A recent article from one of the big daily newspapers cautions us that the one present you don’t want to pass along to your kinfolks this Christmas is any of the various strains of respiratory illness going around—Covid-19, RSV, and the flu. They’re quite literally the gifts that keep on giving. And the one place you don’t want to spend your holiday vacation is in a hospital, it claims. Medical facilities are overcrowded with aforesaid maladies and also pushed to the limit with procedures scheduled before the end of the insurance year.
But if you absolutely must undergo surgery at year’s end—as our local newspaper publisher, Kay Ellington, has this week— you are very, very fortunate to be surrounded by dedicated doctors, nurses, aides, and other people who provide our health care 52 weeks a year, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.
In our small Texas town we count among our blessings the Spur Rural Health Clinic and its parent hospital, Stonewall Memorial Hospital, as well as our local Dana’s Pharmacy. We’re thankful for Cogdell Hospital, which delivers babies as close to us as Snyder.
We’re grateful, in the Caprock Courier readership area, for another Cogdell Clinic, in Briscoe County, and the Wilson Family Pharmacy branch that serves it, and the rural health clinics in Paducah, Turkey, and Motley County.
In Floyd County, we admire the commitment to community service of the Lockney Memorial Hospital District and its W. J. Mangold Memorial Hospital and clinics. Payne Pharmacy in Floydada and Wilson Family Pharmacy in Lockney have ensured that prescriptions and vaccinations are readily available close to home—and have reminded residents of Medicare enrollment deadlines each December.
We appreciate the dentists and optometrists and chiropractors and therapists who have made these small communities their base of operations, too. Your commitment to rural health care allows us to live and work here with confidence that we’re taken care of.
And then, when we do have to visit those specialists in the big cities, and spend time in the major hospitals or urgent care facilities, we know we can count on good advice and follow-up when it’s time to come home.
When we return to Spur from Lubbock this Christmas, it’ll be with a renewed awareness of how much we need every one of you. Diagnostic technicians, clerks, phlebotomists, physical therapists, anesthesiologists, aides, surgeons—thanks for all you do, around the clock.
Take time to take care of yourselves as thoroughly as you’ve taken care of us.
And please, for all our sakes, stay well this winter— and find a moment for some well-deserved rest.
- Log in or Subscribe to post comments.
