The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life by Mike Rucker PhD.

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life by Mike Rucker PhD. Discover the latest compelling scientific evidence for the potent and revitalizing value of fun and how to make having fun a habitual and authentic part of your daily life. Doesn’t it seem that the more we seek happiness, the more elusive it becomes? There is an easy fix, hiding in plain sight. Fun is an action you can take here and now, practically anywhere, anytime. Through research and science, we know fun is enormously beneficial to our physical and psychological well-being, yet fun’s absence from our modern lives is striking. Whether you’re a frustrated high-achiever trying to find a better work-life balance or someone who is seeking relief from life’s overwhelming challenges, it is time you gain access to the best medicine available. The Fun Habit is the ultimate guide to reap the serious benefits fun offers. Grounded in current research, accessible science, and practical recommendations, The Fun Habit explains how you can build having fun into an actionable and effortless habit and why doing so will help you become a healthier, more joyful, more productive person. In the vein of Year of Yes, 10% Happier, and Atomic Habits, The Fun Habit is an inspiring and motivational guidebook that you will want to share with everyone in your life.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the the big show we certainly appreciate you guys uh welcome to the new year it's 2023 if you're listening to this uh several years from now on youtube you're like

what's going on uh anyway guys it's 2023 our first show of 2023 and we're going to be talking to an amazing doctor today on patient empowerment and her new book uh so we're pretty excited for that in the meantime uh how hopefully you planned a good year. My New Year's resolution is I'm still at 2K on our monitor. Maybe we'll move to 4K this year. I'm not sure. But that's my New Year's resolution. I hope yours is doing well, too.

I'm reading from that 1080p on those computer screens there. You know the drill. Go to YouTube.com, Fortes Chris Voss. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortess Chris Voss. See all our books and reading and reviewing over there and our friends over there. Go to LinkedIn as well, all the LinkedIn newsletter and LinkedIn big group that's over there and all the stuff we do on LinkedIn. The company's over there as well.

All of our places on the internet. Follow them, share them. Get your friends to sign up to the Chris Voss Show. Guilt them and emotionally torture them until they subscribe. No, don't do that. That's a joke, people. Anyway, she is the author of the newest book coming out. It just came out November

28th, 2022, just in time for Thanksgiving. And of course, you can read this book. You know, this is a good time where people sit down with books, if I can pontificate for a second and do a little plug here. This is a great time to sit down, books, if I can pontificate for a second and do a little plug here. This is a great time to sit down, read, plan out your next year and your future. So a lot of people buy books, a lot of people set resolutions, a lot of people, you know, do whatever to kind of use this as a

great reset. So pick up her book, wherever fine books are sold, so you can kind of plan out what you're going to do this year. Her newest book is called Patient Empowerment 101. More than a book, it's an adventure as it's built. And we're going to be talking to some of the different things. She is a medical doctor, so she's smart. She's been to school. She knows much more than I do, which are most of the people that we have come on the show. And Em Hester is on the show with us today. She's going to be talking to us about her amazing book. So let's give you a rundown on her. She is a board certified internist with over 25 years of experience caring for patients. She's obtained her medical degree from the University of Tennessee in Memphis.

She's passionate about empowering patients to take control of their health care. Her mission started in medical school when she witnessed a tremendous amount of unnecessary pain and suffering. Over the years, she's written various patient empowerment pieces online and through her books. Her latest book is Patient Empower 101, and it gives you a unique work. It's a unique work that takes an unprecedented step in helping people think like doctors so they can position themselves right where they belong to be at the center of their health care team. I'll find out if I can do my own surgeries.

Welcome to the show, Ann. How are you? I am too blessed to complain. How about yourself, Chris? There you go. I'm awesome. Welcome to the new year. The new year.

We've kicked off the new year, and there you go. So give us your dot coms wherever you want people to find you on those interwebges in the sky. Well, the main website is patientempowerment101.com. And if somebody wants to contact me, certainly they can fill out a form there. Or my email is dr.hester at patientempowerment101.com. And I've got a LinkedIn as well. How many books do you have? Well, I have a couple of books.

One I wrote over 20 years ago. It was called Your Family Medical Record, An Interactive Guide to Getting the Best Care. And John Wiley and his son published that in, I think, about 2000. At that time, people didn't really care about their health impairment. They wanted the doctor to do it. So ultimately, it went out of print. And then recently, it's like, this is the time. People are becoming savvy healthcare consumers.

They need to know what's going on. So I sat down and I took some of the parts of that, revamped it, added another 20 years of medical practice, and popped up Patient Power 101. There you go. So what is an internist? I try and stay away from knowing anything about medical stuff and terms of technology as much as I can.

It's like an avoidance thing. I try and stay out of ERs and hospitals as much as I can. So's like an avoidance thing. I try and stay out of ERs and hospitals as much as I can. So what does an internist do? We're the adult version of pediatricians. When kids get sick, they see a pediatrician. When adults get sick, they see an internal medicine doctor, also called internists. Ah, there you go.

So anything that's wrong with me on the inside, basically, is what an internist messes with? Anything internal. Actually, we do skin too, but basically the internal organs. Yeah, there you go. There you go. So you've been doing that for 20 plus years, I think you mentioned. If I look back to medical school, 30 something years when I actually started seeing patients.

So it's been a while. So it's built on the front of the book, Exponite Your Diagnosis, Slash Your Medical Bills, Think Like Doctors, Take Fun Online Quizzes, and Watch Engaging Videos. Talk to us a little bit about what's in the book and give us an overview, 30,000 feet. This is like a conversation between me and the readers.

It's not filled with a lot of difficult medical jargon that's going to put you to sleep. There are lots of pictures and charts and humor here and there just to kind of keep you on your toes and just make it an enjoyable read. So I explained to patients, the people, and we're all patients at some point, but how do you communicate with doctors? Typically, what happens is people will go to the office and sit on a cold examining room table. And they're often angry that the doctor is an hour behind schedule. They may be in pain. They are half

dressed. The examining room table is cold and they're not happy when the doctor comes in. And so the doctor starts asking questions. That is typically what people start pulling together in their history. I once timed a patient. She's very loquacious, yes, but I thought I'd time her. I asked a yes or no question. It took 10 minutes for her to give an answer because she was thinking it through then. And so what I teach people is how to start thinking about the symptoms when you first develop them.

If you develop abdominal pain within the book, there are web pages, the information to get to web pages within the site where you can download the frequently asked questions that doctors are going to know for everything from abdominal pain, fevers, diarrhea, back pain, and so forth. So let's say you develop abdominal pain. You can look in the book because the charts are in the book. But if you want to download the chart, it's a fill up a word chart. You just download it and you go through the questions. Yes, I have this. No, I don't have this and so forth. You can save it. You can print it. So when you go into the doctor's office, you can have your 60 second elevator speech, so to speak, about what's going on. So the doctor doesn't have to try to pull things out of you. You can tell the doctor from A to B to C to D when it started, how long it's been going on, how

severe it is, what makes it better, what makes it worse, what else has been going on. So this is how we think. Patients don't go to patient school. We go to medical school. So we know what we're looking for. Patients have not been given that opportunity. And so the focus of the book is to help patients think like we think. There you go.

And to expedite their care. You know, that's important because, you know, number one, people should probably recognize that doctor isn't your therapist, unless it's a therapist doctor, I should say. But, you know, I mean, you want to get in there and you want to just get right to the point. You don't want to be around the bush or whatever. You know, I have this problem when I go to the point. You don't want to beat around the bush at whatever. I have this problem when I go to the store and stand in line at the cashier

and somebody wants to have a life conversation with the gal at McDonald's who's handing your food or whoever's at the cashier thing. They decide that they want to have, this is the only friend that they have in the world suddenly, and they want to have a 20-minute conversation with her. You're standing in line going, hey, man got the rest of us have stuff to do man chris remember on joe friday joe friday that's the facts just the facts man just the facts no i like that because it helps because the doctor's pressed for time as well

and you you've got a you know the sooner you can help them understand what's going on, the faster everyone can get to the resolution. Of course, the faster you probably get to a right diagnosis, right? That is the point. If you help your doctor help you, then your doctor doesn't have to order a lot of tests and procedures to get to the bottom line. I was told, we were taught in medical school that most of the diagnosis is in the history, not the test. And I didn't believe the professor. I was like, what do you mean? Are these diagnostic tests? Those are the things that tell us the test that's right. No. If you can give your doctor an excellent history, by the time you finish your last

sentence, your doctor's already narrowed down the list of potential diagnoses, which means fewer tests. Tests cost money. You've got to take off the work to go get the test. Tests can be painful and expensive. So you help the doctor narrow down what's going on, which means fewer test procedures, less of a need for you to come back in two weeks to see how you're doing. Fewer prescriptions that cause side effects that don't work. So it is a huge win-win when patients can really partner with their doctors to help them expedite their diagnoses and minimize their costs. There you go.

This seems much better than when I do at parties, when I find a doctor at a party, I just walk up and go, hey, does this look infected? Don't do that, folks. Let's just say say I'm up dude you call me back tomorrow that's usually what they do that or they just give me a diagnosis really quickly they look me up and down they go you're crazy go get some uh you don't have a medical issue at least not physically you just have a mental issue so So here's a psychiatrist and get those six personalities fixed. So one of the big popular things you hear now about medicine and the medical community is advocating for yourself, advocating for you as a patient. Talk to us a

little bit about what that means. And it sounds like that's much of what's incorporated in your book. Actually, there's a whole chapter on health advocacy. It's huge. It's important. For instance, if you go to the emergency room, you're not going to be feeling well. You may not remember all of your history. If you have an advocate with you, whether it's a spouse, a relative, anybody with you, they can fill in the blanks. You get pain medicine.

You may not remember what your doctor told you. So certainly it's great to have an advocate. And a lot of people don't realize, in addition to an advocate that you know well, there are patient advocates. That's the profession. There are a lot of nurses. There is a patient advocacy movement, and that's huge because they can help you understand your bills, advocate for your health care when you don't know that you need an advocate. So I have a couple of quotes in the book from patient advocates. And within the book, I have quotes from a variety of different healthcare professionals, but it's important for people to understand that patient advocacy is very real and it's important. And all you have to do is Google patient advocate in my area,

and you can learn about the professionals qualified in your region that can help you with your healthcare. Yeah, you've really got to, you've really got to manage the game sometimes because I've had, I've had some, I've had good and bad doctors and I've had doctors that I have to, I have to try and manage and really advocate for what I'm doing. I remember years ago I had a doctor where I'd burn my foot and it'd become infected. And I'm one of those people that,

I don't know, I seem to be a strange being where if you just give me some penicillin for a couple of days that, I don't know, I, I seem to be a strange being where if you just give me some penicillin for a couple of days, like I can, I, I, I think I fought off, I, my arm fell off one time and I fixed it with penicillin. Um, and it seems to be like a miracle drug for me. I don't know. I guess, I guess the miracle drug for me, maybe I'm not that special. I just think I am, which is kind of a narcissistic problem I have.

My audience knows that. But no, I mean, and so they wouldn't give me penicillin. They were giving me some kind of crap and they were trying to get some referral to the hospital that they clearly made money on. And I was like, no, just give me penicillin. They're like, well, we don't give penicillin because blah, blah, blah, blah. So they gave me some crap and it didn't work. It was getting worse. And so I had to advocate to get penicillin and raise hell. They finally gave me penicillin. And by that time they were trying to get me to go to the hospital for a bone scrape. They're like, you just need to, you need a bone scrape.

It's going to be, you know, millions of dollars and you know, all that stuff. And like, you need to give me stronger penicillin. And I raised hell and threatened to sue. Actually, they were really awful doctor. Most people shouldn't have to do this, but there's lots of good doctors out there. But these guys are really bad, and they clearly were just making money referring stuff to the emergency room. And they finally relented, gave me some heavy penicillin. It was gone in a week.

I didn't need a bone scrape. So you've got to advocate for yourself. You've got to really, you've really got to try and manage your medicine, manage what's going on. I mean, what are we doing? Do we need that? What's going on?

I do the same thing with my doctors. I've had my veterinarians for my dogs. I've had veterinarians say, you need to put that dog down now. And you'll go see a second doctor and get an opinion. He's like, no, it's not what you think it is, and you don't need to spend $5 trillion in battery

tests, and my dogs live for years afterwards, just fine. Turns out it was a small infection or some sort of weird thing they might have had. But it's really interesting. My dog, the anti-cancer, the doctor said, three They might have had. But it's really interesting. White dog that had cancer. The doctor said three days to live, bring her back in three days, call the ball and put her down. She just got cancer.

She lived with cancer for another year and a half. Just fine, running around, peeing, pooping, you know, living. So you've got to advocate for what's going on because there's good and bad doctors out there, I think, in my opinion. What are your thoughts on that? You do have to advocate, but something that's also very important is to work with your doctor. The goal is for us to become one, a well-oiled machine. And as I mentioned, patients don't go to patient school, but they've not been given the tools to understand how to communicate. And we've

had a very paternalistic healthcare system. Now the patient's experience is important, how the patient feels, all of those things are being appreciated on a brand new level. I've been practicing for decades and I'm very encouraged to see the drive to put the patients at the center of their healthcare team to help them understand. And certainly when they don't understand, they need to ask questions, and the health care professionals need to be forthcoming with those answers and explain things to them in a way that they understand. And so it's the give and take, but the goal is that we're one.

There you go. Be one with your doctor. Sounds like a whole Zen sort of thing. There you go. Don't try your doctor. Sounds like a whole Zen sort of thing. There you go. Don't try to coin that one. Yeah. Can I text my doctor on Snapchat? Is that a good thing?

Probably not. I would not accept a Snapchat message. The HIPAA issue. We always do the jokes on the show. We make fun of Snapchat a lot. Let's see. Health insurance options. What do you discuss in that chapter in the book health insurance options i know there's a you

know the big obamacare and and uh a lot of different things you do there i think there's some side options now outside of obamacare but i'm not sure there are a variety of issues so health insurance is a very complex issue so i just give an overview of the different types, such as Medicare, Medicaid, the PPOs, the HMOs, and so forth, and just give people an understanding. Something else that people aren't very aware of in general is the high deductible plans. And so people hear, okay, high deductible plan, $3,000 a year that I have to pay before anything happens. That's too much. But if you have an option of a high deductible plan for, let's say, $100 a month through your employer or a traditional plan, $400 a month, and you don't get sick very often, and that $3,000 is going to cover for you and your family,

then it may be worth your while to do the high deductible plan. I just give some examples of how that could actually work out in your best interest so you don't spend as much on health care. So I just give an overview of different types of health insurance so when you sit down to try to make a decision just have some general information you have a better understanding of how you should proceed definitely i mean i i'm not a person who's sick anymore i mean health insurance ends up a waste of time it's more like an emergency sort of thing for me if I ever decide to have an emergency. I haven't been in the ER since I was 12.

Lucky you. Yeah. I mean, I don't do a lot of crazy stuff with my life. I'm not jumping on airplanes. Oh, I want to someday. But I don't know. I just, I've been really blessed with my health. My mom's 80 years old and she's never had a major event.

She never had a heart attack. So hopefully I have her genetics. Yeah. Good genes. I hope so. Knock on wood. I mean, my dad passed at 75,

but I mean, when he was my age, he was already in a hell of a lot of problems and stuff and had issues. And then, uh, his, uh, kidney and liver,

but enough about me. Um, so this is really good. You have inside the book, uh, a questionnaire for 11 common symptoms and, a lesson for how to prepare people for their appointment. So basically you're not just kind of winging it when you go in the doctor and saying, does this look infected? You can give them the data that hopefully they're looking for.

Exactly. And people don't really know what we're looking for. Exactly. And people don't really know what we're looking for. So people try to think back, oh, I'm not sure I haven't really paid that much attention. But these questionnaires give you the frequently asked questions the doctors are going to want to know about common symptoms. So for instance, if you have abdominal pain, you may not stop to notice if your stool turned dark. That means a lot to a doctor. So just the things that patients don't understand that they need to be on the lookout for. So when the doctor asks, you can say, yes, I have. No, I haven't. Be precise, be concise, and you can really help expedite things.

And by being able to get to the bottom line quickly, you'll have those few minutes left to talk to the doctor about preventive issues or anything else you want to discuss. But if the doctor spends the whole time trying to pull out what's important, the time may be up. It's time for him to go on to see the next patient. And you may have to come back in two or three weeks to address the next issue. Yeah. The coming back is the crazy part. I was a big advocate for telemedicine back in 2013. I talked to Forbes and a big advocate for telemedicine. I thought about starting a telemedicine company and I should have. Everybody else started one and beat me to it. It's really important to do this.

One thing you talk about in your book too is choosing the right doctor. Why is that important? I know my mom sometimes, well, you know, she'll go see one doctor. She's got all these doctors and she almost has a relationship with them. Like I think they're pseudo virtual husbands sometimes, but choose the right doctor. Why is it important for you? You're talking about somebody whom you're entrusting your life to essentially. You want a doctor you can feel comfortable with. You want a doctor who listens to you.

Different people have different priorities. One individual may want to dock close to work because you want to go right after work. You want to go on your lunch hour. You may want somebody who has evening hours, weekend hours. Your job may not allow you to go. You don't want to take off a whole day to see the doctor. You want somebody who meets you where you are. There may be some doctors who just really don't have the time to listen or don't listen. There may be doctors who are the other extreme. So you need to determine what is important to you. You need to find a

doctor that fits where you are and can meet the need that you have. Otherwise, you're going to be doctor hopping. You're not going to be happy. If you don't respect your doctor, you're not going to respect your doctor's opinion. And he or she may tell you to do something that can be tremendous for your health.

But if you question that doctor, you're less likely to do it. You're more likely to become sick as a result. There you go. You probably need to listen to your doctor too when they give you advice or they tell you to take your pills. I know, I guess a big thing a lot of people don't do is they don't take, you know, a full prescription or where, you know, the doctor says, here's some penicillin, you know, clean that allergy infection up or whatever. And you don't take the full thing and you're like, I took a couple and I'll be fine now.

You know, I guess a lot of people don't fall through on their medication. That's huge. People end up in the ER over and over and over. They're discharged from the hospital. They go home. They don't take the medicine, and next week they're back in the hospital. Medication noncompliance is huge, and that's something else I go into in the book as well.

In finding the right doctor for you, that reminds me of how to pick the best doctor. I need to, I've been seeing all my life, and I think now as I get older, I think my health care plan is to just marry a doctor. I think I'm just going to go start, maybe I should hang out in hospitals. That won't work. My husband married a doctor, but he still has his knees, so that doesn't work. Does he have his own doctor? He can't just go... Yeah, he has to have his own doctor. It's best to divide and conquer. I'll make dinner, and you go see Dr. Ramirez.

Okay, well, that plans out. Damn it. Damn damn it that doesn't work uh all right well i have that or i'm going to win the can or one of the two uh so uh these are really important you know you hear about this all the time i know i've learned the hard way that i have to go in and advocate for myself uh that i have to go in and my i have a sister who's in a care center here in utah uh that we have to oversee her care. And it's a constant battle with her health care and the doctors. And she's got MS, so she's not – and she's kind of – she's got a state of dementia going on that's accelerating. So she's not fully there either. So, you know, trying to figure out what's going on with her and, you know,

advocating for her and then trying to do the doctors. And sometimes they're on autopilot because she can't really communicate well. And it's a whole, it's a whole piece of work there with the care center. It sounds like an excellent case for a professional patient advocate who can do things that you never even thought of. Yeah. It's, it Yeah, it's really hard. It's hard on my mom. It's hard on us to constantly, you know, it's, fortunately, my mom's more patient than I am. I'd just be suing everybody 24-7 if it was under my control. But it's very hard to do that. But it's great people can read your book and they can get into some of the details of doing all this.

One chapter you have is called Stay Safe in the Hospital. What's that about? I thought the hospital was the safest place it could be. No. Not with that COVID running around or whatever? Well, before COVID. I was a hospital specialist for most of my career, actually. I did primary care, but most of my career was spent in a hospital.

Hospitalists or hospital doctors, typically internal medicine doctors, but they're family practitioners. There are nurse practitioners, physicians assistants that fall under the term hospitalists. That just means that we specialize in people with acutely ill issues. So if you go to see a doctor and you have pneumonia and it's mild, he may say, take this medicine and I'll call you tomorrow to check if it's significant. You may end up in the hospital. So whenever you end up in the ER, there's a good chance your doctor may not go to the hospital. There's a movement away from going to the office, working all day and then going to the hospital. A lot of doctors pass off their patients to hospital specialists. But there are so many things that can happen in the hospital. People may not be aware.

A lot of people, they want to have a urinary catheter in place because they don't want to get out of the bed to go to the bathroom. But having that catheter in place, while it may be convenient, will increase your risk of a urinary infection. A urinary infection can increase your risk of bacteria spilling to the bloodstream, which can increase your risk of dying. So there are so many things that people don't understand. It's better to get the catheter out as soon as possible. If you don't want to go to the bathroom, ask for a bedside commode.

Somebody can help you get to the bedside commode as long as your doctor feels it's safe to get out of bed. People want to lie around in bed. They can increase the risk of blood clots. A pulmonary embolus, a blood clot that starts typically in the leg and breaks off and goes to the lungs, can be fatal immediately. Wow. That is a huge cause of potentially preventable death in this country, blood clots. But there are things that can be done to prevent the blood clots, whether it's a matter of walking.

If your doctor feels that you're able to get up and walk regularly, that will decrease it. If you're pretty much bed bound, the doctor may order some shots. A lot of people don't understand why they have to get a shot, but it can decrease the chance of a fatal event. It's more than worth it. It may be a matter of the doctor ordering these pumps for your legs that pump the blood back up. variety of things that can help people stay safe in the hospital because people, they don't fully appreciate how many people acquire these hospital associated infections and other illnesses that can literally take their lives. They can come in for problem A and they can pass away even after

problem A is gone because of hospital-related complications. And so I delve into that pretty deeply. And I have quotes from ER doctors and so forth, internal medicine doctors. There's a nurse practitioner who's a hospitalist I worked with for ages. He weighed in. And so people really need to understand the hospital is a vital place to be when you're sick, but you need to know the ins and outs so you can be safe. You go in, you get what you need, and you walk out safely, and you go home and keep going. That's always important.

I mean, I remember when I used to go into, we used to do blood stats for hospitals. And so we would pick a blood or other samples of body tissue and take them to a testing lab ARUP in Utah. And we had a career service that did that. And it was really interesting. I would go in and there would be signs on the wall about tuberculosis and

stuff like that. And I'm like, oh, the hospital's a great place to catch TB. Great. That's awesome, man. It has its issues. But, you know, if you're sick, where else would you want to be? That's true. Don't go there just for fun. It's not a merry-go-round ride. That's true.

But when you need it, you need it. Yeah. I tried going to the bar for the sickness, and that didn't work out quite as well. That one helped. I just put you back in the hospital. That's true. But I didn't feel anything for a little while, so that was good. I'm sure.

But that's probably not healthy for you. Don't do that alcohol anymore. That's bad for you. What other things have we touched on? Do we need to touch on about your book or tease out that we haven't touched on yet? I like to explain how to get ready for a doctor's appointment in addition to the questionnaire. So there are eight elements. There are eight key elements the doctors need to know

about. Doctors can't just charge whatever they want to charge when you become sick. You go to the doctor's office and you see the doctor. He can't just send any bill. The bill needs to be able to be substantiated. There needs to be good documentation. The national evaluation and management guidelines, they guide what the physician can charge, what level of care the physician can charge for the care. In addition to that, those eight elements are very important in helping your doctor hone down potential diagnoses. You need to know these. Number one is severity. When you become ill, don't say it hurts a little bit. Try to be as specific as possible. If you're a woman, consider 10 over 10 pain is childbirth. And if you're a man, let's say you fell and you broke a leg, 10 over 10 pain. Zero, I mean,

one over 10 is, I barely noticed it. So be as specific as possible. How severe is it? I can't get up and go to work, doc, or I can do all my activities. It's just a little annoying. The severity is important. The location. My belly hurts. What does that mean?

You have appendicitis? Did your spleen rupture? That's really not enough. There are so many organs, so many possibilities that could be going on, things that could be going on. My upper right abdomen hurts, my lower right, my lower left, my upper left. Doctors divide the abdomen into four quadrants, left, right, upper, lower. So be as specific as possible about the location. So if you say I have pain in my upper right abdomen, your doctor may be worried about your liver or your gallbladder, but not so much your penis because it's not there. So the location is important. The duration. Doc has been going on for six weeks versus has been going on for two days. And the timing, if it comes and goes. Each time it occurs, that's the last seconds, minutes, or hours.

So the arc has been going on for six months, off and on. That's the duration. Each time it occurs, it lasts for two or three days. Associated signs and symptoms. If you have abdominal pain, pay attention. What else do you notice?

Are your stools all of a sudden black and tarry? Unless you've been consuming Pepto-Bismol or iron, that could mean that you have blood in your gut. Because the acid in the stomach, once it mixes with blood, turns everything black. So you could vomit up black, gritty coffee ground material. Or your bowel movement could be black and tarry. So what other symptoms go along with your abdominal pain? Modifying factors, what makes it better, what makes it worse? The context, I've had severe pain in my back, but it happened just when I picked up that

heavy sofa. So the context will also help the doctor hone things down. So severity, location, duration, associated signs and symptoms, the modifying factors I have a burning sensation and I belch and I feel better, he's going to think more along heartburn. So the quality, is it a burning? Is it a dull? Is it an aching? Is it a stabbing? Think on those eight things and that will help your doctor tremendously no matter what symptom you're having. Those eight things are important. If your doctor can document those eight things, your doctor can get to the bottom line quicker and his notes will be more effective and they will be better for him or her as far as the documentation. So it's definitely a win-win. So those are the eight things I really want people to understand. Something else is that

the American Association of Medical Colleges, this is a nonprofit organization that administers the medical college admissions test. It is involved in medical school application processing. So all of the U.S. and Canada MD-granting medical schools are members. That's how important this is. They are predicting a shortfall of physicians by the year 2034 of over 100,000. And specifically, primary care docs up to 48,000, specialists up to 77,000. And if you consider the healthcare needs of the underserved in rural America, inner cities and so forth, if they actually took advantage of the healthcare system the way that people who have insurance take care of it, then we'd be short 180,000 physicians in this country in 2034. So just imagine 11 years from now, we're short 180,000 doctors.

I don't care what kind of insurance you have. You can have the best insurance in the world. If your doctor doesn't have an appointment for four or five months, you're out of luck. Wow. So people need to take heat now, empower themselves, learn what they need to do to make the most out of every moment with their physicians, and teach the skills that they learn to other people. We need to be a well-oiled machine in America to withstand this tsunami that is getting ready to hit the U.S. healthcare system. You don't have to be a doctor or a nurse. All of us have to get involved.

That is crazy to think about. Unbelievable. And we all need to eat better. I do intermittent fasting every day. We need to eat better. We need to take care of our bodies better because, man, when it turns on you, it turns on you.

So there you go. This has been really insightful. I ended up having you on the show and talk about these things. And people need to pick up your books and learn about them. Give us your.com so we't have you on the show and talk about these things. And people need to pick up your books and learn about them. Give us your.com so we can find you on the interwebs. PatientEmpowerment101.com.

That is the website. And there's information about the book. There are several five-star reviews, San Francisco book review, a variety of organizations have given a great review. It tells you more about what the book does. Also, I don't think I mentioned within the book, there are URLs, there are pages you can go to, to download what you need to create your own personal health record. That was huge.

I did forget about that. So you'll be able to make your own copy of personal health records. That information is in the book and charts. And also it tells you where to go to download everything. You can do online quizzes, real time quizzes, see videos of these cartoon doctors giving you information. Also, you can download the symptoms. If you go to patientappartment101.com, that's just the general page. The information to get inside of the site, that's all part of the book. And if you have Kindle Unlimited, you can read the book for free. And I really like the Kindle version because you can have it on your smartphone.

So you're sitting in the doctor's office. You can pull up all these questionnaires. You'll have it with you all the time. There you go. There you go. Advocate for your own health care. It's super important. Did we get your dot coms?

I think we did. PatientandPamela101.com and LinkedIn. If you just put in my name, Ann Maria Hester, LinkedIn, you can find me on LinkedIn as well. There you go. Thank you very much, Ann, for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me. It was great.

There you go. Thanks so much for tuning in. Also go to goodreads.com, for instance, Chris Foss, youtube.com, for instance, Chris Foss, all the places you can find us on the interwebs. Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to order the book up wherever fine books are sold, Patient Empowerment 101. More than a book, it's an adventure. We'll see you guys next time. Be good to each other.

Stay safe and take care. Bye-bye.