Healthcare in Point Roberts

I went to the Point Roberts Public Hospital District monthly meeting last night to see what they were up to.  This is the group that oversees the Aydon Wellness Clinic.  This has been an important transition period for the clinic since Ed and Virginia, who have been the backbone of the clinic staff since it began, retired a few months ago.  Alexandra Hunt has replaced Virginia as the main clinician and she was at the meeting to report on clinic work and needs.  Sounds like she's getting to be at home there, which is good for all of us who need her to be at home there.

Also a visit to the meeting from Alan Finston, who runs the physical therapy services (including massage) that are available at the clinic on Wednesdays and Fridays.  Plus there was discussion of the need for a community survey to assess how the clinic was doing from the public's perspective.  Getting the public to respond to surveys in P.R. is a real challenge.  So, put it in your head now to remember to respond when it comes to you.  It's important to have public input and you don't want to depend on somebody else to be 'the public' on your behalf.

The big news, for me, was that the clinic will be looking at its 10th anniversary this summer.  I could hardly believe that it had been with us that long.  Back when we first moved to Point Roberts, it was hard to explain to our away friends and relatives that we really had no medical services available here short of the fire department transfer to some far away hospital.  And now we have had this fine clinic for ten whole years and, though it has doubtless produced many challenges for the Commissioners and the staff, it has pretty much appeared to us outsiders as a smoothly elegant operation.  Our own personal experience with the clinic here at chez ross-park has been that they provide stellar service as a first-line provider.  Also, we think we're very lucky to have it and all the 'thems' that make it work.

Hearing of this anniversary at the meeting, reminded me also that we should occasionally remember all the work that it took to bring the clinic into existence: both organizing and fundraising and negotiating all the necessary twists and turns of bringing something as complex as a clinic where there was before NO clinic into existence.  That's all in the past, of course: the money's all raised AND spent, the negotiations are long since concluded, so it's easy to lose track of how much work it was.

But I find that remembering that work reminds me of how much public spirit there is here in the strange little town that borders make difficult to find* and how much willingness there is for people to make something new.  Such thoughts are good to have on a grey day.  I no longer remember who were the people who put the clinic together in the first place.  But I expect we'll hear about them this summer when that 10th anniversary rolls around and we can thank them then.
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*A reader wrote me recently about having applied to a new U.S.-based home insurance carrier for insurance on his P.R. vacation home.  After some time of application and payment, the insurer informed him that the company was "cancelling my policy because their inspector could not find my home and I was located on a “remote Island” ."  That's what it feels like to all of us sometimes:  they just can't find our home because we are on a remote island.