This is Not Another Medical Blog
"Health Care" and the medical industry are not the same thing. I did the homemaker and full-time mom thing for two decades and it allowed me to keep my son with cystic fibrosis remarkably healthy in spite of not having a diagnosis until he was fourteen. Because of that background, my idea of health care included things like cooking and cleaning (not just drugs and surgeries). This allowed me to get myself well after being diagnosed with CF just before my 36th birthday and spending a year at death's door.
This is not medical advice. Please see your doctor for that.
This is about eating right, exercising, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" and all the other boring stuff you've heard a million times before. It's about thinking about your health differently and about maintenance and prevention, which is really boring and involves no drama or sense of accomplishment. If you simply take better care of yourself and avoid health crises, there's no news and no one will behave like you did anything at all, much less something really remarkable. You will get no credit. There will be no fanfare or sympathy or news headlines. (Those will still be hogged by dramatic medical rescues, like lung transplants.) The only thing you get out of this is an ordinary life where you get up every morning and go to work like everyone else.
Ho hum.
This is not a medical blog. This is the opposite of the medical approach. Doctors routinely have you trade short term gains for long term costs. It makes them look effective and useful and justifies their high salaries. They get to claim credit for the short term improvements and blame your on-going deterioration on something else (like your genes). You know they do that. It's not some secret. All prescription drugs come with a long fold-out explaining the negative side-effects and risks and they won't perform surgery until you sign the waiver. If you are basically healthy, your body can take the hit occasionally and not fall apart. But if you are managing a chronic, incurable condition by routinely trading short term gains for long term costs, your treatment plan is part of what is killing you. The only way out of the downward spiral is to start trading short term costs for long term gains. And that means things typically get worse before they get better.
All Ye Who Enter Here: Abandon Hope. Embrace Hard Work.