Country Wisdom

My "wood guy" lives about 60 miles away in part of central Virginia. He's a sort that you can find just about anywhere in the South, a do-it-yourselfer with a very practical head and very little formal education. He was driving a forklift at 15 and paving roads, driving dump trucks, etc. Now he's a ways past 60 with bad joints, Type I diabetes and I found out today, just suffered a heart attack. He spent a couple of weeks worth of time at one community hospital and one large university teaching hospital. He was profoundly disturbed by the degree of "education" of the people taking care of him, but the lack of practicality. "They just didn't get the fact that I wasn't gonna pay for the $190/bottle of insulin nor prick my fingers 6 times a day every day." He also threw the hospital folks out of his room at night so that he could actually get some sleep! The good news is that some really fine utilization review person or social worker actually got him signed up for Medicaid finally. I'd been talking to him about it for years (I've known him for about 18 years) but he didn't want "no government hand out thank you very much". Once he realized that he can better care for himself on his limited income, Medicaid became a real blessing. He's now going to see someone about the diabetes-induced nerve damage to his fingers and toes and the diabetes-induced loss of vision. I'm hoping he can get tuned up and be bringing me wood, hunting stories and wisdom for many years to come. What struck me most about the conversation today (they last a mimnimum of 45 minutes) was his take on how poorly run hospitals are from the practical end of things. Nobody asked him how the changes they (the docs) were proposing fit into his life. Since they were trained at a world-class hospital and university, certainly he would see the need to follow their every utterance. To my country friend, most of what they said was impractical from the standpoint of tolerance or cost (usually both). He didn't agree that these professionals knew more about his body and health than he did. I'd have paid good money to be a fly on the wall to see the looks on their collective faces as he told them where they could get off. ;-) Wisdom comes in many forms and it doesn't come exclusively from university training and advanced degrees. My friend has an advanced degree in life and in survival. He proved once again that learning from the university of life often trumps all other forms of wisdom. Something to consider as we grapple with how to revise our currently broken healthcre system. Maybe we should just employ my friend as a consultant - he's have some very practical wisdom to share. Peace for the journey, Dan