From the front lines of America’s war with chronic disease

[jon-nyc]

I’m putting a gift-link to this piece from the NYT. It follows Sam, a nurse who visits chronically ill patients in rural West Virginia.

It shows the intractability of the problem (at least with these extreme cases) and also, man is this woman a saint.

Worth a read.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/us/chronic-disease-us-americans.html?unlocked_article_code=1.004.CFpd.2mJPGY6nLOts&smid=url-share

[jon-nyc]

This tidbit jumped out at me.

Sam turned into Williamson, population 3,042, where two local pharmacies had distributed more than 20 million opioid painkillers over the course of a decade, though the drugs didn’t so much numb people’s pain as exacerbate it. Now the downtown was largely vacant except for rehab centers, budget law offices and a methadone clinic.

That’s 5500 pills a day.

[jon-nyc]

Re intractability:

Some of these patients get by on food stamps of a few hundred per month. Even if they try to eat well they can’t afford to. Many don’t have reliable transportation, and have to walk or beg for rides to get groceries. She describes a local convenience store where avocados are $2.99 each but ramen noodles are $2.50 for a pack of 12. Lots of ramen noodles and Mac and cheese gets purchased at the dollar stores.

[LuFins Dad]

@jon-nyc said in From the front lines of America’s war with chronic disease:

Re intractability:

Some of these patients get by on food stamps of a few hundred per month. Even if they try to eat well they can’t afford to. Many don’t have reliable transportation, and have to walk or beg for rides to get groceries. She describes a local convenience store where avocados are $2.99 each but ramen noodles are $2.50 for a pack of 12. Lots of ramen noodles and Mac and cheese gets purchased at the dollar stores.

This has been a common theme for quite a while. We like to point out the SNAP benefits being used for Oreo cookies as one of the causes for the poor being overweight, but it’s Wonderbread and Hamburger Helper far more than it’s snacks that’s causing the problems.

[taiwan_girl]

Wow. Quite an interesting article.

[Jolly]

If you're aware of rural healthcare, particularly among the indigent, it's pretty common.

[89th]

@jon-nyc Thanks for sharing, what a saint indeed. Hard to imagine how she doesn't just throw her hands up out of depression/despair/defeat.

[Jolly]

Because it's not what she does, it's who she is. Healthcare is not a job, it is a calling, at least for the ones who do it right.

And it is a calling in which the end result is always failure.