Letters to the Editors

Welcome to Dodge, but watch your step

Editor: I would like to think that my home, a log cabin surrounded by oaks and unspoiled woodlands on a quiet street, is a safe haven. It is located in Ridge Manor Estates on the Withlacoochee River, an area resembling a mid-Florida enchanted forest with beautiful scenery and exotic wildlife. My neighbors are the best neighbors. However, there is trouble in paradise, and my neighbors and I feel threatened.

We are being overwhelmed with problems caused by others who do not even live here. They are making our lives just plain hell. I think this area of eastern Hernando County should be renamed or re-platted as "Dodge City" for the following reasons:

1. Having to dodge around the potholes in our unpaved, limerock roads.

2. Dodging around the families of yahoos who think nothing of loading up all of their ATVs and dirt bikes in pickups and racing around on our public rights of way with the dust flying and no fear of regular car traffic -- and no helmets used at all, even on their children. (Maybe if they got a ticket or two, they would see the sense that riding legally in the Croom Forest is worth the price of admission.)

3. Dodging the trash: mostly beer bottles, fast-food wrappings and whatever else is dumped out here during "cruising and boozing" weekends.

4. Having to hear the neighborhood "shootist," the retired cop who bought a piece of property out here so he could play war with his buddies by shooting all kinds of weapons, including AK-47s, all day long and into the night at least once a week and on holidays. Also, since there are no improvements on this piece of property, where do they use the bathroom?

5. Going to Hernando County Commission meetings to let them know that flooding after a few inches of rain is due to mismanagement of the Southwest Florida Water Management District, which was initially established in 1940 to deal with flood control. What a concept!

6. Trying to let other people in our county government know that just raising a road to keep the floodwater from flowing over it will impact the people who live on the river even more. Mitigation funds were given to this county by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in 1998 and nothing was done in this area to alleviate the problem. However, the county budget somehow found it had a big surplus. Imagine that!

Dodging our issues is the only area in which Emergency Management, Swiftmud and our county commissioners seem to be very adept. We read in the paper every day that they cannot manage themselves, so why do we expect that just because we pay our taxes that they will be there to assist us? Yet, they don't turn down our tax revenue; we are just informed that "demographics" is the bottom line.

In other words, they don't care to extend the services that are available to the people in heavily populated areas, like Spring Hill. Personally, I would not live in Spring Hill if you paid me.

Yes, Dodge City does seem to have a nice ring to it.

In addition, since all this "wasteland" is contiguous to Sumter County and all have Webster mailing addresses, why can't we just secede from Hernando County and see if we could be annexed into Sumter County? At the very least, we would have no impact fees and improved roads. Sumter County probably would appreciate our tax dollars and not blow off our concerns (yes, our county commissioner for this area will not return any of our phone calls).

As a bonus, the inmates at Sumter Correctional Institute can clean up the trash littering our roadways.
-- S. Butler, Webster

Spring Hill needs more doctors

Editor: I believe it is time we took a good look at the level of medical care the average senior citizen receives in Spring Hill. We have what probably are some of the finest doctors we could desire. The problem is getting an appointment to see them when we are ill and require their expertise.

It is not unusual to wait two weeks to see a general practitioner, or a month for a specialist. It seems to not matter to the person who oversees the appointment book how urgent the need for treatment may be, or how much pain the patient may be suffering. Each person's name is written on the next line and that settles that. As evidenced by conversations with my peers, the older one becomes, the more acute this situation becomes. In some cases this practice is self-solving, as the patient expires before the waiting period does.

This is akin to hearing "See me in six months and we'll see how you are" at the end of a visit. I also have determined that the level of credibility accorded to a patient's description of an ailment is inversely proportional to his or her age. Most senior citizens' complaints are arbitrarily diagnosed as being the result of living alone, having too much time on one's hands, just being old or "It's just in your head."

It seems as if the custom now is to advise the patient, who cannot wait for the appointment date, to go to the emergency room of a local hospital. Upon arrival at the ER, if it is determined that a life-threatening situation does not exist, he or she is told to see his or her primary physician. Thus, the cycle is complete and the only recourse is to begin marking off the days on the calendar until an appointment can be obtained.

I see no fault with the policy of the emergency room, as it is not a clinic, after all, nor a dumping ground for patients who cannot gain access to a doctor's waiting room.

An area in which Spring Hill is deficient is mental health care. There is a hospital for treatment of addictions, but no facility for the treatment of the lesser forms of mental illness, such as depression, etc. The best the patient can hope for are sessions with a psychologist and a few minutes with a psychiatrist who prescribes the latest psychotropic drug on a one-size-fits-all basis. My daughter, who is a psychiatric registered nurse, chose to live and work in Sarasota rather than in Spring Hill for that reason.

My comments are not meant to be a criticism of those who are members of the Spring Hill medical community. Rather they are intended to point out that our medical services have not kept pace with our population growth. There are simply too many people for the number of doctors we have. It is interesting to note that many have their main practices to the south of us, e.g., Clearwater, and come to Spring Hill a half-day two or three times a week. The limitations imposed by Medicare do not allow doctors to employ needed diagnostic procedures and treatments in many cases. In addition, the amount of reimbursement for services rendered is not sufficient to attract physicians of a caliber, in some cases, who can be found in other more cosmopolitan areas of Florida.

I believe that as Spring Hill grows, the level of medical care will rise. All I ask in the meantime is that senior citizens like myself be accorded the courtesy of credibility equal to that of younger patients, and not be treated as if we have entered a state of senility. We deserve to be listened to and believed when we have a medical problem, and not be shunted to the psychiatrist's couch and prescribed Prozac.
-- Edgar H. Althouse, Spring Hill

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