To the Editor,

What part of no emergency care do people not understand?

True, a paramedic level ambulance will be a great help for many health problems, but even those fine professionals will be unable to truly handle snakebites, poisonings, serious blood loss, heart attacks and strokes, just to name a few emergencies. Those conditions need to be treated promptly in a hospital with an emergency room, and in our case in Hyde County, that is now 30, 50 or even 60 miles away.

After my mother had put my father’s pills into her mouth, thinking they were hers, I called the urgent care to see what could have been done had she swallowed his highly potent heart and blood pressure medications. Oh no, they said, they couldn’t have helped her had she swallowed the pills. That is the job of an emergency room. There’s a good possibility she wouldn’t have made it that far without suffering permanent damage, or even death.

When a gentleman with prostate problems was recently unable to void for twelve hours and a normal catheter wouldn’t work, the urgent care could offer no assistance (other than good advice).

The new multispecialty clinic being built in Belhaven will be lovely and brand new, but it will not provide emergency care, or any better care than eastern Beaufort County and Hyde County already have now.

As far as Pungo Hospital losing money, I was told by a pillar of the Belhaven community in the position to know that in the latter days of the hospital, while we still had patients but were working with less staff, that the hospital was making a profit.

Much money could have been saved in the first place by more careful use of resources, and a great deal of revenue could have been generated to aid the situation, had those in the position to do so have been even slightly interested in keeping the hospital open.

By the way, Pungo Hospital stayed high and dry in the recent flooding.

We all want to be on the winning side in any situation and in a “David and Goliath” scenario it is tempting to side with the pagan giant. But might is not right.

There are fine, well-meaning people on both sides of the equation.

But think for yourself!

Don’t just “Let it alone and it will get okay” because it won’t.

And for those who complain that they are tired of hearing about Belhaven and its hospital: Would you feel differently if there was no emergency care readily available to your family, and your grandchild might perish from eating mouse poison, your grandma could have a stroke that without prompt treatment leaves her paralyzed for her last 15 years, your son could die from an under-treated heart attack, your daughter-in-law could bleed to death from injuries sustained in a minor car accident, or any other of a dozen unnecessary scenarios?

Truly, it is a matter of life or death!

 

Elizabeth Mullet

Hyde County