I’m Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired

The Wise Wolf Rants About the American Healthcare System From His Motel Bed

To the Wise Wolf Pack,

About two and a half weeks ago I went down to Walmart to do my grocery shopping and realized somewhere around the front doors that I had left my trusty bottle of alcohol spray back at the motel. (I spray down every cart because I have seen the people who push them and I have seen what they do with their hands.) The alcohol pad dispenser by the entrance was EMPTY (because of course it was) so I made the kind of calm adult decision a man makes when he needs a cart and has no other options. I grabbed the thing and promised myself I would wash my hands like a surgeon the minute I got home.

I did not wash my hands like a surgeon or like anybody else because somewhere between putting the groceries away and flopping onto the bed I simply forgot. Three days later I woke up drenched in sweat with a cough that sounded like a lawnmower trying to start in January and a stomach that had decided without consulting me to eject everything I’d eaten since roughly Labor Day. It did this several times and the motel plumbing deserves a formal apology.

A Third of My Life Spent Horizontal

I wish this was some kind of freak event but I’ve spent roughly a third of the seven years since I became a freelance hobojournalist sick with one thing or another. I have never been what you’d call a healthy person. As a kid I got strep throat, the flu and bronchitis one after the other every single year like they were on a subscription plan (and unlike the Wise Wolf they never once offered a discount).

The only time that cycle ever stopped was when I lived in southern Florida. Sadly southern Florida turned out to be a little too pricey for my meager income. Then my dad was diagnosed with cancer and my mom insisted he was dying and I needed to come home to spend time with him. My dad and I never got along so I figured this might be my last shot at burying the hatchet. I packed up and spent six months living with my parents while getting the Wise Wolf newsletter off the ground.

The newsletter started bringing in a little money (along with some crypto investing) right around the time I realized two things. My dad was going to be okay and my parents were basically screwing me out of my hard earned money. They were charging me a grand a month in rent PLUS a third of the bills and the food. Nobody in history has ever built a nest egg that way. (Mom, Dad, I love you both and I would like my money back.) So it was back to another rundown motel. That’s pretty much been my address for the last fifteen years since I bounce around too much to put down roots with a lease. That worked fine for a long time but with my health getting worse and worse I really need to plant myself somewhere.

I’ve been seriously thinking about moving back to Florida since that’s the only place my body ever seemed to work right. The problem is that Florida is SO dang far from Buffalo and I hate traveling with the burning passion most people reserve for the DMV. I’m deathly afraid to fly (my position is that if God wanted me in the sky He would’ve given me wings and a better health insurance plan) and while I genuinely love the train it takes a couple of days to go that far. My constitution does not do well with that kind of trip, ya know?

Three Hundred Dollars for a Probably

For the last two weeks I have basically lived in bed coughing up things I won’t describe in a family publication. Since I don’t have insurance I went to a walk-in clinic and handed over the THREE HUNDRED FREAKING DOLLARS in cash they required so that a nurse practitioner (not even a freaking DOCTOR!) could tell me it was probably the flu and bronchitis.

I paid three hundred bucks for a probably and I would like everyone in Washington to know I could have gotten a probably from the guy behind the counter at the gas station for free. When I asked her if it might be pneumonia she told me it sure could be and that finding out would cost more money. It was like ordering a burger and having the cashier ask if I’d like to upgrade my meal to knowing whether my lungs are full of soup. She wrote me a script for cough syrup and some antibiotics and sent me on my way.

Yes, I thought about the emergency room right up until I remembered that an ER bill for an uninsured guy is less of a bill and more of a hostage negotiation. The richest country in the history of the planet looked at a sick man without insurance and offered him a three hundred dollar maybe with an upsell attached. To every congressman with a taxpayer-funded health plan who has ever stood at a podium and called this the greatest healthcare system in the world, I’d love for you to come spend a week in my motel bed (bring your own sheets). That clinic visit was over a week ago and I still feel like utter shite.

Help Wanted, Pay Negotiable, and by Negotiable We Mean Nonexistent

I was hoping Lily would be able to pick up the slack while I was down but she’s pretty busy these days between her waitress job and the online college courses she’s taking for her master’s degree. She turned down a job in LA that pays more than the entire Wise Wolf team makes in a year to chase that degree. I told her to take the job and leave us in the dust. She wouldn’t do it (she’s a loyal little lady and I appreciate her for it) but she’s got her own financial problems to worry about and she just hasn’t been able to write for us.

The real reason I dragged myself to the keyboard today is that WE ARE LOOKING FOR WRITERS. We can’t pay you much (in fact we probably can’t pay you anything at all unless your article goes viral and actually earns some money) but what we CAN do is put your work in front of 90,000 new sets of eyes that never would have seen it otherwise. If that sounds good to you, leave a comment below with your contact information or shoot an email off to admin@wisewolfmedia.net.

We want REAL writers and I do not need any more ChatGPT slop in my life. I don’t care if you use AI for research or image generation but if you submit an article that was obviously written by a robot I am going to block you. I just do not have the time or the lung capacity to waste on that.

If your politics are sensible and centrist and you know your way around the Bible and conspiracies and AI and fallen angels and weird stuff like aliens then we might have a home for your work. Alternative health writers are welcome too as long as your big theory isn’t that viruses are fake and the cure for everything is a tall glass of pool cleaner. (I am currently being held hostage by a virus and I can assure you it is VERY real.)

Thanks for bearing with us. I’m working on a few articles I’m hoping to publish this Saturday (we’ll see how my lungs feel about that) and in the meantime we’ve lowered the yearly price 80% until the first of the year. We’re hoping a wave of new paid subs will convince the algorithm to quit shadowbanning us. If you can afford to upgrade that would be awesome. Every upgrade gets this sniffling wolf one step closer to a real lease, a Florida zip code and maybe someday a doctor who is actually a doctor.

Thanks so much for sticking it out with us.

Help keep the Wise Wolf howling.