This is happening in 2024. Where are the TriCorders we were promised?
March 7, 2024
Altered States, the seminal movie starring William Hurt, is an apt comparison to the last few weeks we have had in this corner of reality. I inadvertently stepped into a world only rumored to exist in acceptable quarters, so I’m going to download it on you, Readers. Like therapy.
We have a close relative here I’ll call Aunt Liz. She is dear to Mrs. Outpost, living a typically robust lifestyle here in the tropics. I often extoll the healthy air and food options, but naturally there are vices as well as regional diseases that can really bring a person down. Aunt Liz is in her early ‘50s, and has a deep dislike of doctors, probably justified considering she had a child die young from vaccine-related meningitis. But that is getting off track.
She has had a few chronic conditions for a decade or two. One is a predisposition to pneumonia, and you can imagine how dicey CovidTM was for the family. Some of them wanted to run out and get vaccinated, and some like Aunt Liz had the attitude You’re not sticking me with that thing. We felt the same, and let’s just say that on paper everyone is vaccinated.
But we were totally unprepared for how many problems Aunt Liz had under the surface. It started a month ago with splitting headaches, then progressed to legs so painful she could not walk. At the family’s insistence she was checked in to a ‘semi private’ hospital in the next town. We’re talking about a 100 y.o. house converted to a rudimentary hospital with broken equipment, and cats roaming the hallways. She had been there about a day by the time we arrived.
Outside of the Western bubble, it is common for family members to basically attend their loved ones in the hospital 24/7. It is the only way you can ensure they are washed, fed, and can get to the bathroom. What is even stranger however: the sense that we really never knew exactly what Aunt Liz’ condition was. They were checking this and that, and suggesting maybe this or that. I noticed her belly was enlarged, but no one was talking about it; another red flag. This is about the point I began to realize that along with cultural things like superstition and rumor, what we seem to be dealing with here is what I call Medical Hearsay. Starting to sound familiar?
Fast forwarding a bit, they never even hooked Aunt Liz up to a heart monitor, and the only piece of equipment they could use for a diagnosis was Ultrasound. Her condition deteriorated quickly, and she was having difficulty breathing. So the decision was made to rush her to the private hospital in the city. I will skip the ambulance fiasco, finding our own in the middle of the night with no help from the hospital.
So in the wee hours of the morning we arrived at the big hospital, and wow. It was bang-up-to-date, dare I say modern. It was like stepping onto another planet. The first thing the exasperated ER doc asked us was What kind of goober country doctor doesn’t know her belly is swollen because of low potassium?? The second thing he asked us was When did she have her stroke?? Wait, what...? After the ICU staff got involved and started running tests, it turns out that she had a heart attack and a stroke, maybe in the ambulance on the way there.
That is the kind of week it was. Neurologist saw a mass in the brain, but maybe just a blood clot. Pulmonologist saw nodules in the lungs, but maybe just Tuberculosis. By the way, did we know she was diabetic? Well we had suspicions. Her thyroid is off-kilter but they can control that. Her heart has some damage, but we won’t know more until an angiogram when she is more stable. Five different specialists were all telling us things, and thankfully were quite conversant in English when I asked for it. My only involvement is to keep Mrs. Outpost sane, to be her sounding board, and to offer what logic and experience I can apply to the discourse.
Maybe you’ve heard it before, but hospitals in general are unfamiliar territory for me. The problem with all this activity was that no single doctor was guiding the process. Each one wanted a test for different reasons, and there was a general consensus that Neuro had priority. But we were missing Hawkeye Pierce or Dr. House to really step in and be the patient advocate.
That job fell on us, note to self. We don’t even live on the same island, that is how crazy it has been. But the worse problem for Aunt Liz is that after two weeks she is not improving, and she is not waking up on her own. Between the drugs, the steroids, the feeding tube and catheter, there is a lot going on without many actual answers. They proposed adding a drain tube to her cranial cavity. Final red flag.
The cost of all this is astronomical to poor family. About $15K USD so far.... you read that right. 24/7 doctors, a week of ICU, another week in a standard single room, tests, etc. Hopefully one of you Readers can translate that into what this might have cost in the US, so that we can all get a chuckle. For you would-be expats, it is worth considering that ‘good’ care can be had abroad rather cheaply. Many of you can keep $10k in a savings account for emergencies and just skip the insurance altogether, rather than the $500k you might need in the US for something similar.
When the long-awaited lung biopsy was finally available, they ruled out cancer. It turns out they had suspected stage 4 cancer for a week but didn’t tell us. We think she has advanced tuberculosis. And by the way, it was also in her liver. We think? Can’t we know for sure? Yes sir, we can run a culture but it will take 8 weeks. I’m still scratching my head, processing how TB can be confused with cancer. They assured us it can, and that it presents many of the same side effects, even meningitis-like infections. Thankfully they had already started administering TB meds, but the next step depended on the family’s willingness to approve the cranial drain tube.
After some brief consultation among the family members (like, less than 5 minutes), the unanimous decision was to just take her home. Invasive surgeries, out of the question. Ditto chemo or radiation, if the prognosis had been cancer (I’m still unconvinced). Without getting involved with loan sharks, the family has done all it can do. Her chances of waking up are only about 50/50 even with a drain tube, although if she lasts long enough for the TB meds to start to work then she has a good chance of pulling through. Strong heart, failing kidneys. There is only so much a body can take.
Rockefeller Medicine
What we have here is a stark contrast between Medical Hearsay and the Medical Industrial Complex. On the one hand, save the family farm and let Aunt Liz take her chances. We’ll continue the meds and pray she wakes up. On the other hand, fall into the system and lose everything, on the vague hope that the doctors think they know what the problem is. If I didn’t know better, this feels more like 1924 than 2024. As usual, all this has caused me to ponder, and I have some observations:
1. Aunt Liz spent decades avoiding the doctor, but she also didn’t really take adequate steps to mend herself. Surely there could have been natural / homeopathic steps that might have helped. Self-denial is not treatment, and we are kicking ourselves for not being more involved. Note to self. There are times when you just need to see a doctor, and get the proper test.
2. Modern specialists may be smart and well-trained, but they lack some of Hippocrates’ basic instructions. Well-being of a patient includes things like sound advice, rather than just “you decide”. If we ask you for a percentage likelihood, just tell us your honest opinion. If you are the overall charge Doc, then take control rather than just drifting along according to which doctor is loudest.
3. Get the WHO out of hospitals and their policy guidance. Rigid mask-wearing rules are still being enforced, despite masks being nearly useless. And some of these patients might have TB but are not in a separate ward? The doctors have upgraded from the unrated medical masks to the branded N-95s, just to show how serious they are about health. So either they don’t know anything about masks, or are committed to going along with the system. I’m not sure which is worse. I wrote up a deep-dive on mask design here for anyone interested, based on research my company did prior to CovidTM.
4. Posting your business goals for FY ’24 in the hospital hallway does not impress, nor do flowery-sounding neo-Hippocratic patient care pledges. I’m more interested in your quality care and efficiency, rather than waiting an extra day (at cost) for you to finalize the billing charges, or spending all night sleeping in the hallway hoping to catch the Cardio specialist when he does his 6 a.m. rounds. Your staff doesn’t know when the doctor comes in? Or how to reach him?
5. We are nearing the point where the case for white-coated experts giving guidance is losing its credibility. I’d say we are past that point, but you may feel differently. When the experts cannot convincingly commit to a diagnosis, it seems like a pretty big problem. TB is a common ailment here, and you are telling me there is no doctor who can say “Oh yeah, I’ve seen a hundred cases like this. Definitely TB.” Disappointing. But it squares with other observations many people are making about modern experts. Fauci, Gates, Jerome Powell; you know, Experts.
Next Gen Medicine
After seeing both ends of the available medical care spectrum out here at the ends of the earth, the conclusion I have is that both of these extremes are dead-ends for the future. When we think about how health care should operate vs. how it does operate, I think we are missing it completely. What would some possible alternatives be to these two bookends?
Gen Z Country Doctors - For anyone in medical school looking to really make a difference, I hope you will consider simple country clinics where you are desperately needed. You won’t get rich, but you will live a rewarding life and do some real good. You are the generation that likes tiny houses, right? Consider the far corners of the world, where your training and education may be unparalleled. If several of you formed a group, you could raise funds for the needed equipment. You could have the most viewed YT channel on the planet with voluminous donations. Operate without the WHO. I guess I am describing becoming a medical missionary. It is not about getting rich, is it?
Distributed Care - With such vast medical knowledge available around the globe, we could move to a system of non-expert-driven medicine. Hook me up to a med-bot and give me a diagnosis, like in the movies. Design a med-bed that is a scan analyzer, coupled with a medical database. When something is wrong with my car, there are step-by-step things to diagnose and fix. Is that an oversimplification? Apart from serious surgical procedures, I don’t quite understand why we are clinging to the system of experts in white coats (wearing permanent masks) to tell us what is wrong.
We need consumer TriCorders, like in Star Trek, or something similar. Engineers, get it done, please. Let’s start with imagining some kind of 3d heat map for various condition fields, showing probabilities of causation in the systems of the human body. I will volunteer my services gratis for the industrial design and HMI.
Unleash the Meds - Flying in the face of Rockefeller Medicine, what would happen if the doctors or distributed care systems I have just described had unlimited access to any substance for the possible use and treatment of a patient? Demonization of things like Ivermectin or Cannabis would not exist. If Borax were good for your bones (it is), people would use it without hesitation. If competing companies were locking up their research or overcharging for their medicines, we would know immediately. If natural homeopathic cures were better than a drug, we would also know immediately.
The patient-run database of medical knowledge would be continually evolving; actually it would be a perfect application for the Blockchain. It would be a quantum leap in medical learning and experimentation, justified by people making their own decisions about what to put in their bodies. It would take healthcare out of the hands of Big Government. It would put Big Food and Big Drug out of business, as soon as the majority realized what those industries were doing to us. Have we found a root cause here?
I bet we would cure cancer in 10 years or less.
Death Penalty for Gain of Function - If I were King, this would be one of my decrees. Anyone found actively trying to design or refine pathogens to be more deadly gets a lethal injection. Any company found doing so gets immediately taken apart, and any government agency found doing so gets permanently shut down. Until such time as we could move this kind of deadly research to another planet, it cannot be tolerated on Earth. You’re not fooling anyone, researchers. You are purposely creating death.
Trapped in Yesterday
Sigh.
Our collective problem seems to be that we can never conceive of a better system than the one we are stuck in. It happens everywhere: Public schools, elected government, foreign policies, public works, communications infrastructure, homeland ‘security’. Readers know am critical of these industrial-grade complexes, which I have written about before. Our structural and social systems tend to be self-serving and self-feeding. Decades or centuries later we don’t remember why things are the way they are, we just know we are supposed to wear that face mask. As I often say, we need more critical thinkers.
Too few of us ever question why, ever seek to break the bonds or investigate the alternatives. We dislike change, so we tolerate servitude. Breaking out of a system unfortunately often requires a catastrophic realignment, and that will never get many enthusiastic supporters. Do we really need to rebuild society from the ground up to fix these systemic problems? It is looking that way.
Until such a time, we seem to have limited options on Healthcare. Insurance, mindless policies, meds that are more marketing product than cure. Drugs for everything, interference in family matters, woke surgeries, yikes. Outside of Rockefeller Medicine we are on our own, figuring things out by the internet and medical hearsay. ‘Research’ is often a mixed bag, but all you can do is your best. This method served our family well during CovidTM, and I harbor unreasonable hopes that the Borg will have a harder time brainwashing people on the next ginned-up pandemic.
Back at Home
As I finish this up, Aunt Liz is sleeping in her own house, attended by a good family. At least a dozen people have stopped by, most of them trying to open her eyes or get her to say something. They have a rotating schedule worked out for her feeding and other needs. Mrs. Outpost is over at the table counting out pills and labeling little ziploc bags for the days to come. They are adding up the bills, and the neighbors have never heard of a sum this big in their lives. She is basically worse than when she left here two weeks ago, although we have an actual diagnosis now. I guarantee the next time another one of them is seriously sick, visiting the big city hospital will not even cross their minds. Sad, but understandable.
Being a dreamer, I am instead imagining how different things would have been if a local clinician with a TriCorder could have given her a 5-minute diagnosis and a printout of needed meds or procedures. But this is reality — and the reality, Readers, is that we do not know the days marked out for our lives. Only God knows that, and we only have a limited time in this body to make a decision about Him.
Job 14:5 A man’s days are numbered. You know the number of his months. He cannot live longer than the time you have set.
I can truthfully say we were with Aunt Liz when she made that decision, a couple of years ago during CovidTM. She had come to stay with us for a month, but it ended up being a year because of travel restrictions. And during that time she attended church with us, and started reading the Bible. Although a lifelong Catholic, she accepted Christ one Sunday morning. About six months ago so did two family members who live next door to her. If Aunt Liz survives this ordeal, we think of the powerful personal testimony she will have. But if the Lord takes her home, then that is the best place she could be.
Selfishly, we pray that God will spare her life. More deeply, we just pray that His name will be glorified in the situation. She is already in good hands no matter the outcome. I hope you can say the same, friends. Prayers are welcome.
Peace be upon you in Christ,
Visayas Outpost