Gratitude

Thank you God that when I couldn’t sleep I woke not from nightmares but sweet dreams.  I love the absurd associations and visits of old friends. Thank you best for the times that departed family return to remind me that this too shall pass.  Thank you that when I wake up I’m not in some refugee camp or war zone or a terribly unhappy marriage to an impossibly demanding wife blaming me for the woes of her family and expecting me to solve all her problems.
Thank you for Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Gordon Lightfoot, Stan Rogers and Shania Twain, country music, rock and roll, folk music and symphony, all those people whose words and songs and music made it possible for me to feel less alone and different.  Thank you for my dog Gilbert and all the dogs and cats who have come before him. Thank you for the fish. I always loved the tropical fish and the cacti and all the other plants that brightened up my daily life.
Thank you for family .Thank you for friends. Thank you for work. Thank you for the sense of meaningfulness that I have found in bits in this so often meaningless and frail existence. Thank you for my minister and the church and the holy books. Thank you for psychiatry and Freud and Jung and Erickson and all the great teachers I had. Thank you for patience. Thank you for PET scans, MRI, scalpels, blood pressure cuffs and stethoscopes. Thank you for the medicine. Thank you for the great books of medical learning. Thank you for the texts and the study and the class rooms and encyclopedias, pubmed, and the internet. Thank you for research. Thank you for the laws and police and the good judges and the good parliamentarians. Thank you for this democracy of Canada that mostly works. Thank you for traditions. Thank you for the wonderful wilderness and land.  Thank you for our heritage. Thank you for this globe and the astronauts and space missions that have made us so much more appreciative of the space we live in and how all is so interconnected. Thank you for sleep and wakefulness. Thank you for this body despite the pain. Thank you for this life despite all the loss and sorrow.
I pray for another man dead in the Downtown Eastside. That’s 4 this year.  Suicides, disease and overdoses.  I will especially miss Alex but then I miss them all.  Remember that year of nightmares with all the faces of those who had suicided waking you every night.  And then that other year when all the people who had died in your arms , skin growing cold and clammy, eyes glassing,  Those haunted you too.  I wished I remembered more the hundred babies I delivered or all those lives who thanked me for helping a little further. Thank you for the letter from the doctor today thanking me for convincing him not to kill himself.
I know they say you shouldn’t care.  Over and over and over again the ‘authorities’ have said ‘don’t care, the patient is the enemy, it’s all about money, just follow the protocols, don’t get involved, know your boundaries, just get the job done and don’t think about them as people, they’re just customers.'
Even the judge and newspaper condemned me for ‘advocating’ for my patients.  Boundaries they say, remain aloof. They're the enlisted men and women. You're supposed to be an officer. Act like one.  Stay aloof. Keep away from them. Don't mix.  Don't live where they live. Don't eat with them.  Keep away from them.  A doctor mustn't have anything to do with patients. There are boundaries. What do you think the Great Wall of China or the Berlin wall was for. It's for your own sake.  We need walls and mortars. Be always ready to have them turn on you. Don't you know the psychopaths never get complaints. They're too smart for that. It's always the doctor who tried to save the life already gone and then the family sues him. Avoid the war zone, watch it on tv. Claim you were there. Nodd, Avoid direct confrontation.  Never let people know you don't know. Didn't anyone teach you anything.  It's all about status and money.
It’s a personal failure when a patient dies.  It’s always been a personal failure when a patient dies.  It was a personal failure when I delivered the still birth.  It’s a fight with me and God and I don’t want anyone to die on my watch.  They called that grandiose, They laughed at me praying for miracles,begging God to let this one pass. They thought I was silly.  I was the most learned and skilled but all the science and all the textbooks wouldn’t put humpty together again.  And they said I shouldn’t care. And they said they knew better and they took the money and the y were rich and they sneered at my softness. They said the winners and the survivors are all that matter. They said life is just  bean counting. They stopped doing medicine after a few years then got into places where people were afraid of them. People are more afraid of them now than they are their diseases. They stopped being doctors and became enforcers.  If they had a real sense of humour they'd be human but they're channelling kindergarden teachers and want to mommy the world because they failed their own children's.
And I moved ever closer to the centre.  My interest had been noncompliance with medical regimen. It was that first patient who died having refused to take the medication I gave him and then lying to me saying he did and dying because he didn’t take the life healing medicine and because of the lies further compounding the death. Then I learned that 80% of schizophrenics don’t take their medicine. Then I learned that 50% of jails and hospitals are filled with the drug and alcohol addicted. Then I realized that everyone was told not to smoke and whole respiratory departments were set up to treat the smokers.  Of course everyone is taught not to go to war and get shot but the whole of medical departments are devoted to ‘noncompliance with good medical advise’.
And then I realized St. Paul had said, “I do that which I should not do and don’t do that which I should”.  And I understood sin. Because I failed miserably as a husband. I failed miserably as a father. I couldn’t save everyone of my patients lives especially when I worked with cancer and aids and addiction.
I miss the light lifting. I miss the university. I miss the easy work in government.  I miss the committees and the bunkers and avoiding seeing patients and all the investigations and the talk. It was so great to talk about patients but so few had actually seen any too many. Now I’m often in court and places where they talk even more. It’s like Hollywood.  I was there. I held the dying again and again. No one else was.  They just want to be told about the blood, so they can live vicariously.  They're the silly people. They take all the money for their nonsense and say 'let them eat cake'.
All my patients are sick.  Some so much sicker than others. Of course they’re getting older and they are getting more and more illness, the cumulations of life and there’s no ‘returning’ from the aging and dying. There’s no ‘solution’ to life but death.
And I’m overwhelmed by the details. I’m overwhelmed by fighting daily to get paid for work and seeing thousands and millions stolen.  I can’t keep ahead of the thieves. I can’t keep ahead of the liars and neglect. The sins of omissions are cumulative.  I just build a sand castle and have someone knock it down.
Thank you for the building Lord. Thank you for the getting up and standing once again. I did as a child and I do as a man. Thank you for resilience. Thank you for the lessons all around me. Thank you for the examples. Thank you for the students who go back to school, again and again, all to get a better life. Thank you for patients who again and again try medications and treatments to do better in life.  Thank you for the drive to create and build and make that is so very human.  Thank you for the trading and marketing.
Thank you for my brother. He’s been such a fine example of a human being for me. Thank you for my father and mother and aunts and cousins and the cowboy uncles. Thank you for my city and country grandfathers , those great men and the grandmothers who stood tall beside them, even though they were little slips of women.
Thank you for the elderly, Thank you for hunting season.
Today I could go fishing.  There are fish to catch and I would feel good I think catching fish but I have salmon in my freezer.  I am going hunting soon.  I should get myself out on the ocean. I’ve been out several times this summer. It’s better if I get out. It’s refreshing, clears my mind, restores my soul.
I want a new dvd player because I’ve lost the channel changer on this one and I can’t want episode 2 of the NCIS with Hedy and it's not blue ray and increasingly there's blue ray and it really doesn't seem to offer anything but the new don't play on the old so I'm forced to get something new. I woke this morning and saw the whole list of things that needed to be done.
I hired the person and they didn’t file, just stuffed a month or two of papers into one file. I have that to do now. I have back logs of billing to do and will never get the missed thousands of lost money.  The government creates ticket poo bean and quarter bean and fifth bean and tenth bean and taxes everything and no one can do any work because this who idea of bean counting and silliness with the constant attack on the citizenry by psychopaths and their mirrors means that so much wisdom and genius is diverted from the real tasks.  Mozart and Bach and Einstein couldn’t live today.   I compare myself with everyone. I and everyone are constipated by the regulations and the court cases that go on for years and years because the system pays people for not doing anything so the judge doesn’t make a decision and the realtor holds out with the land so that he makes money some day in the distant future and no one is present today.
And I just want to get a Willaim Shatner story telling mind chip from the William Shatner novels and plug in and disappear. I don’t blame the drug addicts. I just blame the government for wanting everyone on marijuana and alcohol because they are lying and not giving them better housing or better public transport or new homes in mars but instead encouraging them to do drugs and holding out ‘euthanasia’ as the solution.
Thank you God for the light. Thank you god for the warm days. Thank you for the sun and the rain. Thank you for my vehicles.  I really don’t know if I should get a winch on the truck. It costs so much but I ‘m going on a moose hunting expedition and I’m concerned because so much of hunting trips has been about getting the vehicles unstuck.  I am outfitting all the time. My boat has been years of restoration and use and restoration. I think it’s amazing that I can go up into the mountains or out into the seas but the equipment and my own body have taken an incredible beating. Even now my neighbour is saying we should sail the northwest passage. I just want to sail to mexico and lie in the sun but maybe that’s my ancient love of tequila calling. The northwest passage was something. Stan Rogers.  But that first Alaska coast stretch would be a bitch . I don’t fear the north except ice flows but I’d like to be over in Europe. I love visiting churches and museums. I can’t get enough of churches and museums.  I like outdoor cafes too.  I like how they treat dogs and the humanity of Europe versus the bean counter police and jail world here. We never get more workers just more supervisors and regulators and talkers, but no doers.  I understand why apocalypse movies appeal.
I would go fishing but I’d be alone. I’ve not wanted to be a lone so much recently. Maybe laughing with Lorne reminded me too much of Bernie and Hank and I’ve not been to church so much in the summer and I miss Art and Hugh and Alyson and Julie. I can’t understand why we’re so apart.
It was so good to see Robert.
I have been so blessed with so many friends.  I have been so blessed with the greatest of men in my life, real mountains of men, like John and George.  I must make more time to be with them.  Life is better when I'm making time to be with friends.
I am thankful but said that Alex left.  I am sad about the loss. I’m sad working where death is so common.  Only the old people died when I was a country gp.  But I’ve known more death working with addiction than even when I was working with AIDS.  All week the patients were coming in talking about Robbin Williams.  Then there were those too who celebrated their depression.  The death of a star elevated their own suffering. They are the central leading lady and men of their lives and they feel they should have Andy Warhol’s 20 minute of fame.
I am so thankful for those who have helped me this week.  A crew mutinies and other sailors step forward to man the posts. The ship staggers on.  The threat is again from the staff and not from without.  I can’t trust anyone is the message. I might as well do everything myself. I can only trust those I stand over their shoulder. There is no honour. They is no pride in work. There’s just this demand for more and more money and I can’t get the money because I have to save the life and the bean counters know you can’t be watching them stealing while you’re saving their children. And they don’t care for their children. They’re grown in vats and eat humans.
I have a bone to pick with you God. Why have you given me so much work to do and so little help. Of course I know you’d say it’s my ‘choice’ then why do so many people in the world right now choose to kill each other rather than swabbing decks and watering the plants.
I don’t want to get a medal for killing something. I want to get a medal for keeping Alex from killing himself these last several years.  But maybe if I didn’t talk with him he’d not have died.  That’s the omnipotence. The truth is he was dying. Some cancer or disease we’d not found because he was smashing his arm and thought I’d send him to colleagues he’d not keep appointments or he’d show up looking like a drug addict and they were the smart rich doctors who didn’t have time to waste on people who didn’t care for themselves and they’re tired of me sending them people who don’t wash. They’re tired of helping me with the dregs. They’re making money helping the rich and famous. They would rather see people whose shoes cost $800 and I can’t blame them.  So would I . So would I.  But ….
I don’t know why I’ve wasted my life on lost causes. I don’t know why I can’t be normal and get a normal job and cherry pick and take the easy richest routes and get in those committees and talk about the work and delegate it some poor smack like Hay whose no good for anything else, won’t play, the game, doesn’t understand you break a lot of eggs to make an omelette, trouble maker,  useless shit, asshole, fucking know it all, piece of business, dirty boy, idiot, too bright by half, too big for his britches, doesn’t leave well enough alone, doesn’t understand everyone is stealing, thinks he knows God, and look at him, a loser, can’t even keep his wives happy, they hated him, lots of promise but doesn’t die in the saddle,  isn’t going to be there for us in the end. Doesn't even drink or do drugs. What a loser. Can't be trusted . Calls himself a Christian. Christians can't be trusted.
I was there when my parents died. I was there for my dogs death.  I’ve been always at work.  Everyone wants more of me.  I had a 2 year waiting list.  I selected sicker and sicker people more complicated and unusual thinking that the junior people could do the easy but now the easy gets paid and there’s no money for the complicated and difficult and the masses of stupid people always form gangs and I still have those dreams of being chased by zombies.
This started out as a gratitude list. I woke in the early early morning as I have these last three days overwhelmed by all the details and all the unfinished business. I learned to use my own new fax machine, found that a file had been uploaded to my computer and wondered why I spent tens of thousands of dollars in security for my paitients and this silly cow uploads a file wanting me to trust them that their ‘file’ so important to them that they would use my computer was ‘clean’ and I’ve spent last month removing a ‘trojan’ a half dozen times and cleaning a ‘phish’ and it’s taken a weekend because I needed to go to the apple store to get help with debugging after just one email got through all the firewalls and cost me a day and hours of work to eliminate it. And there was that files, zip files, uplifted to my main computer, right there beside the patient files that hadn’t been backed up in months because …..
So I’ve backed up and thankfully had a really bright computer guy in and now I’m feeling a little more secure but distracted.  So much vulnerability.  The demand from the authorities is perfection. They make the rules and the rules don't apply to themselves but I paid $50,000 for the staff I hired who destroyed records and computer files. I learned from dozens of other doctors about the industrial sabotage that follows terminating such people. I was so thankful for Robert Hare's, Snakes in Suits.  I worry though that I have flashbacks to that lost year of false accusations and a crack addict ho cooping the complaints process to do her destruction and a cow acting out her aggression against men because she's so incompetent and wants 'equality' for stupidity and says "Because I'm a woman I'm smarter than all men" and she reigns supreme in that little beaurocratic office where they sweeps the room for bugs afraid anyone would hear her.....but she's gone and that was years ago.... and today there's no harm done.....you just left a lot of doors unlocked and let a person into your world that shouldn't have been allowed in because they don't care for the wounded. They don't know how hard it is to talk to people who have lost so much and been so badly beaten down again and again.  I have several torture victims and all the horrible trauma people have endured and now they are fighting the bean counters too because there must be money for the parties that they have on high.  All the meetings and the talk and the chandeliers. I miss the chandeliers. I used to look up at the chandeliers and dream.
There’s all the filing to do now, all the faxes to answer, all the people to see.  I paid thousands for people to do work and they didn’t do it.  When the cats away the mouse will play.
It’s soul destroying.
I wwant to believe in my fellow man. I want to trust and believe and hope.
And yet I can be distracted. I can focus on the one bad apple in the lot and forget about the orchards of fine ripe apples.  I’ve been so blessed over and over again but this brought back that year my mother died and those psychopathic women who called themselves ‘feminists’ and spent the year stealing and attacking a man because his mother had died and they hate men and they hate mothers and they use their ideology like Jihadists.  In the end I just worked weekends and evenings. and all week.  They flogged me and like any dead horse I carried on.  I survived. They strutted and preened and flaunted themselves.  Maybe my patient would not have died if I hadn’t had to give half my time to these witches.  These evil trolls took my attention from what I wanted to do which was heal.  Not fight. But there’s no one covering our back these days. Doctors are the targets.  The enemy looks for the red cross to bomb. In the middle east they’re killing doctors for helping the enemy’s troops. We’re only supposed to care for the family of the king not the poor people, not the wounded.
I see here that those who know the tribal signs and follow only the rulings of the colour and are terribly sectarians are successful. It's who you know not what you know.
It’s the way of the world. The court. The flattery.  King Lear said it all.

And I am thankful for the colours. I’m thankful that this isn’t all in black and white. I’m thankful that I have hearing though it’s less and sight though it’s less and I have the fresh fruit and coffee  and my own bed though the dog pushes me aside a lot.
I’m thankful for all the blessings. I just wish my mind would hold onto the god channel and not so easily be distracted by the negatives.  I am so blessed this moment and this day. I’m so thankful for the breath and the chair, this table and this McAir. Thank you for my fingers.  Thank you for my eyes.  Thank you for the thoughts and the mind and it’s entertainments.  Thank you for sensation. Thank you for this world. Thank you for the gift of life. Thank you for the journey. Thank you for all the great teachers. Thank you for Saturday. Thank you for the weekend. Thank you for the night and the day. Thank you for sunshine and rain. Thank you for the plants and soil and the seas and the skies. Thank you for everything Lord. Thank you for the contrasts and the journey. Thank you for this time.
May I do better this day.