“This is reality”

Editor:

* Your husband is complaining of chest pain. He’s having a heart attack. The closest hospital is 30-40 minutes away. The ambulance is out of the county, and the closest one is 20 minutes away. What do you do? Wait for the ambulance? Drive him to the closest hospital yourself? Either way, every passing minute causes more damage to his heart. “Time is muscle.”

* Your grandma is in the local nursing facility. For whatever reason, she codes. She doesn’t have a pulse. No blood pressure. CPR is started and the ambulance is called. They get a pulse back. They take her to the closest hospital which is 30-40 minutes away. She’s in critical condition. She codes again once they get her to the emergency room. In the meantime, you’re still driving to get there. She dies in the ER. Alone. She dies without her family there because they were still driving.

*The school calls you and tells you your child fell at recess and broke his/her arm. He/she needs medical attention- xrays, a dr, and a splint. You rush to the school and then rush to the closest hospital 30-40 minutes away. If it’s a simple fracture, ok… not a huge deal. Your child will just be in a lot of discomfort during the drive. But what if the fracture is pretty severe?  So severe that there is no longer a pulse in that arm. The fracture has disrupted the blood supply. Your child’s arm may not survive 30-40 minutes with poor to no blood flow. I’ll give you a hint what happens if that might be the case… \uD83D\uDD2A.

* Your wife is in labor. Her contractions are every 1-2 minutes apart. The ambulance is out of the county (again). The closest one available is 20 minutes away. You’re freaking out and don’t want any part in delivering this baby, but you know there’s absolutely no way you’ll ever make it to the hospital where her OB dr is. What do you do? Risk it? Deliver the baby yourself? What if something happens and the baby isn’t breathing when it’s born. What if your wife won’t stop bleeding? Without the proper medical care, you just might lose both of them.

* It’s storming outside and your dad calls. Your mom is having symptoms of a stroke. She needs a medication to bust the clot. The ambulance doesn’t carry it. The helicopter doesn’t carry it, but even if they did, they don’t fly in storms. If your mom doesn’t get medical attention ASAP, she could die or suffer serious neurological injury. The only thing that could save her brain or her life is the clot busting medication that’s only available at the hospital. The closest hospital is 30-40 minutes away. Every passing minute is life threatening at this point.

* Your elderly relative fell last week and broke his/her hip. They had it repaired, but now they need physical therapy to learn how to use their new joint and to get their strength back up. Instead of being close to home to do their therapy and rehab, they have to go somewhere else that just so happens to be an hour away from home and their family. It’s strangers taking care of your loved one. It’s a lot of driving to visit them. It’s all an added stress.

* You had a heart attack 2 weeks ago. You had bypass surgery and now need to do cardiac rehab to strengthen your heart. Sure, you could just walk up and down your road or wherever. Hopefully the weather is nice.  What happens if you start having chest pain again? Would you rather do rehab alone, or would you rather do your cardiac rehab under the watchful eye of a registered nurse? In case something would happen during your rehab, he/she is there to assess the situation and provide life saving care should something terrible happen.

* You just had a baby 2-3 months ago. He/she needs their immunizations, but the closest health department is 20 minutes away and you don’t have enough gas to get there. You’re a single parent, and you’ve been off work after the birth of your baby. What do you do? Not vaccinate because driving 20 minutes to get it done is an inconvenience? Do you try to bum some money off a friend?

* Your child gets hurt during a school event or a sporting event in Eldo. They need medical attention for whatever reason. Maybe they broke a bone. Maybe they got knocked out. Maybe they’re in severe pain and feeling absolutely miserable. I hope they can tough out the drive to the hospital that is 30-40 minutes away.

* You have some sort of medical problem that requires you to get daily or weekly infusions of medication. Maybe you have Crohn’s Disease. Maybe you have rheumatoid arthritis. The medications have to be infused at a hospital. The closest one is 30-40 minutes away. Do you make the drive every day/week/whatever the regimen may be? Or is the drive an inconvenience to you so you decide to just deal with the pain and discomfort on a daily basis?

The point of this post. This is reality. This is reality if we lose our local hospital- Cedar County Memorial Hospital. This facility has the capabilities to provide care to every single patient and situation mentioned above. They have life saving cardiac and stroke medications. They can realign your child’s broken bone to get the blood flow back and save your child’s extremity. The medical staff are trained in what to do for precipitous deliveries. They are trained to care for your wife and newborn baby, even if something bad does happen during delivery. They provide physical therapy services and cardiac rehab. These services are close to home and allows your loved one to be near family. This is a small town, so chances are your loved one will be familiar with the medical staff at CCMH. Hopefully this will help ease their mind and take a little bit of stress away. If we lose CCMH, chances are good that we will also lose our county health department. As an experienced nurse, I am here to tell you- losing the hospital could become a matter of life or death when it comes to medical emergencies. Eldo has 1 ambulance. Stockton has 1 ambulance. Only 1 of them can be out of the county at a time. That means the chances of having to wait 20 minutes or longer for the closest ambulance are pretty good. By the time an ambulance gets to you, you could already have been in the emergency room at CCMH and have been seen by a doctor. Helicopters don’t fly in rain/snow storms. They don’t fly in fog, and they don’t fly when the clouds are too low. CCMH saves lives. Our community needs this hospital. The increase the hospital tax levy might cause me is nothing compared to the price of mine and my family members’ lives. I encourage everyone to get out and vote YES on Tuesday, Aug. 6.

Korissa Perrodion RN, CEN, CFRN