in the United States
- because it was becoming evident to anti-war folks that we were not winning the war and
- that it was probably going to be a losing proposition. But, during that time of Tet
- we were -- our hospital was inundated with casualties, civilian women and children, and
- I think probably that began more my awareness of sort of the impact you have if you do maternal
- and child health; when you’re taking care of women and children you have a much bigger
- sort of impact than you do, certainly, just nursing wounded soldiers. So, I don’t know
- if it was a real conscious decision, but I became much more interested in maternal and
- child health issues after I came back. Although when I first came to Austin I was working
- at intensive care units and ER environments, but I think I was quickly happy to begin more
- of a community-based work when I started to work in the public health clinic and did maternity
- care. Q: Okay, what kind of, like did you ever face
- any sort of pushback in the healthcare environment? A: You mean as a civilian here coming back
- from Vietnam? Q: Yeah.
- A: No, no, I think always if you do reproductive health you’re on the forefront of kind of
- an activist point of view because true reproductive health also then includes a woman’s right
- to choose, to kind of take care of her body and what to do with her body. So, we have
- huge emotional issues surrounding that part of reproductive health. You also have a huge
- emotional issue about young peoples’ right to choose whether or not they want to use
- methods of birth control and whether they need parental consent. So, there’s been
- sort of societal rules and regulations that have made giving or dispensing methods of
- birth control, or allowing women to have a choice about her body, you know, society has
- created pushback in many, many ways. You’re protesting a woman’s right to choose and
- being able to make a decision about her reproductive wellness. Supporting that, advocating it has
- always been something that I’ve been involved in doing (inaudible).
- Q: So, have you been involved in protests? A: Well, I think for every -- yes, every pro-choice
- parade or advocacy opportunity, or has -- yes, that’s been a part of my, kind of my personhood,
- but it’s because I so much believe in reproductive health and a woman’s right to obtain it,
- get it safely, and to also make choices about it. Yeah, so anything that has to do with
- that, whether it’s a protest or a march or whether it is a fundraiser or whether it’s
- advocacy in terms of promoting it under healthcare provisions, yes.
- Q: So, how did these protests or marches or whatever,
- how did that drive change in the ’70s for women’s reproductive rights?
- A: Well, I think that there were more, certainly within the community, Austin’s a fairly
- liberal community, and there were providers that were willing to make available reproductive
- choices. In the ’70s, on the national level, family planning was quite a well-funded governmental
- program. From the ’70s it shifted then to more child health and then maternal health,
- but in the ’70s there was quite a bit of money available for family planning. So, there
- were -- there was a lot of education and a lot of training associated with trying to
- understand the methods of birth control, make them available, how to do good counseling.
- So, on a national level I think that was happening, I don’t know whether protests made that
- happen, but it was -- I think there was an awareness that if you could help with population
- control, that you were doing something that was -- since then, our national direction
- has moved from family planning (inaudible) either child emphasis or maternal health emphasis,
- vaccines, that kind of thing has been more of a push -- there was a lot of money available
- in the ’70s. So, there was providers willing to make services available, and then, you
- know, Roe v. Wade came along and I think we were, as a nation, coming to terms with the
- fact that reproductive health and a woman’s right to choose -- it’s still a huge controversy
- -- but I think it’s still -- now it’s law, and as long as it’s law we’re blessed.
- Q: You mentioned Roe v. Wade, can you expand on that?
- A: You know, I don’t remember, I can’t remember the date, I’m going to have to
- look that up, but you know, it was the Supreme Court decision that allowed a woman’s right
- to terminate a pregnancy. It was between -- the choice was between her and her doctor. We
- have seen a huge chip away at those liberal rights, every legislative session they try
- to modify and change how many weeks a woman has to be, whether or not you have to listen
- to the fetal heartbeat, whether or not you have to give teaching material. We have -- a
- conservative agenda has taken over, and is eroding our constitutional rights that were
- given to us by Roe v. Wade. I just can’t remember
- the actual date of it. Q: That’s fine, I can look that up.
- A: Famous Supreme Court decision. But, it’s every legislative session with this conservative
- legislature we have now, it’s terrible in terms of doing away with it.
- Q: Let’s see. So, on a personal level, what do you believe that you’ve had the most,
- like, impact on? It can be an issue, it can be peoples’ lives, I don’t --
- A: I think supporting family planning, and the family agenda to provide accessible, affordable
- family planning has -- I’ve done it on individual levels, like working at Planned Parenthood,
- being a direct provider, and then for many, many years I worked in the state level, and
- at the state level then you’re having an opportunity to deal with populations of people,
- so I’ve supported the training of women’s healthcare nurse practitioners, you know,
- using state dollars to provide training programs to make care more accessible.
- I think I have, on a policy level, dealt with family planning issues in terms of supporting
- good family planning providers, to be sure that they get the funding they need with federal
- and state dollars, distributing them, evaluating them for quality, assisting them in improvement,
- quality improvement. And, I did that for years on a state level. So, I think sort of the
- provision of family planning, reproductive health for women, and I should always say
- women and men, because you -- many family planning clinics provide care for men, whether
- it’s STD testing, whether it is fertility issues, whether it is just basically health
- counseling.
- And, recently, over the years when I’ve worked as a volunteer at Planned Parenthood,
- I’ve instructed how many men that I would see in the clinic, and I’m not very well
- trained to take care of them, so it’s always a stretch. On a personal level, in volunteer
- and advocacy, what I spend my energy in, is advocating for maternal and child health issues,
- family planning. I have volunteered for several years in a sort of health relief missions
- overseas, particularly in Haiti, and there I’m promoting improved maternal healthcare
- by supporting Haitian midwives and training them and supporting them in different clinical
- situations.
- So, it’s -- my lifetime endeavor has probably been women and children, from all aspects
- of the age continuum, with family planning so a woman can prepare for her family, after
- she’s had her children she can also plan again and you know, it’s -- so family planning
- is an integral part of maternal and child health. And, until a woman has an opportunity
- to control her fertility, to have job training and childcare, those three things, I think
- it’s impossible to change or break the poverty cycle. One of those by themselves is not enough,
- you need all three. And, I’ve made my, sort of, life mission to try and promote that concept.
- Q: Can we go back to when you were working at the state level, when was that?
- A: Nineteen eighty-three to -- through the ’90s and then I went and worked at the Health
- Science Center out at Texas Tech, helping create a health management organization, HMO,
- but through the ’80s and ’90s was the time when I was at the state level.
- Q: All right. A: One time I was responsible for the state
- and federal program, the Medicaid program, for -- Medicaid is, there’s two parts, there’s
- one for aged, blind, and disabled and the other’s for women and children, and I was
- on the side for women and children, and was responsible for it. So, the program design
- and implementation on the Medicaid level, and that’s a federal and state funded -- in
- Texas we spend billions of dollars on maternal and child health. You know, prenatal care,
- labor and delivery, and then care for children. Q: Do you have any particular stories about,
- like, someone that you cared for and that stuck with you, or?
- A: Well, I have a lot of stories from Vietnam where they stand out, I have probably not
- any huge stories taking care of -- they all kind of blur together -- young girls that
- would be there wanting family planning, I have stories of mothers bringing their daughters
- in, insisting we give them family planning, even when the child’s not sexually active
- but the mother didn’t want the girl to get pregnant like she did, trying to educate the
- moms in the families as well as the young people. I think that in our delivery of family
- planning, because you take care of the whole woman, you’re doing lab tests, you’re
- testing for cancer, so there’s always tests that -- I mean, all these examples of women
- we’ve taken care of, or maybe you’ve diagnosed cervical cancer, or uterine cancer, or breast
- cancer, and if she hadn’t gone for family planning she never would have had that diagnosis,
- I think that those are probably the examples that stand out. And then, I have an awful
- lot of sort of examples of patients that I’ve taken care of, like in Haiti doing volunteer
- work, and just the desperation of their lives over there in terms of how important it is
- that they’re able to breastfeed, because there’s no really other nutrition, there’s
- no ability to buy formula, there’s no clean water, so supporting breastfeeding is so vitally
- important, and it actually is a natural family planning method, too. Women that breastfeed
- naturally kind of space their children about two years, which is, you see that in most
- developed nations, babies are two years apart, and you see the mom breastfeeding the brand
- new baby, and she’s off of breastfeeding the toddler, because she realizes that’s
- the only nutrition, perhaps, that the toddler’s going to get, also, so. So, lots of situations
- of dire need, I guess. Q: You had some stories from Vietnam; do you
- want to share those? A: Well, most of those are the tragedies of
- -- associated with the women and children that were cas-- became casualties, you know,
- putting two hospital beds together, Army beds, and taking care of, like, the momma and her
- five or six children, the amazing care and tenderness that the family members would have
- helping take care of the injured, we didn’t have resources to do good enough nursing so
- if it hadn’t been for the family members that would come into the hospital with you,
- that would have been really, really more tragic, you know? I remember a father having a little
- girl who’s jaw was wired shut, and he literally -- she wouldn’t eat any of the liquid concoctions
- that we would make, but her father would patiently just take one kernel of rice at a time, put
- it between her wired-together teeth, and that was really the only thing her -- nutrition
- she had for the whole entire time her jaw was wired. Just became the food was so, what
- we had, ice cream, you know, formula all of that was so foreign to them. The incredible
- strength and endurance of people in that terrible, war-torn comm-- you know, situation, was intense.
- We couldn’t pronounce their names, their names -- the Asian names are complicated and
- most Vietnamese people have three names, so if you got a whole ambulance or truck full
- of fresh casualties, there was no way you could do an interview to even attend their
- names, so we would assign, just assign names to people, so one whole level of fresh casualties
- might be named after flowers, or another whole might be named after cars, or another might
- be named after brands of beer, or steaks, or -- and I used to think, how cruel in a
- way it would be to kind of wake up in a foreign, in a hospital environment not knowing the
- language, not knowing what’s wrong with you, and having someone calling you by a name
- you’ve never heard of before, like Ford or Chevrolet, you know, not having any understanding
- of that end.
- I remember a mother who came from the highlands and her child died when he was in the hospital,
- and she mourned and cried outside of our hut for days until, finally, we’re able to get
- a translator to her who was able to say that she wanted to take the baby’s body home,
- because in their culture unless the baby’s wrapped into a -- in a family blanket, it’s
- soul would go away. So, there were so many issues associated with not understanding the
- culture, that I thought was wrong, I was regretful that my -- the country had sent me, the US
- had sent me to take care of people in a nation that I knew nothing of their culture, or their
- language, their religion, and I felt that that -- I was ill prepared that way. I could
- under-- I could do medical care, but I should have been so much kinder to [have?] understood
- their psychosocial needs, and you don’t if you don’t understand the culture. That
- was the biggest regret I had about that; years, caring for people and not understanding their
- language, or them.
- So, there’s one more piece about Vietnam. When I came back from Vietnam in the 19--
- ’69 and ’70, I became more involved in the anti-war movement, not because I hated
- my time in Vietnam, I honored it, but it was so very clear to me that there was not going
- to be a military victory in that war, it was only going to end because of a political decision.
- And, it wasn’t until 1975 that there was a political decision, and we ended the war;
- but the rest of my time in the Army, I was considered kind of a -- I was punished, actually,
- for speaking out against the war. And, the only thing I said was there’s not going
- to be a military victory, there will only be a political decision. Because, I was often
- asked to, you know, teach a history class or visit the Lion’s Club or the Rotary Club,
- and I showed pictures of the slides of the women and children I took care of and what
- it was like over there during that year. And, the deprivation we had trying to take care
- of civilians because we had no equipment to take care of them; I mean, it’s -- feeding
- a tiny baby that needed some kind of milk, and we’d have to use, like, a rubber glove
- and make a tiny hole in one of the fingers, and make that be like a nipple to squeeze
- the milk in the baby’s mouth, and not having the right supplies for them at all. It was
- clear that we were not prepared to be in that country, certainly not prepared to take care
- of the civilians, but we were not going to win that war. So, that was my major active
- activism in terms of protesting that. Q: How would you say that you were -- you
- said you were kind of punished for speaking out, how so?
- A: In the Army, well, I was confined to quarters, forbidden to do any more talking, even though
- I went as a -- in my time off and dressed in civilian -- I didn’t go in uniform or
- anything. It just -- you weren’t allowed to -- you just weren’t supposed to do that.
- And then here, and then coming to Texas and then protesting and being part of the anti-war
- movement, there was, you know, there were -- I was only aligned with people who thought
- like I did, so I was -- there was no pushback on that. (pause) You can turn this off for
- a second.