The Rock Wall

Jana Witt put in a lot of hard work helping do the major article this week on Cedar County Memorial Hospital, but I thought something was lacking – something to really spark your interest and make you want to read the article.

As Kimball and I were about to leave for a very late lunch Monday, something Mary True said suddenly hit a note with me – more like a gong. For several weeks, it seemed like she and Brad had to make an all day trip to Joplin for another test or procedure. Just recently a doctor told Brad something they couldn’t do at the Joplin hospital that day could be done in Cedar County Memorial. And a lot more of them could have been.

I guess you can’t blame the doctors and nurses for wanting to help their employer.

So ask questions – lots of them. It could save you a lot of time…and money in travel.

When I interviewed Jana, I asked what services Cedar County Memorial provides and she gave me a list. I won’t pretend to understand or remember most of the list, but save it. If some doctor wants you to go out of town for a medical procedure, look at the list or just ask if it could be done at Cedar County Memorial. The training and equipment are the same. The miles aren’t.

Yes, I’m excited to uncover the secret. I think it will greatly cut down on the inconvenience for many of you and help us keep our hospital. I know that when I had to go back in the hospital for a few days for pneumonia, it was a lot easier  (and cheaper) for Kimball to drive to the hospital here rather than make an all day trip to Springfield.

And I’ll tell you another advantage that might not mean much to you, but it did to me. In the Springfield hospitals I constantly had to give the staff my name and my Social Security number. I’m talking about several times a day, at every shift change. Here it was, “Hi, Kenny. How ‘ya doin’?” The staff knew me, my wife, my kids. And I knew them.

– It was probably a coin toss that cost the Chiefs a trip to the Super Bowl. I mean, if the Chiefs had gotten the ball first the outcome might have been different.

It was a totally blown call by an official that cost the Saints their game. Davis saw on Facebook that the NFL rulebook says the Commissioner can set aside a win “if the Commissioner deems an ‘act’ so extraordinarily unfair or outside the accepted tactics encountered in professional football that such action has a major effect on the result of the game” then he can have the two teams resume play at that point or play the entire game over. Don’t hold your breath but we’ll see.             KL