Patients from away

Every year I get at least half a dozen new patients who are “from away”, as we say in Maine. Obviously, I’m “from away” myself. I chose to come here after once driving up from Massachusetts, where I had been an exchange student, and seeing the untouched vastness and the slower pace of life in rural Maine.

Until a few years ago, these new patients were all people who had fallen in love with Maine by vacationing here, or they had come here because of job opportunities.

Lately, I have puzzled over why some of my new patients have chosen to move here; many of them have serious health problems and disabilities, they have never visited Maine before (or seen a Maine winter) and they don’t know a soul here.

A few have hinted about the lower cost of living, and I didn’t really think very hard about that until I saw an article in the Wall Street Journal about a baby boomer in California who moved to an Iowa town of 700 just to be able to survive on the resources she had left to live out her life on.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/with-15-left-in-the-bank-a-baby-boomer-makes-peace-with-less-1487259894