ArcaMax

In my free time, I've been exclusively watching medical shows and making doctor's appointments. No, this is a blast, I swear.

Have you seen "The Pitt"? Best thing on TV right now. "Dying for Sex"? Heartfelt and hilarious. Are you also mired in a cursed rewatch of Season 6 of "Grey's Anatomy"? I'm so sorry, and we will get through this together.

Because American health care is essentially a liquidating JCPenney, these shows are riddled with commercials for name-brand pharmaceuticals. I keep a running list of the ads on my phone along with the corresponding ailments I will need Noah Wyle to fix:

Vabysmo: The actors open up their world by parting a giant eye and walking through it (gross) because they overcame wet AMD. You are asking, what in the George Clooney is wet AMD? My notes say it is a "serious eye condition characterized by the growth of abnormal blood vessels." The wet AMD lobby has convinced me I have this.

Botox: If I get it for chronic migraine, can I also erase the 11s between my eyes?

Rinvoq: Once I overcome moderate to severe rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis, I will hop back on a Jet Ski!

These commercials are my preferred midlife crisis, my bell jar, my slow descent dramatized with a perfunctory warning about nausea and vomiting.

When it came time to make New Year's resolutions in January, I decided mine would be getting my health together. I don't mean this in a bikini body type of way. There was a time for that in life, sure. If I had to guess, we were all last hot during the 2008 recession.

In 2025, health means staying alive from the inside. Taking advantage of the bedeviled blessing of insurance, scheduling pokes and prods, draining every drop of blood for testing. Mammograms, colonoscopies, mole checks, teeth and gums, eyes, ears, something involving the aorta. Should my toe be this color? How much is normal for a spine to crack?

Ebglyss: These are the same names as Amazon.com fashion brands.

Jardiance: The most harrowing commercial of all. It stars a cast of animated turtles making deep eye contact and speaking in seductive voices. Like, why are the turtles telling me about chronic kidney disease in the style of Barry White? Why are their carapaces so ripped? What are these feelings?

Part of this new hobby has to do with being in my 40s, and part of this has to do with The Politics. What I mean is, if I get cast out into the hinterlands for making fun of Donald Trump in a column about sexy turtles, I will need my health.

Forget tariffs on Hondas; I will need to tote a heavy knapsack across our ruined terrain. Should the health care system sink further into a privatized free-for-all starring a host of provocative cartoon critters, should more health studies be canceled, should more public data be erased from government websites, I want to know my cholesterol could be managed in a cave. Should only raw milk linger upon the barren shelves, I need my gut biome prepped. As I perform chest flies with 20-pound rocks and turn leaves into paste with my pristine molars, I want to know that my antinuclear antibody titer is 1:320 but that the rheumatologist in the dell just past the river is looking into it. I want us all to be so strong. I want us to make it. I want us to last.

Skyrizi: Be all in with clearer skin!

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Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. Follow her at @stephhayes on X or @stephrhayes on Instagram.

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