Chronic Maladies Get Brushed Off as Just Aging

I have a condition called peripheral neuropathy – in both legs and some in my right arm. I have to wear braces to walk. This condition ‘came on’ in my late sixties. I am not diabetic. I was an outpatient at St. Luke’s Neurology in KC all summer (2019). After extensive testing from everything from […]

Well Dang, I Have Foot Drop

I have a diagnosed medical condition that I did not know existed a month ago. I am using the proper noun “I” often because this is all about me.  I believe this problem has existed for some time because I wrote about it in 2012. Humor is often my escape from the cruelty of reality.  […]

Letting Go

Anyone following this trail of essays on mental health might find themselves feeling sorry for this old fool.  That is not my intention.  About ninety-eight percent of my troubles have been the consequences of my own decisions.  Does that make them less painful?  No.  Becoming aware of consequences directly related to one’s own decisions relieves […]

Immature, or Mentally Ill?

Anyone following this string of articles about my mental health might be growing weary.  I struggle to find the correct words.  I am generally fond of words and know how to use them, but exploring mental health is difficult terrain to cross.  It finally comes down to this: I am a senior citizen – what […]

Family As A Barometer – The Highs and Lows of Life

Most of us do not like to talk publicly about our families. When we do we are praising someone for a public accomplishment, like being on the honor role at school or getting a promotion at work. The underbelly of family life generally is taboo. And why not? It is nobody’s business what our family […]

Aggravated With Medicare And The Health System

Right off let me be clear, I am a senior.  That is somewhere between middle age and elderly.  My health insurance is Medicare with a United Health Care supplement.  As I have aged I have experienced more aches and pains resulting from the active utilization of my body parts.  Did I mention that I have […]

A Visit To The ER

I cut my finger.  Or perhaps I should say my finger was in the way when the door was closing.  I thought for a moment the finger was broken but it turned out to be only a bone deep cut.  My deductible for an ER visit is seventy-five dollars – what to do?  After a […]

A Facebook discussion on Drug Addiction

Ron Taylor shared Jordan Rice‘s post. May 5 at 11:09pm · Jordan Rice April 23 at 12:21pm · Thank you. Edit: I didn’t explain why I agree with this or any experiences I have which left people opinion to make a bunch of dumb ass opinions about my logic. I don’t have the time to […]

Single Payer – What Is It and How Is It Better Than What We Have?

The health care debate rages on.  Our system has been flawed from the beginning.  Powerful Unions negotiated with employers to provide health insurance.  Good for the Unions and unionized workers, not good for everybody.  Insurance companies liked the deal because they could negotiate big lucrative packages.  Actuaries ruled the day.  It is actually simple math […]

Electronic Medical Record – Great Idea, Problematic With Lazy Docs

Get out the cheese and crackers because I am getting ready to whine.  It was long, long ago, about 2005, that my primary care physician was an accomplished in Internal Medicine.  I had switched to his practice when I was fifty years old, reasoning that as I aged I would need someone with a more […]

“…an organized, nationwide system of care…”

Civilized industrial nations have searched for many years for an appropriate response to public health.  Individual health care financing in the United States was somehow attached to one’s job as a part of the benefit package.  A good job came with good health insurance.  By 2008 there were fifty (50) million individuals without health insurance. […]

Life After Tuberculosis

As suggested by a good friend and cousin of mine, I will try to shine a light on a personal experience regarding Tuberculosis, the “Curse of King Tut”. The year was 1965 early Autumn. My mother’s estranged husband was taken to Mount Vernon, MO. This was at the time a ‘sanitarium’ for individuals with ‘lung […]

Walking the Roof of Methodist Hospital – Circa 1972

It was literally ‘the good old days’.  Data Processing.  No MIS or IT or IS.  We processed data – and the data came in the form of punched cards.  Everything was ‘batch’ processing – almost no ‘real time’ interaction.  But that is an aside for the purposes of this post.  This story is about walking […]

Stop Fighting

Most of us do not know how to fight.  Sadly, most of us think we do know.  We are proud of our wit, our sarcasm, our humor at the expense of others.  If not, then we act as if we are in control – proudly and falsely saying that we would not ‘stoop to that […]

Municipal Smoking Bans – Solid Redneck Reasoning

Some scoundrels in St. Joe, Missouri, are trying again to ban smoking at the places where they go for their Sunday morning brunch.  The opposition swigs their beer and pops peanuts between puffs on their favorite means of getting their regular nicotine hit.  Some prefer cigarettes, some a cigar, personally – I favor a pipe.  […]

Moveon.org Medicaid Petition

Emerging Ideas on Medical Marijuana – Rethinking the Bias

This writer has changed horses. I have been in the stable for awhile – uncertain of the future direction. The recent documentary by Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN provided a compass with true north as the central bearing. Marijuana is probably not as devastating as we once thought. Note the qualified ‘probably not as devastating’. […]

Smoking Alcohol – No Calories and No Brains

Drugs and alcohol – the elixirs of a giddy walk down the path of doom and despair – have many different modes of ingestion.  Until about five hundred years ago alcohol and drugs caused few problems for mankind.  It was about that time that some Chinese bricklayer working on a really big wall discovered that […]

The Allegory of the Forest – Carl Jung’s Collective

There are no more trees.  No more forested wildlife.  Humans no longer have terms for forest or wildlife.  The Earth was deforested many years ago.  Some older adults remember playing in the woods.  No pictures, photographs, exist.  There are many drawings by children.  Some drawings are done in pencil, others in water colors – some […]

Creepy Ad by drawtheline.org

My first take on this ad was that it was produced by some anti-abortion provocateur to discredit the celebration of 40 years since Roe V. Wade. This smooth talking black guy is offering a rose and a glass of wine as a toast to the judicial victory. I interpreted an image of Obama – clearly […]

Old Men Walking, And Falling Down

I am a senior.  That is the life designation we get when we are between middle age and elderly.  My health is generally good.  I walk about three miles every day and as a result I take no medications for any heart or respiratory conditions.  But walking of late has become a treacherous proposition.  I […]

Cisco – A Tale of Addiction, Justice, and Redemption

People are dying.  Our Prisons are full. Families are being destroyed.  Government sponsored religion in the Criminal Justice System is not working. Federal, State, and Local funds are rewarding bad behavior.  We are talking about the Criminal Justice System sanctioned treatment programs for alcohol and drug addiction – substance abuse treatment. Cisco, A Tale of […]

AA and Addiction Treatment Have Failed Charlie Sheen

Charlie Sheen is in the news – again – and his choice of words directly reflects the misguided efforts of contemporary addition treatment.  These efforts do not address psychological health – but rather demand conformity to some loosely defined notion of ‘proper society’ or of  ‘Christian values’ or of something called ‘spiritual health’.  This addiction […]

Redneck Medicine

I live in rural northwest Missouri.  My mother’s family came here by horse-drawn covered wagon in the beginning of the 20th Century.  My father’s family came here from Pennsylvania about the same time.  Wherever you go – there you are.  The two families mixed with the locals – and with some folks from the Missouri […]

Taxing Sugar, And Other Taxing Behaviors

Hey fat boy, I’m not talking to you.  But alas, he will not stop looking at me in the mirror.  I said, “Hey fat boy, they are going to tax your Coca Cola.”  He smiled, “So what, they already tax the Jack Daniels in the Coke and the tobacco in my pipe.  My wife said […]