Community Hospital = Quality of Life

I joined many of my fellow Licking Countians in a "Year in Review" presentation at Licking Memorial Hospital today.  Again, LMH has shown us, as a community, how fortunate we are to have such a fine institution in our own backyard.

The fact that our community hospital remains a community hospital that is locally-controlled and not answering to a corporate office in Timbuktu is, alone, a measure of how fortunate we are in Licking County.

It's more than that, though.

Licking Memorial's capabilities, as the Year in Review ably showed, are head and shoulders above their peers and on par with hospitals around the nation widely thought of as being at the top of their game.

I'm reminded of my own family. 

My dad was in the throngs of bone marrow cancer and wanted to travel to see his grand kids.  In order to travel, though, he had to know he was traveling to a place where a hospital was nearby with the unique capabilities he needed.

Most suburban communities like ours can't promise to have the capabilities the terminally ill need.  His New York doctors were more than skeptical he could find those capabilities in a non-urban area.

Licking Memorial did.

So, a month before he died, my Dad was able to travel to Licking County from Albany, NY and see his grand kids one last time. 


My youngest kids with their Grandpa in August 2004.

No doubt.  That contributed to the quality of his last days, the quality of life for my kids, and to my quality of life as well.

Thanks, people of Licking Memorial, for all you do.  I'm grateful.