Bonus Content: A Visit with Dr. Rabbit

Greetings, fellow Type 2 diabetics, GLP-1 aficionados, and curious onlookers! This journalistic effort is a mostly-weekly compendium of facts, opinions, and self-inflicted sarcasm, along with the latest in how Mounjaro has affected my life and well-being.
This week, we dive into the future of medicine — a future where AI calmly digests a billion data points in the time it takes your doctor to misplace your chart and forget why you’re even there. While human health care plods along using outdated brains and HIPAA-era paranoia, the silicon side is finally poised to connect the dots — assuming, of course, we can pry the data from cold, bureaucratic fingers.
On the personal medical front, I’ll also share my latest stats and a new visit with the physiatrist who gamely guards my thoroughly busted back and neck.
What We’re About — More Than Mounjaro
Let’s get the basics out of the way. I’m a 78-year-old active guy who started Mounjaro in June 2024. I’ve brought my HbA1c down to 5.4% (36 mmol/mol), dropped 65 pounds (29.5 kg), and now, riding along at a 7.5 mg dose, my focus has shifted toward preserving and building muscle — not just losing weight. The plan? Hop off the GLP-1 train by year’s end.
I’m doing this with the reluctant complicity of my so-called primary care physician — a concierge doctor I affectionately call Dr. DeLorean. His business model appears to be: collect hefty fees, occasionally feel for a pulse, and bill accordingly. Good work if you can get it.
My Lawyer Would Have Told Me to Write This (If I Had a Lawyer)
Advice? Me? Please.
If you decide to act on anything I say, it’s entirely at your own risk. I’m neither a doctor nor a physical therapist — just a guy with opinions, a pulse, and a very stubborn attitude. Your mileage may vary. Feel free to leave a comment if you think otherwise — YouTube disclaimer included at no extra charge.
AI in Medicine — Because Your Doctor’s Brain is Still Running Windows 95

This week, I turn my caustic gaze toward one of my favorite topics: artificial intelligence in medicine — or as I like to call it, the only hope we have of making health care suck slightly less.
At the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting (because you know the orthos are always cutting-edge — literally), they hosted a town hall about AI’s potential. “Transforming medicine,” they said. And by “transforming,” they meant: doing in microseconds what your doctor would take three months, three specialists, and a malpractice claim to figure out.
According to the sages, AI offers “unprecedented opportunities” to improve outcomes, cut costs, and make sense of the tsunami of patient data.
That’s right: AI calmly swims through oceans of labs, MRIs, and “patient portals,” while human doctors are still stuck clicking “Forgot My Password.”
Meanwhile, back in the Real World™, what happens today is simple:
The doc sees you for 12 minutes, hears about your hip pain, notices your blood sugar is high, and — if you’re lucky — mutters, “Hmm, you should maybe get that checked out.”
The critical dots? Left floating in the breeze.
Why? Because human brains have bandwidth limits. After decades of fighting insurance companies, EMR (electronic medical record) disasters, and endless compliance training, most doctors’ heads have the processing power of a 1997 Compaq Presario.
Enter AI: no hair to scratch, no ego to bruise, no golf game to rush back to.
Just pure, merciless information synthesis.
HIPAA: The Great Ball and Chain

Now, if you’re wondering why this brave new AI world hasn’t fully materialized, look no further than our old friend HIPAA.
Yes, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act — initially crafted to protect the privacy of HIV-positive patients — has since metastasized into a Kafkaesque, data-hoarding nightmare, a bureaucratic love letter to paranoia.
Instead of enabling responsible, secure data sharing to improve patient outcomes, HIPAA forces hospitals to clutch their patient records like toddlers guarding a binky.
God forbid the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic actually compare notes and figure something out.
No, no — that would be efficient. Can’t have that.
Meanwhile, researchers and AI developers spin their wheels, trying to fix big-picture problems using tiny, isolated datasets — like trying to fix a watch with boxing gloves.
“But But But… We Still Need Human Doctors!”
Cue the hand-wringing:
“AI can assist, but surgeons must remain the decision-makers!” the experts solemnly intone.
Sure. Nobody’s suggesting we replace doctors with ChatGPT-12 (though between you and me, it might actually shorten wait times).
The point is: AI, when allowed to spread its silicon wings, can condense 30 minutes of patient babble into actionable care plans. It can spot complications before your surgeon’s second cup of coffee. It can match treatment options to your genome while your orthopedist is still fumbling with the X-ray viewer.
But thanks to decades of tribalism, data hoarding, and regulatory overkill, we’re stuck with a medical system that still runs at the speed of fax machines and manila folders.
In Conclusion: Let the Bots Do What the Humans Can’t
If we want real progress — not more useless “patient portals” nobody reads or “telehealth” that’s basically Skype in a lab coat — we need to:
- Unshackle data (without hiding behind HIPAA).
- Trust AI to handle the information overload.
- Let humans do what they’re good at: empathy, intuition, judgment.
- Let machines do everything else.
Or we can keep pretending that mainstream physicians — like my own irascible, computerphobic gastroenterologist Dr. Scrooge — are going to piece together my multi-system autoimmune mess while angrily pecking at pop-up windows.
(Hint: Dr. Scrooge once reviewed my urinalysis and concluded I had no upper respiratory infection. See Week 37 if you need a laugh.)
The choice is yours, America.
My Week on Mounjaro
Before I bore you with numbers, a quick update on the living train wreck that is my spinal column.
I visited Dr. Rabbit, my long-suffering physiatrist. After two weeks of neck and back pain (which of course resolved itself the moment I walked into the office — like a squeaky wheel silencing itself in the mechanic’s lot), we reviewed some fresh imaging. An MRI from last year showed my lumbar spine in all its wreckage, but nothing recent on my neck.
An X-ray revealed the obvious: my spinal column is a crooked, gnarly mess.
The fusion hardware from my 2007 surgery is still there. One of the screws broke cleanly in half. Yep. Still hanging out in my neck, living rent-free.
Today’s News
The real culprit for my neck pain isn’t the broken hardware — it’s the C7-T1 disc, worn down to bone-on-bone, made worse by my thoracic scoliosis. Dr. Rabbit told me that if I stay symptom-free (no arm numbness, no intense pain), surgery can wait. But if it’s needed someday? The neck surgery would involve bracing beyond C7 — basically welding more of my neck into immobility.
Regarding Strength Training
He encouraged me to keep lifting, just smartly: no overhead work, no flexing the neck aggressively, moderate weights, perfect form. Deadlifts? Keep ‘em. Strength training, he said, likely saved my spine from far worse outcomes. He also agreed that fighting sarcopenia is essential at my age.
I’ll take that as a green light to keep deadlifting until the Grim Reaper pries the trap bar from my cold, callused hands.
The Mounjaro Numbers, Already!
This week’s numbers are (predictably) stable:
- Morning fasting glucose: 97 mg/dL (5.39 mmol/L)
- Average glucose (Stelo biosensor): 99 mg/dL (5.5 mmol/L)
- Weight: Nominally unchanged — which is the goal right now, as I focus on muscle maintenance and growth.
Eventually, I might target another 20 pounds (10 kg) of fat loss — but not today.
See You Next Week!
Thanks for sticking around!
While AI’s full embrace by the medical establishment will surely be throttled by regulatory nonsense, I’m convinced it’s inevitable. AI won’t replace doctors. It’ll just finally make them dangerous — in a good way.
Agree? Disagree? Think I’m a hopeless dreamer? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Until next week — stay healthy, stay stubborn!
For an annotated catalog of all my Mounjaro updates, visit my Mounjaro Update Catalog page.