No Guarantees (Thank the Heavens)

Listen up.  You aren't guaranteed safety in rural America.  Get over it.

Keith Sivertson lays it out:

"--- is one of the last places you can find (where) you’re entitled to do yourself harm," he said, explaining that medical attention, especially emergency medical help can not reach victims here  in most rural areas --as quickly as it might in a large city. "If you’re counting on getting a second chance, forget it. You don’t get to choose how you die. You get a chance to choose how you live. Your life can change just that quickly," he said, snapping his fingers.....for example, if a person who is allergic to bees gets stung [at a location more than 45 minutes from a trauma center,] . and has a systemic reaction, he or she will die. Emergency services would not be able to get that person to a hospital in time.

Comments

[Amy]

It's interesting, because, rural or not, I don't think people give much thought to this: they expect that they'll get help when they need it. I always think about one of my kids choking. We're five minutes away from Washington Hospital and 3 minutes away from the local fire station. With the time it would take to dispatch paramedics, they'd never make it to our home in under five minutes. I found it amazing though, when I took a bad spill on a cross country course on the side of a hill in Moss Beach, the paramedics were there in what seemed like moments(due in part to cell phone technology).

[Chris Edwards]

So true. Whatever happened to the frontier spirit that pioneered this country. Fear rules the American psyche now. Fear of pain, fear of ambivalence, fear of death.

While I think that our collective "sensitivity training" as a society is a good thing, I wonder if our unquenchable thrist to rid the world of imperfection hasn't gotten a little out of control.

Your post and the first commetn got me to thinking about this.

It reminds me of a quote I enjoy:

All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.
- Blaise Pascal