OGDEN — One hundred years after the first hospital opened its doors here, McKay-Dee Hospital Center is still growing in Ogden.
Annie Taylor Dee led the construction of the original hospital in 1910 in honor of her husband. Today, new structures continue to grow the hospital, including the guest home, which is named for her and had its grand opening Wednesday.
Bricks with the names of donors' loved ones etched into them mark the path to the front doors of the building. A grand room, complete with a fireplace and library, opens to guests as they walk in. Rooms line the halls with new linens and mini-fridges.
The new Annie Taylor Dee Guest Home, which feels like a mix between a home and a hospital, is a far cry from the string of old homes that families were staying in until now.
The older homes were like the scene of a "Big Brother" episode, one former resident said. New people would shuffle in and out of a cramped, shared space all the time.
Adam Howes and his wife, Julianne, stayed in the hospital guest home for nearly three and a half months while their son, Michael, was in the newborn intensive care unit at McKay-Dee. Born at 23 weeks, Michael stayed at the hospital for the next few months before his family could take him home to Logan.
The commute was unrealistic for the Howes, who ended up relying on the home as a way to spend time and check up on Michael as much as they could. Now Michael is 15 months old and was taken off oxygen just last week.
"We had to commute back and forth, and we didn't have the money to commute as much as we needed to," Adam Howes said. "Of course, we wanted to stay closer to Michael in case anything happened."
The guest home started from the Dee family's own hospital experience. Janice Dee and her late husband, Thomas Dee, got the idea for new guest homes after Thomas had a stroke and Janice stayed in the guest home to be close to him.
After her stay in the older homes, the couple decided to push for a newer facility for families that needed to be near the hospital.
"We were both very positive about this project," Janice Dee said. "It needed to be done."
Janice Dee said the new guest home was just something she and her husband were going to do. No second-guessing. With them starting off as major contributors to the new home, the project was wrapped up with donations from around the community.
The ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrated a project that started in 2001. The facility offers new amenities and comforts to families and patients as they spend time in and around the hospital. The new guest home contains 14 suites, with two queen-sized beds for each family, housing a total of 56 people at any given time.
Families who live 60 miles away from the hospital are automatically eligible to use the guest home. Those living inside that radius have to have family members who are in the intensive care unit and are terminal or have a baby in the newborn intensive care unit.
For one night in the guest home, families spend $30. For every night after the first, the price drops to $20, but the prices are still on a sliding scale so that families who need extra help can get it.
"We don't ever want to find out someone is sleeping in their car that has a loved one in critical care when they can stay here," said McKay-Dee Foundation executive director Cathleen Sparrow. "We're going to work it out so we never turn anyone away."
Guest homes have accommodated patients and families from surrounding states and even as far away as Alaska. While most families only stay for a few days, others have used the guest home as an impermanent home for two or three months.
The home away from home is meant to be part of the healing process, Sparrow said.
"It's part of the whole healing environment," she said. "If you have a patient in the ICU or terminal, allowing you to be close gives you peace of mind."
e-mail: gbarker@desnews.com