(Just a quick CW for mentions of lactose intolerance, dairy, and being sick when those two things come together. No gross details.)

As a US citizen who has always had decent health insurance but not enough spare money to pursue all of my minor ailments to full comprehension, I’ve gotten pretty good at finding ways to deal with minor day-to-day health issues. Now, this practice is no replacement for actual medical aid, nor are my actions entirely without negative consequence (the thing about trial and error is that you get a lot of errors before you find out what works, generally speaking), but as a person living in an imperfect system who is methodical in almost everything they do, I’ve managed to mostly resolve a few minor problems that come up for me. I keep a close watch on them, of course, making sure I’m not ramping up my mitigations without realizing it to account for worsening symptoms because I know there’s a chance that they’ll graduate from minor problems to major problems, but so far this strategy has paid off pretty well for me, all things considered.