The Similkameen News Leader
Editorial
October 2, 2007
DID OUR M*A*S*H UNIT BUG OUT?
Rumours flying around and getting called into our office this past week involve, among other things, the Princeton Part-Time Hospital.
It appears that someone with too much time on their hands has put pen to paper and figured out the math and came up with a suggestion that since new doctors aren't flocking to the area the hospital will likely scale down further to a point where the next time you call 9-1-1 for an emergency other than a police or fire matter, you may have to explain where Princeton is.
We never thought we'd see the day where an emergency in Coalmont would generate an ambulance response from Keremeos and transportation to the nearest hospital, which would probably be Merritt.
Or at least that could be the case if the rumour mill was even slightly correct.
We contacted Interior Health to find out more, and are still waiting for them to get to our file. Maybe we should have indicated it was sort of an emergency.
We obviously didn't ask our question clearly enough.
"Are you shutting down our hospital?"
We're not sure what the snag is in the phrasing, so we assume our query is in a pile somewhere. Call it a waiting list, if you'd like.
Possibly some young intern who hasn't heard of Princeton will stumble across it a give it a quick diagnosis, scribble out a prescription and suggest we stay away from computer screens and telephones for an extended period of time.
Or at least until the drugs wear off and we come out of that fog only to realize we still don't know the answer to a question we can't remember because of that annoying siren in our head.
It only took us Mac users up to this week to realize Word Documents with O.doc' at the end of them aren't items written by doctors. But we were so hopeful.
And you know, we still have a choice.
We could choose to roll over and play dead as our local M*A*S*H unit gets dismantled to the point that PGH stands for Princeton Gets Hosed (again) or we stand up take a stand for what's best for our community.
Providing of course, it's not just a rumour.
