Welcome to Dave’s Notes
Dave’s Notes is a long-running, evolving notebook of essays, cartoons, stories, and hard-won wisdom—written at the intersection of medicine, humanity, complexity, and care. Some pieces are short reflections, others are deep dives, many are illustrated with super-RAD cartoons (!), and all are part of an ongoing conversation about how we think, listen, and help one another better.
Below, you’ll find the essays indexed by year—an invitation to browse, wander, and choose what speaks to you. You can also scroll further down the page to engage with the most recent posts, where the conversation continues in real time.
This isn’t your average blog...it’s a platform for discovery, and a place where EMPOWERMENT is always part of the answer! Enjoy!
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2022
McCarty, DE. A Brief Word About the Cartoons and Creative Process.[excerpt from “The Beautiful Blue Book”] Published online 6/9/22
McCarty, DE. Thoughts on Being Patient-Centered. Published online 6/10/22
McCarty, DE. The Story of My Friend Doug and the Problem of Time. Published online 6/14/22
McCarty, DE. The Story of Dr. Matthew Walker and the Fear of Sleeping Pills. Published online 6/15/22
McCarty, DE. The Story About When D’Aria Embarrassed Her Doctors and Helped Invent The Five Finger Approach. Published online 6/20/22
McCarty, DE. The Story of How “Gentlemen! This is No Humbug.” Didn’t Actually Happen. Published online 6/22/22
McCarty, DE. The Story of How I Didn’t Write an Essay About America on Independence Day, and Wrote a Parable, Instead. Published online 7/4/22
McCarty, DE. Truth in Advertising. Published online 9/1/22
McCarty, DE. The New Idea. Published online 9/19/22 [note: an edited version of this essay was published in CRANIO]
McCarty, DE. New Friends. Published online 9/24/22
McCarty, DE. The Makeover. Published online 10/30/22
McCarty, DE. Learning to Look. Published online 11/6/22
McCarty, DE. Where’s Your Hut? Published online 11/11/22
McCarty, DE. There is No OSFA. OR: The Story About How Abandonment Trauma Hurts All Of Us, and How EMPOWERMENT is Our Salvation. Published online 11/17/22
McCarty, DE. Sometimes, You’re the One. OR: The Story About How The Five Finger Approach Found a Problem That Had Never Been Described and How it Changed Wendy’s Life. Published online 11/18/22
McCarty, DE. Cartoons, Sarcasm, and IRE!...Oh, My! Published online 11/28/22
McCarty, DE. Shoveling Snow at the End of the Year. Published online 12/24/22
2023
McCarty, DE. Silent Movie: What We Don’t Hear is Hurting All of Us. OR: How Efficiency Erases Humanity. Published online 1/10/23
McCarty, DE. Happy 57th Birthday to the Beast Known as Sleep Apnea. OR: The Monster Has Left the Building. WHAT DO WE DO? Published online 2/12/23
McCarty, DE. Rocket Fuel. OR: The Siloes of Sleep Medicine, the Semmelweiss Effect, and the Blue Balloon Solution. Published online 2/23/23 [this essay was adapted to audio for Empowered Sleep Apnea: THE PODCAST in Season 2, Episode 1: PROLOGUE]
McCarty, DE. An Open Letter to Providers. OR: What I Learned From Crows. OR: Project: Real Collaboration. Published online 3/2/23 [this essay was adapted to audio for Empowered Sleep Apnea: THE PODCAST in Season 2, Episode 5: THE ONE ABOUT CROWS]
McCarty DE. The Next Level of Patient Care is Navigating the System Itself. Published online 4/25/23
McCarty DE. Complexity Invites Collaboration. OR: The Story about how the Empowered Sleep Apnea project gets a Rock-N-Roll birthday. Published online 8/10/23 .
2024
McCarty DE. “AHA!” Or: The Story About How The Monkey On My Back Made Me Jump Into a Rabbit Hole. Published online 2/28/24.
McCarty DE. Point Your Feet Downstream and Smile! Published online 12/8/24.
2025
McCarty DE. Pressure Toxicity: When the Cure Becomes the Complication. Published online 5/15/25.
McCarty DE.”IT’S NOT A TEXTBOOK!” Reframing Empowered Sleep Apnea as a Complexity Management Tool. Published online 5/18/25.
McCarty DE. Navigating the COMPLEX in Sleep Apnea: From “Balloons and Mountains and Crows” to EMPOWERMENT. Published online 5/19/25
McCarty DE. REBIS RISING! A New Compass for Sleep Medicine in the Age of Complexity. Published online 5/20/25.
McCarty DE. When “Normal” isn’t NORMAL: The Trauma of Dismissal. Published online 5/21/25.
McCarty DE. MEMORIAL DAY: What I’m Still Fighting For. Published online 5/26/25.
McCarty DE. A Simple Question and the Hydra of Diagnosis. Published online 6/1/25.
McCarty DE. Cervical Headgear and the Hidden Harm: An Orthodontic Reckoning Long Overdue. Published online 6/3/25.
McCarty DE. What Counts As Proof? Rethinking ‘Harmlessness’ in Orthodontic Practice. Published online 6/4/25.
Stothard ER. A Call to Evidence: How We Build the Future Together. Published online 6/5/25
McCarty DE. The Future Is Now. OR: How Rebis Gave Form to a Fourteen-Year Old Dream in Sleep Medicine. Published online 6/12/25.
McCarty DE. FLOW. OR: Why a Kitty in a Flood MATTERS on Father’s Day 2025. Published online 6/15/25.
McCarty DE. CPAP Intolerance: It’s Not What You Think! Published online 6/16/25.
McCarty DE. The Tyranny of Labels. OR: Ode to the Nameless Bird. Published online 8/15/25.
McCarty DE. The Five Angels of the Reconstruction. OR: How a Bunch of Non-Doctors Will Save The World of Sleep Medicine as we Know it. Published online 8/20/25
McCarty DE. Unraveling the Gordian Knot of Central Sleep Apnea. OR: An Empowered Response to the 2025 AASM Clinical Practice Guideline on Central Sleep Apnea. Published online 9/11/25
McCarty DE. An Empowered Response: Patient-Centered Sleep Apnea Care in the Age of Teledentistry. OR: “The AASM, The AADSM and The Cheshire Cat walk into a blog…” Published online 8 October 2025
McCarty DE. A Love Letter to Five. OR: “How Do I Love Thee? Let me Count the Ways!” Published online 10/22/25
McCarty DE. What Would Walt Disney Do? Part I—The Fragmentiest Place on Earth ™. Published online 26 October 2025
McCarty DE. What Would Walt Disney Do? Part II—Disneyland 1976, The Team of Teams, and the Reckoning of Medical Ethics. Published online 4 November 2025
McCarty DE. What Would Walt Disney Do? Part III—Welcome to the ISLE. Published online 13 November 2025
Lamberg S, McCarty DE. A Spa Day for Amy—OR: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Brain. Published online 14 November 2025
McCarty DE. The Fear of Sleeping Pills Part II: Melatonin, Heart Failure, and the Subtle Art of Not Panicking. Published online 17 November 2025
McCarty DE. Why is it called ‘Empowered Sleep Apnea’? OR: “How a Doorway Made of Language Itself Can Save Our Field.” Published online 8 December 2025
McCarty DE. To Cover? or Not To Cover?...That is the Question. OR: The Ethics of Defining “Sleep Apnea” in an Age of Coverage, Codes, and Conscience. Published online 29 December 2025
McCarty DE. KPAP: The Writing is on The Wall. OR: How an “Upside Down” Pressure Strategy Might Just Save Us All. Published online 30 December 2025
McCarty DE. Who is Happy E? A New Year’s Note on Enigmas, Fire Horses, Echoes, and the Kind of Knowing that Moves. Published online 31 December 2025
2026
McCarty DE. The Three Stars of Empowerment. Or: Why Shared Consciousness is the Only Way Out of the Fragmentiest Place on Earth. Published online 12 January 2026
McCarty DE. What is Narrative Based Medicine, and Why Might it Save Us All? OR: Why Getting the Diagnosis Right is Sometimes the Wrong Question. Published online 20 January 2026
Boyd K & McCarty DE. When Childhood Traits Become Adult Bodies. OR: ADHD, Breathing, and the Long Arc of Physiology. Published online 26 January 2026
McCarty DE. Good Trouble in the Dental Chair. Or: Reading the AADSM Consensus Through the Language of Empowerment. Published online 31 January 2026
McCarty DE. Six Things that Matter to Me About Central Sleep Apnea Now That I Live In The Moutains: Field Notes From An Elevated Practice. Published online 3 February 2026
McCarty DE & Walter A. The Nose Rules! Especially During Cold and Flu Season. OR: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love our Noses. Published online 5 February 2026
McCarty DE. The Wrong Fight: “Providers”, Professionalism, and the Hollowing of Medicine. OR: An Empowered Response to the ACP Position Statement on What We Call Ourselves. Published online 12 February 2026
McCarty DE. Sleep in the Time of Cannabis PART ONE: CBD CBN and the Crimes of Sleeping Pills OR: A Field Guide to Curiosity, Caution, and Not Losing Our Minds Again. Published online 19 February 2026.
McCarty DE. Snow White was Never Waiting for a Prince. OR: The Forest, The Mirror, and the Iterative Work of Showing Up. Published online 2 March 2026.
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SCROLL BELOW TO ENCOUNTER MOST RECENT POSTS, SCROLLING EVEN LOWER TO GO BACK IN TIME…
Unraveling the Gordian Knot of Central Sleep Apnea
…by naming the WHY, the WHAT (measurable goals), and the HOW (central apnea physiology, rather than label-based, DEVICE-oriented care), clinicians can move beyond cultural “DEVICE- DEFICIENCY” reflexes and into true patient-centered care…
The Five Angels of the Reconstruction
…the story doesn’t end here, Life Fans! Out of the fog, into this fractured city, we see five unexpected guides—not physicians, not titans of sleep science, not pioneering capno-centric breathing physiologists--but thinkers and seers from other realms. They arrive like mythic allies, each carrying a distinct lens, each riding on a golden beam of light…
The Tyranny of Labels
This is where I live. This is the twilight zone I work in: between the need for structure and the need to preserve mystery and curiosity…if we abandon labels entirely, we lose the ability to coordinate care, to bill for services, to gather data. But if we cling to them as the whole truth, we kill the living bird.
CPAP INTOLERANCE:
…He says the words we’ve heard a hundred times, in different accents, with different backstories, always with the same exhale of defeat: “I just couldn’t tolerate it.”…
The Future is NOW
At the time, it felt ambitious, disruptive—perhaps even romantic—especially for those of us practicing within the hidebound confines of academic medicine, where change happens like the glaciers…
A Call to Evidence: How We Build the Future Together
Together, we can create the path that future generations deserve to walk. One with room to breathe, to grow, and to sleep in peace…
What Counts as Proof? Rethinking ‘Harmlessness’ in Orthodontic Practice
When plausible mechanisms of harm exist, the burden is on the profession to disprove—not simply deny—that harm…
Cervical Headgear and the Hidden Harm: An Orthodontic Reckoning Long Overdue
As a child, he wore cervical headgear to correct a bite that wasn’t hurting anyone except maybe the expectations of the school photographer. Now, as an adult, he wonders: was the cost of that correction ever truly explained?
A Simple Question and The Hydra of Diagnosis
It’s important to realize that this clinical failure is no individual’s fault. It is a failure of integration, a symptom of a deeper disease.
Claudio’s suffering happened due to a failure of language.
Memorial Day: WHAT I’M STILL FIGHTING FOR
Now, all these years later, I’m still serving. No uniform. No salutes. Just a different kind of frontline. So..this Memorial Day, as I cast my memory back, I’m not just remembering the fallen. I’m remembering what they fell for — and what I’m still standing for. Because the fight didn’t end when I hung up my BDU’s.
It just changed theaters.
When “Normal” isn’t NORMAL: The Trauma of Dismissal
This isn’t just bad medicine. It's a category error. It's what happens when insurance criteria are mistaken for clinical truth. When numbers replace narratives. When we swap out the complex, multicolored tapestry of human sleep for a grayscale spreadsheet column labeled "AHI."
REBIS RISING! OR: A New Compass for Sleep Medicine in the Age of Complexity
This is not the world of “doctor knows best,” anymore! It’s the world of the gardener, the listener, the story-weaver. And it is the world Rebis Health was born to inhabit.
Navigating the COMPLEX in Sleep Apnea: From “Balloons and Mountains and Crows” to EMPOWERMENT
…Complex problems can’t be solved by just throwing expertise at them. These problems are emergent, messy, and relational. Think ecosystems, economies, raising teenagers—or managing chronic health conditions like Sleep Apnea….
“IT’S NOT A TEXTBOOK!”: Reframing Empowered Sleep Apnea as a Complexity Management Tool
The result is a tool not just to educate, but to transform. A strange and beautiful hybrid: medical compass, leadership primer, cognitive exoskeleton, and bedtime parable…
Pressure Toxicity: When the Cure Becomes the Complication
“When the pressure goes too high, it feels like a JET ENGINE strapped to my face!”
Point Your Feet Downstream and Smile!
Looking back, I see now that he gave me a narrative that allowed me to think outside of panic, and into joy, despite the circumstances.
Complexity Invites Collaboration
When a project like this moves forward, you have a thousand little choices that you make, so it helps to listen carefully to what the Universe is trying to tell you. Some messages are faint, some are hard to miss. The message I’ve been getting has been so loud, it’s almost deafening.
The Next Level of Patient Care is Navigating the System Itself
The Elephant in the Room is the fracturing of our health care system itself…

