As we age, we begin thinking of moving off the Hill. It becomes difficult to navigate and maintain a mountain lifestyle for many.
Those ubiquitous stairs and forever rake-requiring pine needles and leaves begin to feel burdensome.
The snow and ice become trickier to maneuver both on foot and by auto.
We mostly move to the flatlands to get closer to better health care — specialists, hospitals and nursing care. EMTS, paramedics and even nurse practioners and primary care physicians can only do so much.
Maybe someday — not in my lifetime — Idyllwild, a sky island, as John Laundré calls it, will have a hospital like Saint Catalina, an ocean island.
And retirement facilities with various stages of nursing care may become available to people who don’t want to leave their Idyllwild paradise.
That would be a great thing.
Catalina boasts 4,000 residents and more than a million tourists a year. The Catalina Island Medical Center’s services include a hospital, recuperative care, a nursing facility, a laboratory, a CT scanner and a radiology department, as well as routine medical care.
We would have a close place for Idyllwild Fire and AMR to transport our sick and injured. It would not be able to treat everyone, of course, and like now, some must be airlifted to specialty hospitals.
As we’ve noted before in this paper, most of the emergency calls in this area are not fire but medical related. So think of how much more secure residents would feel living here in their senior years.
Maybe once we get the Idyllwild Community Center built we can put that in our noggins to think about.
Becky Clark, Editor
