As I get older, my exposure to and experience with health care deepens. I’m figuring it out.

Whenever I have a health issue – heart, foot, eyes, diabetes, back – I learn something new.

I’m called to pass along what I’ve learned.

It’s just my experience, one man’s experience,  for whatever that is worth. Joseph Campbell has written that the duty of older people is to pass along what they have learned, especially to the young, who most often don’t want to hear it.

But there it is. I’m not in the Army, but I still have to do my duty.

Lesson one: I never complain about health care.

It does no good, is unhealthy, can poison my relationship with doctors and nurses, and can make me sicker. And there is absolutely nothing I can do about it at the moment.

Nor can they.

Most of our elected representatives now work quietly or openly for pharmaceutical and insurance companies.

Those are the cards we are dealt. Pending a revolution that isn’t going to change in my lifetime, I accept it as a part of life. My health demands that I make the best of it.

The challenge for me is thinking, listening, learning, and being creative.

And always, always be hopeful. There will come a time when hope won’t work anymore; I’m not there yet, but I  hope I will accept it when it comes.

I blame my problems and issues on no one, not even myself. This is life, and life happens to all of us.

Years ago, as a reporter, I traveled with Billy Graham. We became close friends. He warned me never to complain about doctors, the price of gas, and the cost of groceries.

If I did, he warned, I would spend my whole life grousing and whining (like U.S. Senators and congresspeople, Donald Trump,  radical feminists, and far-right extremists) and turn into nasty old men.

Today, I am surrounded by young people of all ages.

They are afflicted by whining and grievance. It’s the national song.

I don’t wish to be an angry old man. The Reverend Graham’s advice was the best advice I ever had.

Attitude is crucial to good health and healing.

I learned that even the best doctors – and I have some of the best – are limited by their education, environment, and circumstances. They are not Gods but people, just like me. People with unimaginably wearing and difficult jobs.

I have a close friend who has severe heart disease and was told by her doctor and local hospital that she was ill, but there was nothing they could do for her. They sent her home thinking she was near death and there was no alternative to it.

Devastated, she and her family prepared for her to die. She lost hope and was in constant, worsening pain.

Because of my heart surgery, the very concerned family asked me to come and speak with her and her husband. I did.

I told her when a doctor said they couldn’t help; it didn’t mean no one could help or that no other doctor could help. The challenge was to keep faith and hope and look for a way.

I learned early on that doctors are often provincial.

They know what they know but don’t know what all the other doctors and hospitals know. They rarely speak to one another. Equipment varies in efficiency from one hospital to another.

The very best doctors in the world usually gravitate to the best hospitals in the world. They are almost all in or near urban areas, where there is the money to keep them operating.

Rural America has been left behind in health care and most other things.

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If my friend gave up on herself, I said, she was gone. I said we were responsible for our welfare and often had to fight for it or think of our own solutions.

Attitude can be everything. The right attitude, my doctors all say, can work miracles.

We know our bodies, strengths, stamina, and history better than any doctor will ever know, no matter how good they are. I approach my challenges with an open heart, an open ear, and good faith.

I don’t threaten or bully or whine. No one but me can say when I should give up or accept pain and unhappiness.

I like my doctors, and they want to like me. That is the way it should be.

I told my friend with heart disease not to believe anyone who told her there was no hope. No one person can know that. It’s a vast system, a nation to itself.

She thought about what I said and what others said, and she decided to listen, and a few days later, she and some family members walked bravely into the emergency room of one of the best hospitals in the world, hundreds of miles away.

They said they needed help urgently.

The doctors there saw that she was dying and took her in and performed a surgery everyone else said couldn’t be done.

Two weeks later, she was home, taking walks, laughing with her family, and driving her car.

She was pain-free, at least for now.

There’s a lot to learn in that story.

Doctors told me after my open heart surgery that there was no way to safely open a major artery in my heart.

A couple of years ago, I found a doctor who said it was risky, but he thought he could do it. And he did.

The risk was high but well worth it.

My heart beats strong inside of me.

Now, I’m dealing with an issue involving my foot – callouses, ulcers, and other dangers to a person with diabetes. It’s gone on for two years. I need to bring some new ideas to fix it.

My doctor has taken me far with it; she is frustrated and running low on solutions. I have ideas. She is doing what she can do. I’m going to do what I can do as well.

With her blessing, I  found a skilled and well-known orthotics specialist who is taking my case and is optimistic that he can help me (no guarantees.).

This means new shoes of different sizes and learning to walk differently. It will be expensive, continuous, and challenging.

This isn’t a one-step, but something that may require my attention for the rest of my life if I want to walk freely and keep my toes and feet.

The doctors have helped me at every turn and kept me going, but now I need to find my own agency, take some responsibility, be creative, and look for my own solutions as well as theirs.

I am confident it will work out if I remain hopeful and committed to it.

We are partners, not enslaved people.

This has worked for me before. When I suffered from painful stenosis, the doctors said it was not curable.

I went to the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, and a young surgeon gave me one needle in the back, and the supposedly incurable stenosis has never returned.

The point is not that I am a hero or wizard; the fact is that health care is a mess (we all know this), but health care in one place is not health care in every place.

Nobody has a perfect life; no country has a perfect healthcare program. Since most of us live far beyond the age span of even 50 years ago, the system is staggering under our weight.

To some extent, we are alone. Most people can’t afford to get to one of the best hospitals in the world and get the help they need.

Taking no for an answer can cost a life, or at the very least, a comfortable and meaningful one.

The Mayo Clinic is different from one’s local healthcare facility. New York City is not the same as my county.

Hospitals in Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, or Houston, Texas, are not the same as those in Raging Creek, West Virginia.

I had a friend who suffered severe spinal damage two years ago in a car crash. He saw a half-dozen surgeons who said they couldn’t help him

He and his partner called the Cleveland Clinic, and they told him to come out, and they operated on his spine, and he is hiking, swimming, and even jogging lightly.

Attitude really matters. When my heart-strick friend was planning her death, her family drove her to a famous hospital, rushed her into the emergency room, and demanded that they help her. They did.

They told me to go home three days after my open heart surgery; I didn’t need to be there. They all said my attitude was the reason. I am no hero; I was surprised to hear it.

There’s small health care and excellent health care.

Most rural health care is underfunded and has limited resources and a small staff. Almost every big city has one or more great hospitals. I know I need to get to one of those big-city hospitals when it gets bad.

Rural health care is in crisis everywhere. All the rich patients with the best insurance are in urban areas. No wonder they hate us.

But on a less dramatic level, I think the whining and complaining that has gripped our country’s soul has left many people without hope.

It is essential to find doctors who will talk to us, and for me, this has meant starting with women.

In my experience, women know how to speak and are happy to talk with their patients. All of them are overworked and harried, but they are out there and are essential partners on the path to good health.

I never blame my doctors or complain about the system when things go wrong. I look for a way around it; I look for the right help in the right places. And I take responsibility for my health.

But women have listened to me and helped me much more than men. It’s just my truth.

Passivity is defeat; depression is debilitating; complaint and self-pity are pointless at any age and for any reason. Old talk kills. It’s not about the dreadful phrase “at our age.”

It’s about what we choose to make of the time we have.

We have become a culture of protest, grievance, and lawsuit-happy. This has put a big wall between doctors and patients. The doctor’s life is brutal and often thankless between lawsuits and insurance. It is helpful to acknowledge that.

I won’t be a part of despair, whining, or lamenting. Thank you, Rev. Graham.

I trust my doctors and want them to trust me, to be open, creative, and determined to keep me healthy.

It’s a two-way street. I have found that if I believe in them, they will believe in me. And I am learning to believe in myself, also.

I can’t put it all on them. I can’t blame the system.

I need to take responsibility.

They don’t know everything, but they know more than I do, and I know more than I thought I did.