I had a little bit of excitement in New York City when I encountered some type of gastrointestinal issue. We’d speculated it was food poisoning or norovirus with our doctor.
After getting it out of my system and speeding back to Montana; we’ve been pouring over the symptoms, timing, biometrics and medicines to see if we missed anything. It felt like an opportunity.
We had three doctors retire on us this year and after two years of rising premiums, we are naturally skittish about health care. Pandemic telehealth reimbursement being sunset is a hit to rural care as is the other policy roll backs as the of emergency winds down. Reciprocal licensing across all states sure seemed like it should have been a keeper. But alas American health care is a mess.
Thankfully we’ve got a doctor local to us in Montana who we’ve been slowly building up a relationship with over our first year here. After his star turn in this gastrointestinal saga, I am ready for a round of blood work and a look at the big picture with him.
We’ve even been dabbling in a few theories with our Large Language Model friends. While ChatGPT goes to a lot of trouble not to diagnose, we’ve been able to run down some leads on our own and bounce them off our doctor. I’m looking forward to getting a look at my liver panels and gallbladder. Maybe tweaking some of the pharmaceutical line up.
While it may seem a bit grim, I’m considering that with enough questions asked and enough clever inferences on our behalf from our new AI friends, maybe we can get further. Sure we are down 3 doctors and up 30% cost wise, but maybe these plucky kids can make do with a chatbot, a young doctor and a can do attitude.