I had no idea I’d ever need the services of Vashon’s health center at Sunrise Ridge.

Until the day I did.

That experience is one reason I’m backing the Save Our Clinic campaign to raise money to support Neighborcare, the Seattle health care system that has committed to re-opening the clinic that CHI Franciscan shut down last month.

Vashon needs this clinic. Trust me, I know.

I paid my first, unscheduled visit to the health center in fall 2013. We’d moved to the island from Seattle a few months earlier, but I’d decided to stick with my primary care doc at Group Health’s Northgate clinic.

I liked her. Plus I’d always been pretty healthy. Now that I was retired and had more time, I figured a trip to the north-end ferry to see her a couple times a year would be no big deal.

Then one morning I woke up with what I thought at first was a really bad case of indigestion. The usual home remedies didn’t work. My symptoms got worse, and I developed this excruciating pain in my lower back.

So I asked my wife, Carla, to drive me to that clinic whose sign I’d seen driving down Vashon Highway.

I stumbled into the health center and assumed the fetal position on the lobby floor. Carla dealt with the paperwork at the front desk.

Soon I was in an examining room. Dr. Jeffrey HansPetersen poked, prodded and provided the diagnosis: kidney stones.

My memory of exactly what happened that morning is hazy, largely because of the painkillers I was offered and gladly accepted. I was given a prescription for more and told to go home, rest, drink lots of water and wait for the stones to pass. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long. I felt better almost immediately.

If there had been no clinic to go to that morning, I would have had two choices. Carla could have driven me to a Group Health urgent care clinic in Seattle. With ferries and traffic, I would have been forced to endure what was perhaps the worst pain I’ve ever experienced for several more hours.

Or I could have called 911. Vashon’s paramedics and EMTs may well have taken me to the mainland as well — depriving the island of half its emergency medical response resources for several hours, and conceivably delaying or denying care to someone in much worse shape than me. My condition was painful, but it wasn’t life-threatening.

Call 911, or sit in a ferry line: I don’t want to ever face that choice. Neither do you.

So what can you do? Donate what you can to the Save our Clinic campaign at neighborcare.org. Do it for yourself, as a hedge against an early-morning kidney stone attack or something of its ilk. Or do it for your island neighbors for whom a $23 ferry ride and a half day off-island to access the most routine medical care may present a real financial hardship.

One more thing: If you’re one of the thousands of islanders who gets primary care off-island, and your mainland M.D. isn’t your best friend, you might consider switching to a doctor at Sunrise Ridge. That’s what I did. Now I see Dr. HansPetersen, the angel of mercy on that miserable morning three years ago (my old doc left Group Health).

Neighborcare operates on a different business model than CHI Franciscan, which said it was losing too much money operating the clinic. Neighborcare gets more money from the government for services to Medicare and Medicaid patients.

Trouble is, the number of patients at Sunrise Ridge dwindled on Franciscan’s watch. Even with higher Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, Neighborcare projects the clinic still would be operating in the red without more support from the island.

The Save Our Clinic fundraising campaign that’s now underway aims to fill that gap for the next two years. But, long-term, the best way to eliminate the shortfall is to attract more patients and their health insurance dollars to Sunrise Ridge.

Then the clinic would be truly sustainable. Vashon will be better — and healthier — for it. Our philanthropic dollars could go to other worthy causes.

So consider giving Neighborcare a try. It’s taking a chance on Vashon. Giving it a chance in return makes sense to me.

— Eric Pryne is a retired newspaper journalist. He hosts “Island Crossroads,” a Vashon-centric public affairs/

interview show, on Voice of Vashon.