For everyone who has to fight insurance, bills, and their own body all at once: Desperate Dimes

I was diagnosed with PSC & IBD at just 16 years old. And while that sounds like the beginning of my story, I had been sick for 8 long years; 8 years of searching for answers no one could give us. My diagnosis was both terrifying, and a relief.

Living with PSC & IBD has been many things: humbling, grounding, painful, frustrating.. even enraging. I’ve had complications that went undetected for years, because the medical knowledge just isn’t there yet. PSC is rare, isn’t well understood, and is difficult to research. I had a serious complication that was missed for years, and getting the care I needed was a fight. I fought insurance, I fought my body, and I fought to be heard.

While Desperate Dimes is my third release, it’s the first song I wrote from scratch (i.e., no loops, no samples, just my brain) - it was a frigid morning in early 2025, and the research world had just been plunged into absolute chaos. Funding was pulled from too many studies to count, patients and research participants losing access to the hope they had been holding on to, research professionals losing their jobs, causing a ripple effect we’re all still feeling, across the country. You see, in addition to living with PSC, I work in medical research. I knew the harm this would cause from both sides: patient and professional.

PSC is a rare disease, which makes it difficult to research, and difficult to treat. Even with all the incredible medical advancements of today, there is no proven treatment or cure for PSC. While slow progressing, it eventually causes liver failure.

This assault on the healthcare system is deeply personal to me.

In a 20 minute rage I typed out the lyrics on my phone. I could hear the opening guitar part and the melody in my head, and I walked over to my piano and wrote out the both parts. By the end of the day, the “OG demo” existed (available on my YouTube, completely unmixed, haha :) we all have to start somewhere).

But, I got sick. Pause nearly.. a year…

And after waiting and waiting to feel “better” and never really feeling “better”, I decided to finish the song at home, with what I had:

• a $30 microphone

• my Yamaha keyboard from 2005

• my computer

• my violin & guitar

• my voice.

< that’s genuinely it. no audio interface. no studio. not even a proper mic stand :’) lol why am I like this >

AND, my stubborn refusal to let yet another period of illness end this project.

Medical research is vital for humanity’s survival. Medical research needs sustained funding, ethical oversight, and public accountability.

Policies that treat healthcare as profit machines have real consequences for real people: delayed care, untreated illness, debt, disability, and preventable death.

We The People deserve affordable healthcare without having to prove we are sick enough, poor enough, or dying enough. I am enraged medical research and healthcare have become political talking points, while the incredibly wealthy people in charge have cut funding for both, drastically.

(especially when they claim they follow the teachings of Christ. bsff.)

We all have a right to life, and in our modern world, the right to life is truly the same as the right to affordable and accessible healthcare. I am living proof - without the care I have been so lucky and so privileged to receive, I would not be alive.

“Christ would save your for free”, but far too many people in power have no interest in saving you at all. However, they will take every dime you have while you’re fighting to survive.

Let’s change that.

Mixed and mastered by the incredible Adam Grimm (fullonteeth)

“Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime” and yet.. we have to pay every damn dime to stay alive.