My latest Substack essay. This one is not about big gardening or producing local food but about some health issues I've dealt with over the past year and the willingness to challenge or at least question "authority". That's what I learned about the "scientific method", debate with experts is a good thing. If you're just a head nodder at the doctor's office, then this essay probably isn't for you. My brother whines that I tend to write long but sometimes stories take a good amount of words to be told.

https://sodakfred.substack.com/p/trying-not-to-be-captured-by-the

I'll go back and read your essay, but I've always said "Don't question Authority...INTERROGATE it!"

Just read it, and yeah, I feel this heavy. Blind trust in authority, especially in health, is wild. Been down that road and paid for it. We’re way past the era of just nodding at the white coat. Gotta advocate for yourself or get steamrolled.

Yes, I agree with you. I hope your "payment" wasn't a game changer for your life. Wisdom usually needs experiences to achieve, if people are willing to learn from them. .

Having had End Stage Kidney Failure for the past eight years now Ihave a lot less patience with BS and have no problems questioning the dooctors or nurses. Far too much nonsense just to appease papeer pushers

MTraps, I'm sorry to hear about your situation. I hope you have more good days than bad over your time facing it. Blessings to you and your family

good read

my youngest took CNA training their senior year in HS , ultimately decided while doing their clinicals . it was not for them

I said , ok , but think about how much you learned about the medical system , how it works , how it really works and how to advocate for yourself in this medical system.

Drs have been pushed to such short appointments and so many of them with no time between , that they are looking for the stuff that they can easily prescribe something for and OTDYG out the door you go much like the quality control of today OTDIG out the door it goes , a complaint driven QA system let the customer do your QA for you and send them a new one any time they got a bad one.
in health care it is make them another appointment weeks or months out if they complain and maybe they will get better, worse or die in the mean time.

you have to be your own medical advocate and call them out and tell them no this is not working.

Rural medicine is not good , it gets very little attention long waits , send you long distances to get anything but the absolute basics done. Very Urban ERs are insane also a care issue.
not sure where you fall in rural but a 50 mile drive can make a huge difference.

example my wife's co-workers wife started being seen for what was diagnosed as stage 4 lung cancer Dec 2 2024 , they got a diagnosis in late March 2025 the next appointment was always 3-4 weeks away.
looking back the cancer was there in imaging years ago it fortunately is a slow growing cancer and was not what they were looking for at the time.
they gave her 5 years to live who knows how accurate that is she is really to weak to work but won't pass for 5 years by their estimation so that is a quality of life issue.

I took my wife to the ER Dec 30 2025 , in one regard about our particular ER was that we were the only ones there that morning at 03:00 her first pain had started about 21:00 on the 29th.
so we got the attention of both the ER docs that morning 46 year old woman presenting with sever abdominal pain.
a few minutes on the EKG to rule out heart attack and then they broke out the portable ultrasound , they were then looking at the gallbladder for gal stones and found the lesion on the liver.
of course they want to dance around it and say more tests , but thankfully the one ER doc said the C word by 06:00, it would need a biopsy to be conclusive or as the other doc put it imaging is not a cancer diagnosis alone but yeah.

We knew right away we needed a referral out of our county's health care and get up to see specialists in Madison. The young doctor at the hospital agreed they have very few resources for oncology and would have to refer most of it to their sister hospital in Madison , as soon as we cross the county line we have to use a different health system and in this case that meant we could get referred to UW Wisconsin Carbone cancer center who are the best option in WI. So the young doc did just that and referred us to Carbone.

unlike her co-workers wife who had said I will take every cancelation appointment and still had to wait 3-4 weeks for every one , we took every cancelation and it was days not weeks between appointments by 1/9/2025 we had a diagnosis , it wasn't good but at least we had one.

Stage 4 metastatic bile duct cancer. it was in the liver , just last week we learned it was also in the lungs but so small at that point that they were questioning if it was fuzzy imaging.
by 1/16/2025 she was in chemo , hit it hard and tried to buy all the time we could .

new scans 4/22/2025 showed the chemo didn't even slow it down everything grew by about 3x in the months since starting chemo.
chemo is over now for her , the outlook is the liver will probably fail completely about August. That doesn't leave much time to get the rest of a life in.

advocate for yourself , learn how to best advocate for yourself, if you have kids who can take a CNA program in school and have the district pay for it , do it , it will give them knowledge that costs others a fortune and a chunk of their life or their family members life.

if you told me in the 5-6th grade when we were learning it how many times I would be explaining simple scientific theory , what is a flawed test in my adult life , I would have never believed it. the concept is lost on so so many. people who are very successful and have titles in major health care institutions nation wide. My work is health care adjacent , I do technical work for support system to health care infrastructure , let me tell you in the hospitals that seem to have a new owner every few years the entire infrastructure is diminished by the policies that also effect patient care.

if a private equity firm owns your health care provider , you want to try and find another if at all possible. they are pinching every nickel.
that isn't to say a not-for-profit isn't squeezing those nickels hard and turning insane profits , they are or some of them are.

just learn all you can and advocate for yourself is all you can do.

a stat I heard this morning is 1 in 10 people will in their life time have a rare disease or disorder. 10% in a system focused on the other 90 is a lot of people still.

Geriatric care is an area that is suffering as well driven by medicaid. Rehab and out the door or minimum standard medicaid. The missus has done it her whole life and hates what it has become.

Unless you're independently wealthy and can pay cash to stay in your home you're screwed.

yes or if you have the family to take you into their home or live in yours and really tend to your needs.
helps if they are at least minimally trained in care.

I have one grandmother left , unfortunately there is not much of her mind left. for 91 her body is actually in good shape.
if it wasn't for my mom and aunt she wouldn't still be here.

Been trying to figure out issues with my daughter since she was five weeks. She's 16 years now. Mom's been going through everything reading and mom figured out she was misdiagnosed all those years ago and were just figuring it out. To the point where some of the medicine she was getting she was actually allergic too but they didn't know b/c of the misdiagnoses. Bad deal all around. She was at prom this weekend and is doing well all considered what's going on with her. Good luck to you. I hope you figure your things out too.

GREENCOUNTY PETE and OhioBoy, thank you for sharing your situations. I pray for miracles four your loved ones!! Not much else I can say.

warrior- You get to witness the health care decline in a big metro. Mine is way smaller but things have changed lot, even in the nearly 25 years since I left working for the hospital. Security is much tighter now, a person can't even walk through the main lobby, especially after 3 pm, without getting asked why you are there.

This particular health care system had a big banker sugar daddy for a while and the "suits" spent his money like crazy on various things, including expanding their system into multiple states. Sugar daddy is now senile and his money handlers don't give much out to the system anymore. Most of the big buck chuck specialists they hired with seven figure annual salaries have split.The system appears to be rebuilding with mostly foreign born specialists, both of the neurologists I saw were foreign born. This doesn't mean they are not good physicians, only that will probably settle for less pay. Most of these folks are also younger so the suits an start them off at lower pay. I don't think many of the suits took pay cuts when Sugar Daddy's resources dried up but I suspect some of them, the less entrenched, got axed.

my they told my grandpa he was not long for this world 2-3 times every time on further inspection they were over dosing him on statins.

they dropped his dose and he was good for a few more years

he passed at 84