Jasper County, Texas, is located in Deep East Texas, in the Piney Woods Region of the Lone Star State. With a population of just over 30,000, the region is known as a peaceful escape from busy life, whether one enjoys time on the water at the Sam Rayburn Reservoir or a weekend hunting trip destination. The area is located about 130 miles northeast of Houston and 170 miles away from Baton Rouge, Louisiana…a great distance from what many would call a “major” city.

But it’s been home for Kamron Slaydon since day one. At the beginning of 2019, while home on leave from the service as a Marine, Kamron found himself needing emergency care for a freak accident

“When I reached over, my elbow slipped off my knee, and that’s when the accident happened. That’s when the gun went off. Then I fell on the floor. I fell face-first, actually, then bounced over to my back. And I was kind of laying there, and everything went into slow motion,”

“At first, it was like, wow, I can’t believe this happened. And my second thought, well, as far out where I live, I know the medics aren’t going to make it in time. So in a weird way, I was kind of just waiting to die,”

But, Kamron didn’t succumb to his injuries. His life was saved thanks to CHRISTUS Southeast Texas Health System.

Wayne Moore is the President of CHRISTUS Southeast Texas Jasper Memorial Hospital. He says he sees daily instances that prove the necessity of having access to emergency care in rural areas.

“It’s the perfect place to get stabilized if you need higher levels of care. We have to be perfect in every way in getting that stoke victim or that person that’s having an active heart attack, getting them in our door and stabilizing them and then getting them to where they need to go to get them the right care,” explained Moore. “Because you take somebody who’s having a heart attack that in their car drives 50 miles, a lot of things can happen. If they come here, we stabilize them, get them under medical care, and then fly them out. Even if we have to go by ground, at least they are under medical care when they’re doing that. So that’s a big plus for a facility like this.”

Mary Goodwin is the Director of Nursing at CHRISTUS Southeast Texas Jasper.

“We are here to decrease those disparities to help the community access care and help them with the means to get the care they need to be healthy,” Goodwin said. “It’s really about improving the health of our community. And, although we do see plenty in our ER we want others to know we also can help with convenience to a primary care physician.”

Wayne Moore pictured Left and Mary Goodwin pictured Right say there are number of ways CHRISTUS offers invaluable services to smaller communities including maintaining the health of the community.

Learn more about rural health care from Jasper and Orange, Texas, to Coushatta near Shreveport, Louisiana, by listening to the latest CHRISTUS Calling Podcast In Your Backyard. This newest episode showcases how various CHRISTUS health care providers are meeting the health care needs of the smaller communities they serve and how people like Kamron have come to depend on their care for life-and-death situations as well as routine care that’s both convenient, accessible and affordable.

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