Is there a medical doctor on the plane?

“Is there a medical doctor on the plane?
I’m unlucky this way.  I’ve responded to a medical emergency in flight several times now in the past 2 years.  It is Air Canada this time.  The plane has taxied to the take off position on the run way.  I hope another doctor is on board. There isn’t anyone else joining the stewardess leaning over the man in the section ahead of me.
I walk up the aisle, identify myself.  The man is in the window seat.  He appears obtunded.  The two passengers beside him move out to let me slip in.  He is breathing slowly.  I place my fingers on his pulse talking directly to him. He’s moving very slowly, pupils midway.  He smells of alcohol.  Maybe something else.
I proceed to ask the emergency questions, talking to him, reality testing, conclude he’s disoriented, slurring words, fluctuating consciousness, disoriented.
The stewardess leans over and asks if we should take him back to the terminal.  “Yes, “ I answer that will be best.  He’s irritated and admitted he’s been drinking rum and tea before the flight. He’s a very poor historian given mental state.  It’s all I can do to engage his floating attention.  I don’t know if he’s just taken alcohol and whether the blood level is rising or falling.  It’s best that we return.
The airport’s emergency services come aboard when the pilot gets the plane back to the terminal .  I briefly tell the fellow the salient features and my diagnosis Delirium secondary alcohol and possibly drugs.  He engages the man, professionally and efficiently. It’s apparent this airport team is particularly time aware.  The man staggers and stumbles sailor walking the length of the stationary plane.
The stewardesses thank me.  I find a card, write down my college #, put my diagnosis on the back.  The stewardess are all young and beautiful. Throughout the flight they each stop to thank me.  I am rather happy to have beautiful young women smiling at me.  Bit of a novel experience at my age.
I love the irony or synchronicity.  Being a physician/psychiatrist/ and addictionist I couldn’t be better suited to this particular emergency.
The last emergency I helped with on Air Canada was coming back from Hong Kong.  Pseudo seizures secondary to  metabolic acidosis after panic attacks.  When I was a family physician I’d have been hard pressed to handle either of these cases.  Both were custom made for me today.
Back when I was a gp I was faced with a delivery on a train. Despite delivering a hundred babies in my day I was incredibly relieved   when an obstetrician came forward and  took over.  Personally I'd given a Doctor of Divinity a similar sense of relief when I came forward.  He'd been good enough to heed the call.  
I'll never get cocky though. Handling an angry psychotic  man on one flight had taxed all my skills despite my psychiatric expertise.
 This time I was lucky.  God was kind.
It was good to be of service too.
I rather liked all those  smiling grateful young stewardesses though.  Made me feel like Brad Pitt must feel always.  Not bad. Not bad for an old guy.

Paranoid Depressive Thinking

The key factor in paranoid thinking is that the person with the disorder is convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that their problems are not of their making.  Once they have concluded that they are the ‘victim’  they are now ‘entitled’ to ‘identify’, often arbitrarily, what it is that is causing them to suffer.
Paranoid thinking can follow from genetics or brain trauma.  The person suffers and lacks insight into their causing the suffering of themselves and others.  If this was the only time paranoid thinking showed it’s ugly head it would be a limited condition. The percentage of such cases is relatively rare.
What is common though is alcoholism and addiction.  These are commonly associated with paranoid thinking.  It’s seen in the statements ‘you make me drink’.  “if you had my wife, you’d drink too”.  “With my job stress I need to smoke crack”.  “With my pain, I need heroin”.
It’s also seen in simple depression.  “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen’.  Indeed if you were a powerless peasant, an Irish man during the potato famine, sold into slavery or a black slave working in the cotton fields or a modern day teen age sex slave, then you would truly be a ‘victim’ and being ‘paranoid’ about your ‘owner’ or ‘pimp’ might well justify your paranoid thinking.
The trouble is, that today, people ‘justify’ their ‘depression’ because they don’t have ‘helicopters’ or ‘yachts’ and that’s ‘somebody else’s fault’.
Everyone has paranoid thinking at some times.  The issue is how sustained is it and how it responds to or doesn’t respond to ‘facts’.
When I feel I’m a ‘victim’ and become ‘paranoid’ ,thanks to the media, I don’t tend to think that I’m strategically misinformed by them for the sake of them selling communication, but rather I think the enemy is ‘government’.  Government is my first go to.  When you’re paranoid whatever the country or era the best object of your fear and entitlement to victimship is to blame your own ‘government’.
In times of war, government actually ‘externalizes’ the paranoia and the enemy, and source of all suffering is the ‘hun’, the ‘commie’, the ‘french’, al Quaida, Boco Harem,  the Americans, the Brits, the Chinks, the Japs, the Prods, the Jews, whatever is convenient.
Without a major war then naturally government wants to deflect frustrations from the rapacious taxation and create a ‘war on drugs’ which was actually a war mostly on ‘drug dealers’ or now a ‘war on terrorists’ which is indeed a war on terrorists only Terrorists are a bit like bed bugs, always laying eggs and hard to kill.
I like to think that the politicians who I can at least elect aren’t at fault in the government but rather some ‘faction’.  These are usually ‘eurocrats.’  I imagine some ‘in house’ group, a conspiracy by say the ‘appointed’ Supreme Court, or senior bureaucrats but that the elected members don’t know about it.  That’s the old idea that the King is good but the advisors are bad.  Melanie Klein showed that the paranoid didn’t want to believe mother was all bad so coined the term the ‘bad breast’.  The good breast gave milk when the child wanted it but the ‘bad breast’ didn’t respond with alacrity.  Black and white thinking, all good all bad is classic paranoia.
In democracies this factionalism comes out with partisan ship. The Republics are evil or the Democrats are evil.  Paranoids aren’t consistent.  They  switch camps too because they think they’re rational but they are indeed classic ‘emotional thinkers’.  Their allegiances are frequently affected by their feeling like the drunk who loves you in the cups and forgets you sober.
With an election there’s demonization of the other party too. Paranoids are like soccer fans only their home team is their own narcissism.  It’s really all about them.  You are their friend as long as you reward their insatiable need.
I have paranoid thinking when I become afraid for my future.  I fear aging vulnerability and can see the with the declining safety and likelihood of a respectable place for an old person ‘physician assisted suicide’ is going to look good.
Sometimes paranoids think it’s aliens that are messing with the world and with them.
Recently it’s been a war on the miners and fossil fuels industry.  Sometimes its a war on the lawyers.  Sometimes its doctors.  Corporations are a real easy target for the paranoid.  Feminists blame white men.  There’s a real hard on in the media for the religious.  Scientists are commonly the target  Indians blame the Residential School but not the laws and leaders and judges and prime ministers and their parties who created them. I’m a white man so I get paranoid about radical feminists at times.
I sometimes catch myself when I have these brief moments by thinking that the chance that it’s aliens is equally like to it being the prime minister or president.  Unfortunately aliens are more likely to be friendly than hostile and clearly if I’m having a touch of paranoia it’s because I’m feeling threatened.
If I was an american I would know it was the IRA.  Everyone knows the IRA are controlled by the CIA who in turn are controlled by corporate aliens.
My friend who is definitely paranoid considers corporations are poisoning her food.
The environmentalists collectively are my favourite paranoids because they’re sure that man is killing the planet.  They ignore the resilience of the shark, birds and cockroaches.  Maybe dinosaurs were walking ‘too heavy on Gaia’ so she extinguished them.
The United Nations Agenda 21 is paranoid about people and wants to extinguish 7 billion.
To the paranoid somebody else is always the problem.  What’s worse if if a paranoid is depressed then there’s a good chance the paranoid might want to suicide and take you with them.  They’ve got nothing to live with because the planet is going to die because of the Alberta Tar Sands or the Chinese are en mass converting to moslem and forcing atheist americans to accept sharia law or die.
It’s always perfectly reasonable whatever one thinks from inside the paranoid psychosis.
There’s no successful psychotherapy for paranoids .  While everyone has paranoid thinking at times paranoids live in their fear and resentment and suck that time like there was no tomorrow.  Terrorists are always fairly paranoid. Suicide bombers are definitely depressive paranoids.
Medications, anti psychotics have been highly effective in reducing the extreme edges of the paranoia.  A paranoid who spits on Jews for instance on medication is likely to maintain the idea that the reason for starvation in the world is the jews, they will likely stop spitting on jews. The behavioural expression of paranoia is best managed with medication but take the medication away and not uncommonly the particular paranoid delusional system will return.  With depressive paranoid thinking treating the depression with antidepressants and antipsychotics might in fact restore the person to normal where they look at their ideas that Napoleon is today  reincarnated as  Chinese general whose also a transexual might suddenly seem odd to the person. They say, I think I had some odd thoughts. They don’t seem to be bothering me .  In time with further enjoyment and good living they might let go of the paranoid ideation unless its trigger. The pure paranoid doesn’t get better.
The drug addicts paranoia doesn’t suddenly stop with the drug stopping.  it’ often takes a year or two for a person whose had paranoia as a result of their alcoholism , stimulant or mariuana using to actually have clear thoughts.  Mostly their thinking will remain impaired as long as they are around other drug addicts with crazy thinking. It’s always easy to relapse to paranoid depressive thinking.
In this regard paranoid depressive thinking has some elements of the dissociations that are associated with post traumatic stress disorder. When the latter as war vets see war on television they suddenly being to act and behave like they’re back in the battlefield.  All the paranoid depressive thinking person needs is a new story about Rothwell to get the paranoid juices flowing.
I m fairly reasonable right now but financial insecurity can quickly have me thinking the billionaires are out to destroy us. I helps to have insight. Humour helps even more Good friends and loving family are the best buffer.
 

Social Housing and Nimbyism

The Neighbour began violently banging on the walls at 6 am. I was quietly dressing to catch a cross country flight.  The banging went on for 10 minutes and was so forceful as to cause the pictures to fall off the wall.  My friend, who I was staying over with said,
“That’s the neighbour, she’s always banging on the walls and ceiling.  Everyone has complained.  I’ve even complained to the super.  Nothing is done."
Suddenly the banging is on the door.  My friend opens her door.  She is tired and in her housecoat. The neighbour is wide eyed, crazy, yelling.
“Stop banging on my walls,” she shouts.  My friend holds up her arm to stop the young woman from barging into her suite.  She backs up screaming ‘Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.”  Every action, every statement is an sophisticated attack. She, the aggressor, is positioning herself as the victim.  “You bang on my walls every morning at 8:30.” It’s 6 am I’ve been getting ready quietly so as not to disturb my friend.  She usually leaves for work before 8:30.  But that isn’t the point, is it.  This is a distraction.  She’s attacking here and now.
My psychiatrist mind has flipped into gear because of the danger she presents. She’s either psychotic or a sophisticated borderline sociopath.  She’s sweating profusely. That could be from the banging or she may be in withdrawal.  Her irritability could be heroin withdrawal but such paranoid projection is more common with marijuana psychosis, crystal meth or heroin psychosis. My crystal meth patients become like this.
Of course she doesn’t look like the stereotype of the mentally ill or addicted. She’s well groomed, maybe 40’s, plain but not unnattractive.  My friend says she has a job.  The rent for suites here is standard Vancouver , well over a thousand. It’s a nice neighbourhood but no neighbourhood is safe from drugs or even sociopaths.
The whole idea of ’social housing’ has the drug addicted and ex convicts increasingly housed in nice communities because such orderly civilized environments ameliorate the insanity and violence of these populations. It’s like the distribution of difficult children in normal classrooms. The normal students provide structure for the ill mannered.  The alternative is the ghetto. The Vancouver Downtown Eastside is a breeding grounds for crime, violence, drug addiction and insanity.
Government agencies, civil and human rights associations, ex convict advocacy activists, mental health agencies, families of the ex convicts and the mentally ill, all serve to get their individual concerns cared for in the best of districts. At the other end of the spectrum the rich and privileged don’t accept ‘social housing’.  They have gated communities. They are protected by their wealth.  The middle class can no longer afford the same so increasingly they’ve turned to Nimbyism.  Not In My Back Yard.
The whole idea of ’social housing’ developed 50 years ago.  That was the height of community movements, middle class values, law and order. The police and authorities in general were widely supported by the citizens.  So many of the adults had returned from World War II.  They had seen up close what ‘chaos’ was like.  They’d seen or heard about the concentration camps. The Jewish doctors, gay composers, ethnic minorities and anyone different had been gassed.  The Soviets had raped everyone in their ‘liberation" especially teen age girls and boys.  After the long nightmare, everyone wanted peace and order.
It’s 2015.  The police have no authority.  My police friend left the force when she said “I set out to be a crime fighter.  I was reduced to being a ‘crime recorder’.  Police are simply not allowed to do anything. When they catch criminals red handed  rich lawyers  get privileged judges to let their clients off on a ‘technicality’. “  Justice is a revolving door.
I treat victims of physical sexual violence. They’ve lost limbs. They have nightmares for years.  They’re still in treatment for the horrifying consequences of their assaults when the criminals are being released back into the community.  They’re terrified. Some of my patients are the victimizers. They’re terrifying.
Increasingly the judges, once the admired back bone of society are being exposed by the rapacious media.  Everywhere the media exposes to the masses the one bad apple and demands an enquiry into the whole barrels. There’s no money for front line resources so police and mental health care givers are forever forced to cut corners or ignore all the while million dollar enquiries make everyone rich writing up more plans and protocols that no budget has resources to address.. Media logic goes like this.   One northern judge in British Columbia was caught for pedophlia so all judges are pedophiles. The former head of the Supreme Court of Canada was a slurring alcoholic so all judges are drunks and alcoholics.  The judges increasingly are throwing the police under the bus, more concerned apparently with popularity than justice.    Everyone in authority knows there will be no one to protect them in retirement.  When the police learned that the proposed new gun laws for disarm police on retirement suddenly the police were no longer en mass in favour of highly restrictive gun laws.  All those in the know want to be living in a gated community. Private security firms prosper like never before.
The industry of housing as “mental health and addiction’ treatment simply  takes the money from true treatment, psychiatrists, physicians,  nurses, psychologists, addictionists, counsellors, standardized scientific therapies and certified treatment facilities and certified recovery houses with treatment components. They give the money instead to ’slum landlords’. These smart businessmen raise the ‘rent’ on their unliveable facilities because they’re overnight called ’social housing.  When the tenants destroy them the landlords give the repair bills to the health care system.  When the facilities are repaired to a liveable state they rent them out at high priced Vancouver prices to ‘normal’ people who now will live in these improved bed bug and cockroach free apartment complexes. The money designated for addiction has paid for the upgrades.
Meanwhile with ‘social housing’ the violent, the insane and the drug addicted are distributed through communities. They’re ’somebody’ else’s problem”.
Psychiatrist used to be able to ‘committ’ for treatment the mentally ill who were violently insane and destructive in the community. Yet today the government has closed down all the asylum and mental health beds with the result that there are simply no resources. The ‘bar’ for admission to a psychiatric facility is raised so high that even psychotic schizophrenics who publicly chop off the heads of their neighbours are quickly discharged  free in the community.  The assumption is that these patients are taking medications that will stop them from being violent. The trouble is that there are so few resources that when patients stop taking medications its often months or another violent episode before anyone notices that they are no longer getting their monthly injections or following up with the treatment team.  The sex offenders from the criminal system are similarly placed in the community with marvellous ‘parole’ and ‘probation’ idealized recommendations.  These pretty documents no doubt make judges feel good about their ‘intent’. The trouble is with no jails and no community staff and castrated  police and a thoroughly unnaccountable destructive deceitful media and vigilantte Facebook justice, there’s no follow through in fact.
When I said to the crazy lady, “You were the one hammering on the wall. We both heard you and you need to leave.”  She shouted spitting in my face, “Shut the fuck up you fucking old man.”  I backed away.
I am old. I’m in my 60’s.  My friend is in her 50’s.  She’s focused her life on health care administration and raising children. She has no training in dealing with criminals or psychotics or violent young women who know all the angles and claim they’re the victim. They have a monopoly of victimship and can bring massive beaurocratic  governmental to bear on kindly innocent people like my friend, the sweet older quiet lady, who has never harmed anyone.  Everyone she has ever met will speak to her good manners and respect for others and loving nature. This woman likely has a rap sheet a mile long. Yet the courts and agencies no longer respect individual histories. Everyone is equal before the law.  Character doesn’t count in the courts. In the street Vigillante justice runs on how many people you know and how many hits you can get on Facebook by taking a video out of context.  Just be sure to sound politically correct.
I work in the mental health and addiction field.  People like her don’t ‘just happen’.  She had all the ‘lingo’ rehearsed.  The best defence is an offence.  She was like Hitler where claimed his destructive tank blitzkriegs were ‘defence.’  Politically correctness is all in the language. Get the right marketing jingo and everyone will believe you should pick up the lump end by the clean end and that this clean end exists and is apparent to all.  The neighbour went from loud to catastrophic. She’s a ticking bomb, a social terrorist. Now’s she’s hammering on walls and ceilings and doors. What will she do next.  My  friend admits that everyone in the building is afraid of her.  She certainly frightened me.
I’ve always been afraid of drug addicts. I know the neuroscience of drug addiction. I’ve watched my little cockapoo dog growl defensively, whenever anyone delirious on marijuana, crack or crystal meth approaches. Animals sense the unpredictability of people who are emotionally anaethetized  bubble boys and girls. These people are able to inflict all manner of emotional and physical trauma without feeling anything in return because they’re drugged.  They’re also always the ‘victim’. Right.
Theres’ a tug of war between the rich with ‘gated communities’ and the new ‘bunker houses’. These two or more story bunker houses were all the rage in medieval towns. Then a family home had to stand against the riots that plagued the city.   Few if any small windows on the lower floor with the big windows on the second or third floor. Reinforced doors.  That’s what the rich have begun to demand.
Barricaded private complexes are a response to the increasing decline of law and order. The public structures are all but collapsing into increasing chaos and brute force rule.  If my friend hadn’t put up her hand to stop this woman pushing her way forward she might well have barged in. Bullies take advantage when they see weakness.     This neighbour would have phoned the police  too and claimed she’d been assaulted if it was one on one. The first come first serve justice system gives the edge to the complainant.  Criminals and frequent fliers know the system.  Everyone knows in Canada that ‘false allegations’ are standard but that there’s never any consequence.  As one judge asked about slander said, “everyone lies in court, it’s my job to assess whose lying more.”
Everyone doesn’t lie and no judge can do what lie detector tests and countless psychological scientific studies have proved.  But what we do know in psychopaths can act better than the innocent. The innocent are no longer the victims.  Everyone is the new ‘victim’.  "Nobody is right when everyone is wrong."  The criminals all know the system and rule because frankly there is no other authority.
“Shut the fuck up you fucking old man!”
There is lawlessness here and now.  The question is when will the media do it’s job and report that.  Will parliaments and congress make the pendulum swing back to the centre. Will judges be supported in making the tough decisions.  Will the rich want to face the ‘peasants’ again.  Have they so quickly forgotten what saying ‘give them cake’ caused.  Do the corporate czars really think they can protect themselves from the Lennins of this world.  The middle classes, the truthful,  the educated, the professionals, the artisans, the engineers, the businessmen, all those whose represent the meritocracy, will they be protected because they don’t do well in chaos. The Pol Pot killed the doctors and university teachers first then killed half the country later throwing a once thriving country into the dark ages.
Hitlers first act was to make the Brown Shirts. The brown shirts became his personal army. They were made up of pedophiles, drug addticts, criminally insane and sociopaths, bullies.
A day doesn’t go by when I don’t hear of a person being brutalized by their neighbours.  The real fear of investing a million dollars in a Vancouver property is not the predicted tsunami and earthquakes but more importantly the very reall possibility of the dangerous or just offensive neighbour.  I know of dozens and dozens of such cases.
Personally I’ve lived the last few years in what is essentially a gated community.  After hearing so often of such complaints I witnessed first hand what is perhaps best called ‘evil’.  When the psychotic is powerful there is little language to capture the depth of insanity one must face.
I feel sorry for my friend.  I get to leave.  Her sleep has been disturbed many nights.  My day began with a threatening confrontation which my friend says is routine, If she’s not banging on her door she’s banging on the woman above her, the man beside her, shouting in the halls or threatening people coming through the vestibule with her.  She’s clearly way out of control and has been for a very long time.  No one is a bout to control her soon because frankly the system will punish the good rather than engage with this evil.  The system lacks the mechanism, resolve or even the intelligence to address it.  It’s not an individual.  It’s a disease.
If it’s not in your neighbourhood.  It’s coming.  It is coming to your neighbourhood.  

Wednesday Evening Journal

It’s hard to reckon how hard a start it was this morning. I wish I worked for someone else. I would have taken a ‘mental health’ day.  But then ‘mental health’ days become addictive.  I loved the program that allowed workers who were ‘sick’ to come to work and sit in the lounge but be present. Too many people in Canada are working two jobs.  As well, misery loves company. Most of mental health is made worse by isolation. And with the addiction incidence, taking time off is a way often to maintain an unhealthy lifestyle rather than get the appropriate treatment for the addiction. Or move over and let someone else have a better job.
Easy for me to say now that the bed is calling my name. I was fortunate.  Thanks to God and coincidence and the universe and the force it was a light day.  Welfare Wednesday always is.  The welfare cheque for so many is the ‘party money’.  And the question arises is it better to just maintain this lifestyle and morbidity in society or to have more formal structure.
I’m a hard ass.  I’m economically grounded. I have strange old fashioned ideas of community and public health. I was in the park today and there were more needles.  Suddenly the ‘needle exchange’ program became the free needles and proliferation of needles  and needles on sidewalks, parks and back alleys and one begins to wonder whose making all the money on this obvious waste and the creation of a public health hazard.
But I worked with others.  Patients were motivated and cooperative. I didn’t have those critical entitled people demanding more from a product that was already free to them.  I didn’t have any more threats or outburst or stuff stolen or the extortionist tactics. I didn’t have any attempts at sexual manipution or physical overbearing. It was just a normal day at the office. Some interesting pathology.  We gathered as doctors to listen to a chest which is likely pulmonary embolism.  We discussed what people would do if they had a gun placed on their desk like I did.  I explained why  I didn’t call the police.  I shared why I didn’t.  We had lunch and talked about the differences between women and men and how little women seemed to know about the world we lived in.  We discussed the way male and female patients had threatened us in our work and the standard patterns.  The triangulation of the women and the attempt to use a proxy while with the men it was always one on one.  The doctors expressed their fear of angry women patients and their experiences of delayed and indirect violence. We laughed about the irrelevance of media.  There was a certain camaraderie.  Staff joined us and we joked together about the demands of work.
It was good to vent together.  Black humour.
As the day wore on I didn’t feel so much alone.  Dinner with my doctor friend he shared his own sense of alienation.  We laughed about aging and how simply growing older made us less ‘attached’ to the things of this world.  Everyone was dominated by the environmentalists. Nothing could be done now without their unelected input. They seemed to be stopping everything everywhere and extorting millions if not billions from society but no one seemed to care that overnight this ‘conspiracy’ was all the vogue.  Every other ‘conspiracy’ was challenged by the lies upon lies of this latest collection of ‘cults’ some scientific, some pseudoscientific. All of them were ‘prophecizing but it was called ‘predictions’.  Isaiah would roll over in his graves to hear these priests with this mumbo jumbo.
Meanwhile I’m waiting for my $50,000 back pay and wondering when I’ll ever get the million dollars I lost in time playing bit parts in others make believe dramas.  I was the distraction. I was the scapegoat. I was the statistic that justified the powers turning their back on the baby killing en mass.  Lets keep an eye on this radical while the suits steal the bullion and kill as many as they can in the meantime.  Soften everyone up and make things so bad ‘physician assisted suicide’ will sell like abortion, marijuana and hotcakes.
The Israeli F35’s are being deployed.
China’s leaders have stated through their media proxy that they want to rule the world and that they must be prepared for war against the west.  They’re threatening war against everyone of the neighbours and continue to kill feminists in the womb while creating an excess of men.  Sunni terrorists expand everywhere and security becomes more and more difficult to maintain.  It’s a fragile thing this thing called freedom.  We’re on the verge of war with the threats of catastrophic earthquakes and tsunamis pending.
I’m older. Tired.  Glad to have got through this day.  I’ve prayed and even meditated. The gloom didn’t lift till dinner.  There were moments of light but the burden was ever present.  I don’t like this chronic adult hood.  There doesn’t seem to be any freedom on the edge of life.  We talked of our caution.  I shared my planning the Atlantic Expedition.  I can see myself sailing the north Atlantic islands .There’s something to the purpose. This slow moving continuation of the incomplete sail to cross Mexico or Panama disrupted then by lies and addiction.  Such a major set back.  Now the South Chinese seas are full of pirates and further along there are Somali Moslem killers. Everywhere Christians are being persecuted but the news refuses to talk about this.  It’s politically correct to kill Christians.  One can kill white men too.  It’s especially good to kill old Christian white men or even old Catholic white men.  Just don’t kill lions.
We talked about the effort to survive that the old are faced with now.
It’s been a long day.  I will sleep and this day will be over.  I showed up for it.  The meeting was good.  I was glad to be among friends.  Full house tonight.  Some military folk.  Doctors movie people business people, beautiful people.  Moments of bittersweet nostalgia.
Thank you Jesus.

Ego Surfing

I have surfed every channel

On my ego mind

There is nothing worth watching

Wednesday Mid day Journal

I've made it to work. The drive was fine.  No major traffic problems. No strange obscene extraordinary patient issues greeted me. A day in the life. I'm running on fumes in a way.  Trying to think of all the contingencies that can be considered for me being out of the office a few days.  Disruptions in routine.  Back up of demands.  Worrying I'm missing something. Considering what deadlines are out there. Still training administrative staff. As yet not sure they're on top of things.  They are but they're not communicating what they're doing enough to still my anxieties.  Takes time to trust.  Half my colleagues have stopped hiring staff because of the high cost of turn over.  It wouldn't be the same but the incredibly intrusive high accoutability demanded of physicians in comparison to others is burdensome.  I feel increasingly that we're measured against perfection but we're sent out into the war zone with a broom handle instead of a gun. Meanwhile the smug beaurocratic leadership brag to their superiors of how many cowards they shot in the back each day.

(A text message from staff answers all the unanswered question, my worrying mind moves on looking for other things to latch onto)

And I must pray more. I'm struggling to maintain optimism.  It's a sunny day. Gratitude.  My dog is well. I'm here. I'm about to leave for another clinic.  There's too many moving parts.  I'm just got to do the next right thing.  I'm moving in molasses.  It's a strange week.  One night I woke at 4 am and today I've slept through the night but woke kind of depleted. Dreamed of a bear within easy shooting range. A nice dream but I only had a handgun and left my rifle in the holster of the horse but I'd switched to a harley and didn't have the rifle in a holster but I could walk back and get it. When I returned the bear was still there.  And I was wishing it was a deer.  Aiming and trying to visualized a deer because I like venison more than bear meat.  Then the alarm went off.  The dog had nuzzled me sometime but backed off and the alarm woke me instead.

Now I'd curl up in bed and start over. It's that kind of fetal position foggy head going through the motions kind of day.  Work is good. 

This after noon it's addiction medicine.  Mostly like general practice. Protocol driven.  Not like specialist work with 'why am I still unhappy" and "I know we've tried everything known to man...don't you have anything else....yes,but.."

So I'll be facing the 'you don't care.'  "It's your fault I'm not getting off drugs'.  "You don't have very good bedside manner."  "I'd like a better doctor."  "I want a better medication."  "The government should pay for me to do drugs." "Why are you late." 

I'm raw I guess.  The constant barrage of criticism has got under my skin.  I don't seem to build up character armour fast enough. All the backstabbing of the authorities coupled with the chronic barrage of complaints in front of me and me don't getting any relief.  "I relapsed because ....(chose any number.).

"I'm depressed." 

You're depresed because you're doing crack and crystal meth.

"My other doctors give me valium. I need more oxycontin.  My other doctors gave me oxycontin for 10 years and now they won't see me and you won't help me with my pain.'

They're sometimes from the streets. The worst are wearing three piece suits.  Well dressed, well educated. Same song and dance. Better costumes . Better set.

I'm enjoying watching Halle Berry in Extant - She's incredible.  But the idea of this alien taking over people is like my work.

I talk to people one day and they're reasonable and appropriate and easy to be with then they're relapsing and doing drugs or hung over and drinking more and suddenly they're super sensitive and critical and looking for someone to fight with. It's eggshells and I'm ducking and dodging all the venom and beaurocrats are just begging to tag team into the fight to beat up on the doctor because they hate caregivers, they hate the front line workers and would destroy all the police, doctors and nurses who are seeing people and take their bows because their organizations kept the corrupt system going by throwing another sacrifice to the mass media. 

I'm gathering myself up. I'm preparing to face the music.  I'm probably going to have a great day. Mostly people are fine. It's just the one person that hurts.  One person makes it their mission to really hurt you and the trick is to be bland and vanilla and robotic and not be individual because any individuality will attract attack.  White coat your whole personality. This is the day of corporate automotron.  Fall on your sword.  You've lost millions becasue you had a conscience. You lost millions because you cared for patients. Remenber what the leading beaurocratic doctor told you."Patients are the enemy'.  Always practice 'defensive medicine'.  You went into the wrong field. Like all the engineers, doctors and accountants and other professionals you needed to take a law degree and martial arts courses to prepare for todays workplace. Everybody's wrong when nobody's right.

Egads.

Gratitude. Look for the positive.  Seek the good in the day. Remember the lovely woman with a month off crack. She's no longer prostituting. The young man is a year off pot. But the government is pushing pot so every person you got off pot is now going to be joined by dozens more on pot so that some politicians and their aids can get rich.  Get your head down. Think of the person in front of you. Forget the big picture.  Be an army doctor. Heal the patient with the gut wound. Stop the bleeding. Don't ever question the killing. Don't ever say, 'don't you think they should be given body armour.' 
Don't be silly.

HALT - hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Have some lunch.  Walk the dog. Get a move on. Stop procrastinating.  Get onto the next thing. Don't be sitting at the computer vomitting your brain into the abyss.  Be positive. Do something creative. Be thankful for the car you're driving. Be thankful for the clean shirt you're wearing. 

Pick up the phone and connect. Make that 'cold' car.  Stop procrastinating. All shall be well. Pray. Ask God to get you through the next minute, hour day.  Get on with it.  It was iffy this morning and here it's already noon.  You're progressing. You can always do far more than you think you can. Just do it. Stop thinking about things. Do things.  Get out of your mind. If you talk the talk, walk the walk. Just do it.  Yes now.  Move. 

Thank you Jesus.  Thank you.

Wednesday Morning Journal

I’m feeling a failure.  It’s something that comes over me in waves.  I’ve got this aging thing happening. Like I’ve had my time and blown it. There were so many dreams and they’ve gone past. The first was family. The decisions and abortions took those. The glass is half empty. I had this belief that I’d save the world in some way in medicine, make things better. I was a cog in the machine. I served my time. I did my part in a thousand little ways but I was plagued by the complaint that always comes to those who want to change something. The reformer is the enemy of all who benefit from the status quo.  The corruption and deceit in the system is putrid to the max and yet others move along stepping around the cesspools. I waded right in and began with a bucket to no avail.  There’s a cesspool swamp in every system. I learned that too late. I look back on years of frustration. There was always this really scummy dirty ignorant person in a position of leadership.  They were killing people and I couldn’t stop them because there was always someone holding me back.  Mostly that was to save my life. The amount of money in killing is amazing. Healing gets a fraction. The big boys and big girls dish out death like it was a fashion designer item.
Spirituality teaches me to look for the positive. Use both hands and pull my head out of my ass. Look back on your life and see the successes.  You’re still alive. Others have died. You’ve been in multiple crashes and walked away. Others are missing limbs. You’ve known incredible stress especially dealing with the corruption of government and the lies of authorities and the theft of the finances meant for services but you’ve not had a heart attack. The stress has been countered by exercise and meditation, family and friends. Others are dying of chronic disease because they’ve had to deal with these same assholes in their own worlds. Cancers come from stress as do all the diseases.  Acute stress is what our bodies are built for not the chronic debilitating stress of endless legal cases and beaurocratic miasma’s that go on for years.
Daily I’ve been required to make a decision , a diagnosis and a recommendation in less than a hour.  I’m on the front line.  Step back one leadership position and they form a committee to make a lesser decision. Step back one more leadership position and they have an enquiry. Step back another leadership position and they have a review. All of these ‘processes’ are to ensure that nothing gets done till maximum graft has been taken from the system and that the ones deepest in the shit have been able to get out and move to more lucrative grounds.  I get paid x for making a decision.  The next level gets 2 x and then 3x and 4 x.  The longer one can delay making a decision in the courts and bureaucracy the more money and power one has.  We’re living in a world of siege mentality.
And every year I’ve tried to stop someone killing some baby somewhere. And I’ve been punished and humiliated and shut up year after year.  I feel like my life could be called one baby too far. I’ve just tried to save one life too many and someone a whole lot higher wanted that life killed. It’s the Morgentaller system. The whole abortion industry of our times. It’s a metaphor.  Like Solyent Green.
And spirituality calls this my personal ‘black dog’. , my ‘depressive thinking’.  I must daily struggle to focus on the positives. Today the worm of despair entered my mind when I read in the papers how a colleague I know as the most deceitful and psychopathic is being rewarded.  It’s like the Aliens with a hidden head and no heart have a little gift ceremony for their cronies and this guys name comes up.
I see it with mixed envy and horror.  It’s like Hitler getting the Nobel Prize. Who can want a Nobel Prize after Hitler gets it.  I see this and wonder as always am I wrong. Was this fellow a good guy. He’s rich and famous now and I knew him as the liar and cheat. I personally know a fellow who let people die and ensured that others were seriously hurt, who sold out everyone and he got ahead.
So my cognitive behaviour therapy teaches me that I have to focus on those who are good people.  I can’t let the drop of ink discolour all the water. I just heard a lovely woman I know won a beauty contest.  A fellow I think is great got a job. My favourite person in academia got a professorship.  Another friend’s book was awarded. There’s all manner of positives there if I can just focus on them.
I wake up now and drag myself out of bed. There’s a whole lot of aches.The dog is ecstatic. He bounces on me.  When I get his leash he barks.  He’s exuberant. He’s loving life. He’s showing me what we both should be doing. I walk him outside down to the park. He sniffs up a storm then has a marvellous bowel movement.  I scoop it up and put it into the container.  He’s happy to walk back with me pulling on the leash.
I think maybe I’d better stop reading the medical news in the morning.  I’ve all but stopped listening to CBC.  I feel like increasingly I’m becoming monastic turning away from the insanity of the world.  I see that a whole lot of the folk I went to school with are hunkering down. They’re retired and kind of preparing for death.  They’ve taken what ever crumbs they’ve been offered and have got out. They don’t plan to do more and are kind of like kids on summer vacation. They don’t think of the future. They don’t particularly care what’s happening in politics.  They’re prepared for Armageddon and mostly just looking to their individual comfort.  I remember dad began fishing seriously when he was my age.  Fame is foolish.  Fortune makes more sense but it’s pretty obvious most of the casinos are rigged in some way. The house always wins.  Maybe next time around the karmic reincarnation cycle I’ll have more tools to win against the bank.
I read about St. John of the Cross in prison for 11 months being flogged every week or so for the entertainment of his fellow monks, the ones who didn’t like the reforms he’d tried to make.  It’s in failure that we find Christ. If I had a room full of sex objects, cocaine and bags of money and a personal army and world leaders dropping by to give me prizes I’d not think of inward riches, those infinite glories that surpass death.  Here it’s about the temporal. I’ve been given all manner of awards and made fortunes.  I’ve delivered babies and had so many children treat me with love and respect. I’ve a full life. I’ve been blessed beyond my wildest dreams.  If I measure my success from the bottom up. It’s success. But if I measure my success from the top down, from my not being an astronaut flying to Mars for instance, then yes my life is a failure.  I haven’t written the great canadian novel, found the cure for all cancer or developed a faster than light space ship.  I’ve been humbled by the reality of limitations.  I’ve done my part. I’ve contributed. I’ve paid taxes. I’ve worked and been a good man when the temptations were overwhelming to be other.  I’m not particularly wanting to be flogged every week so that I can compose the ‘long dark night of the soul’ to point the direction to the infinite. I’m kind of focussed on comfortable. Now I must get to work.  Mid week.  A few more days to go.  The weekends are always down hill.
Thank you Jesus for opening an individual door of communication with the infinite.

Journal - Monday - Treading Time

I’m up. I’ve walked the dog and he’s shat.  Blue sky and clouds.  It was a chilly night.  Woke 5 am.  Chilled.  Must put out the electric heater or electric blanket.  Or wear a sweater to bed. I’d like this if I was tenting.  Normal for the lake.  Just a little brisk for home.  I did love the little guy cuddling up against me for warmth this morning.  Rubbed his belly and felt connected. Prayed.
Now the banana has helped.  I’m thankful for food.  The heater is doing a great job.  I was standing over the vent making coffee. Now eating bread and jam.  Already answered crisis calls. Big question is whether to ride the motorcycle or sports car to work. Feeling vulnerable I pass on the motorcycle. Feeling courageous I ride it.  I’m experiencing this cautionary streak.  Taking least risks.  Concerned about health and fearful of injury.  I don’t have it often. I know others live lives like this.  I just shake it off and face my fears but now it’s different.
I’m Treading Time.
Gilbert’s begging and i’ve showed him away. He doesn’t like bread.  Would lick the butter off but leaves the bread.
Thank you Lord for this day. Thank you for coffee. Thank you for the rains. Thank you for the blue sky and clouds. Thank you for the light. Thank you for work. Thank you for communication.  Thank you for utensils. Thank you for plates and cups. Thank you for the electric kettle. Thank you for pecan bread.  Thank you for rhubarb jam. Thank you for sleep. Thank you for a night with pleasant dreams. Thank you for the tv series Dark Matter.  Thank you for the tv series Humans.  I enjoyed watching episodes last night. Thank you for Apple and I tunes . Thank you for Wind Wi fi.  Thank you for my book. Thank you for my computer. Thank you for family first. Thank you for friends. Thank you for work. Thank you for showers and hot water and soap. Thank you for shampoo.  Thank you for work.  Thank you for my office. Thank you for my assistant. Thank you for physicians. Thank you for my teachers. Thank you for books . Thank you for vehicles. Thank you for birds and animals.  Thank you for tables. Thank you for couches. Thank you for beds. Thank you for taste. Thank you for eyes and sight. Thank you for this comforting heat.  Thank you for the laundry and clean clothing.  Thank you for the Bible and for Jesus. Thank you for St. Teresa and St. John.  Thank you for the coming hunting season. Thank you for trucks and quads. Thank you for boats and lakes and oceans and rivers.  Thank you for pens.  Thank you for indoor plumbing.
Time to get moving

Church - Sunday

It’s 10:30 am. That’s the time church starts.  I’m sitting on the couch in my housecoat.  Gilbert is lying on the couch at my feet.  I’m not going to make it to church. It’s been raining heavily.  Gilbert and I ran in the rain this morning. I’m aching.  My church, St.James Anglican, is in Vancouver’s  Downtown Eastside. l just moved my office out of that area after 5 years of being there.  Driving down there has been a true nightmare.  Zombie like drug addicts staggering about the streets, sirens and police angry at their impotence desperate to ticket a tax paying citizen because the local criminal and drug addicted population is a revolving door group that knows the law so well they invariably set up police for internal affairs and human rights commission investigations. I personally got tired of the screamers. The noise pollution is horrid.  Couples drunk or on crystal meth would walk down opposite sides of the street screaming full volume at each other about who spent the money on the last fix.  Needles littered the street. And politicians promised to make it easier for the locals to use and provide more ’stuff’ for them under the auspices of ‘harm reduction’.
I became cynical.  I was disheartened not by the victims of the drug dealers and the agencies, but rather with the horrendous waste of tax payer dollars and the corruption. It was also sad.  A tragic war zone.
I’m feeling I did my time. It was like a tour of duty.  A kind of non combatant military Afghanistan placement in the centre of Vancouver, one of Canada’s most beautiful cities.  I still work a day downtown but my lease came up and I was forced to move. So now my office is further along Hastings in the suburban zone, out of the downtown eastside.  My first day there I was shocked by the quiet.  There was no one screaming outside my window. There were no demonstrations. No honking horns. No sirens every hour. There was quiet. I’d forgotten what it was like.  I know it from weekends. To survive I’d gone out to nature, either the woods or the sea every weekend possible to cleanse myself of the work.  But now I’m not at all exhausted in that way after a week of work. The work is as demanding even more it seems at times but I took a walk in my neighbourhood. It was so different. No one was bullying me.  I didn’t have to wonder whether some scruffy guy selling cigarettes was going to move for me to pass through. I used to be fearful crossing Carrall at Hastings because a whole bunch of people close together on drugs and alcohol and their dealers congregated there disrupting the flow of walkers.  I felt sorry for businesses because all the tourists who’d love to walk to China town turned around before this army of  near do wells.
Inside the Supervised Injection Site has created a police no go zone so dealers up the street work in the open. No surveillance of the clinic or surroundings is allowed. So all manner of criminal activity and gang meetings go on around that there.  Millions and millions of  criminal dollars pass through this 8 block radius.  Nothing stays. It’s just drug city and deals are made here.  Heroin and BC Bud.  Now that the marijuana is legalized there’s more marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks in the city. Most of them are around here.  There’s prostitutes as well.  And guns.  Not the guns the government tries to outlaw but criminal guns with serial numbers filed clean.  Hand guns, not long guns.  Bodies show up in the dumpsters in the alleys.
I’m more relaxed now.  My vehicles were broken into annually.  Once I was walking down the street a block from my truck and saw my dirty laundry.  “Hey, that’s my underwear, “ I said.  Sure enough, in a snatch and grab someone had grabbed my laundry and rifled through it as they continued down the street.  I picked my stuff up for a block but hated cancelling patients to get the truck into the repair and having to cancel more to pick it up.  When my computer was stolen it took months to restore the applications and files and get it back to where it was previously. Thankfully today iCloud gets past that kind of abuse.
Now I love my church.  I came when a man made a dramatic scene kicking my dog and girlfriend out of church where we’d gone for over a decade and even had the dog blessed by the bishop. He’s a therapy dog.  A great little cockapoo but my girlfriend was humiliated and I just think that anywhere that doesn’t want my dog really doesn’t want me. We’re pretty much a like.  At the same time I understand that some dogs and some owners aren’t socialized.  There’s a need for ‘rules’ and there’s a need for ‘exceptions’.  I remember when children were excluded from a lot of places. Then there was a time when Jews weren’t allowed. Then there was a time it was blacks and then Chinese. Then it was gays and now it’s still transexuals.  But really it’s dogs.  People have a way of creating ‘legalities’ and living in ‘legalism’.  It’s evidence of an inherent desire to exclude and to dominate and control.  I could even accept that dog owners need special insurance to take their dogs in ‘special places’.  I don’t buy the blanket statement by health departments against animals given how uncouth so many people are.  I’ve also been in civilized advanced countries where dogs are welcome in restaurants and churches.
So I was thankful when the former minister told me that “your dog is more than welcome, but I’m not sure about you.” he said jokingly.  There’s a general consensus that my dog is better behaved that me.  And I loved Father Mark and his wife.  I loved their children and dogs.  I began to love individuals in the church, especially Alice.  I loved that my friends Elizabeth and Karen introduced me to the church. I loved that Anna was there with her kids.  I loved several people I met there. I especially loved the jams at tea sales and the lunches and the coffee. The music was great. Father Mathew was an inspiration .  My hearing is not as keen as it was so the sound system bothered me. I had to move around to get my better ear in a better location.  I don’t know if it was the rock and roll or the hunting that’s caused the right ear to be increasingly selective but mostly I noted after Father Mark left that those giving the sermons were angry with the mikes rather than loving technology. So when Father Mark left I was a little less keen.
Now I’m not a summer Christian at the best of times either. I’m usually sailing or camping on weekends. I’ve never had so many weekends home in years.  The trip to Istanbul in the spring and Ireland a few weeks back has had me really enjoying sleeping and hanging out at home.  I would say I’m ‘isolating’ but I have no depression or lack of joy in my fellows. I just feel a little bushed. I’m off to see my brother next week and to Virginia after that so I’m travelling a lot and enjoying any down time.
I don’t like going into the DTES now. I don’t like driving there.  I’m a bit off driving perhaps after the intense Ireland driving on the wrong side.  It’s just I don’t want to deal with people walking on the road and Vancouver drivers lack of skills training.  There’s forever someone who hasn’t been toilet trained to use his signals.  Then there’s this weird macho competitiveness that holds up traffic all over the city because people don’t let people flow in but want to keep everyone else out of their lane.  The traffic jams occur as a result.  I think this is a product of multi culturalism, my bias, too many people trying to be number one and working out their issues on the road rather than cooperating together and moving with the flow. it’s also the drug addicts. and the cell phones. A lot of drivers are disconnected from reality and in their own stinky petty worlds.  The chaos in the DTES might make it worse.  I just don’t have any desire to get in a vehicle and go into town on the weekend for any reason.  Commuting has caught up on me.  I’m a half hour to an hour every day each way going to work and the commutes are getting more and more ludicrous with police blocking two lanes to stop someone rather than taking them off the highway so traffic continues to flow. There’s so much insanity out there that yes I like the safety and certainty of my suburban home on the weekends right now.
So no I didn’t get to church.  I’m better at getting to church in Winter and spring.  I love church but wonder if it’s time to find a new church.  I went to the nearest one here but the preacher was kind of teleevangical happy happy and the people were mostly old women.  The other church didn’t like dogs.  I may have to phone about.  It’s not on my list of priorities. I feel spiritually uplifted by my time with Archie and George.  I really should get out to be with those guys more often.  I’ve been enjoying walking and running with Gilbert.
I will sort everything out after Kingston and Norfolk.  Each year when I get together with the psychiatrists and we say the serenity prayer en mass I seem to find my direction. Right now I’m just crawling into the home plate.  Marking time.  I’ve got too much work and not enough money and want to work less but can’t see how I’ll manage because of the increasing costs and the inflation.  The projects I have are already delayed by lack of funds so I have to find more acceptance.  This city is so expensive too that I fear stepping out the door costs money.  I’ve paid for this ‘parking place’ for my body and Gilbert’s so it’s a ‘safe zone’.  I don’t feel I can afford to leave in a way.  I haven’t taken my boat out this summer because I don’t want to risk costs. The moorage I’m at has shrunk so I haven’t room to dock solo.  The fear of hitting another boat returning has me simply not wanting to take my boat out.
I love riding my motorcycle because its so cheap yet at the same time I’ve had this fear of injury as I still intermittently deal with the ankle injury I got when I dumped my bike in the intersection. A true nutter Vancouver driver slammed on his breaks crossing as a kind of epileptic seizure without any reason causing me to slam on mine. I had too much front brake and not enough back brake in the turn so my ankle twisted holding the bike up.  I realized the guy had this idea he’d cross two lanes and get into a shop but realized it was impossible and had done this bizarre stop as traffic was coming at us and me looking at the oncoming traffic not expecting him to stop with a clear lane ahead and no reason not to complete his turn. The ankle swelled up something fierce and I was thankful that George, who’d corralled me in church,  didn’t think it was broken and the X-ray he insisted on confirmed it.  The fact was that soft tissue tears aren’t nothing and it was a year of healing and still occasionally I’m bothered by it.  Indeed all the old injuries are flaring up with weather, all the sites of traumatic arthritis.  So on lilly livered days I’m find the idea of curling up in fetal position in bed attractive.  Not from depression but just a bit of anxiety about whats out there. I’m a little agoraphobic at times despite all the years of adventure.  Shell shock.
Now I have to trust in God. I’m praying and I need to meditate more .  But I need to floss and do sit ups too.  Maybe I’ll go over to the pool and swim. I don’t like all the kids in summer.  It’s best to get to the pool early morning or late at night.  I like the winter months better.  We’ve had some good guy meetings in the hot tubs. Talking about nothing.  Not now with screaming teens.
I’m enjoying movies.  I watched Sword of Vengeance last night and really enjoyed it.  Gilbert and I missed Laura.  She’s baby sitting a bird this weekend.  We’re just comfortable around her.  She makes Gilbert happier. Tom visited last week and it was a great evening meal. Gilbert was ecstatic with all his friends. I’m alone and that’s good at times but I like the company too. All a matter of balance. I’ve got a couple of friends here Dave and Mac and we were both talking about how much we enjoy being alone with the dogs. Guys and their dogs. But it’s good when the girls are over. Aging is a kind of return to late adolescence.  Hanging out, dating.   I have difficulty generating activities occasionally. I’ve got this full schedule. I collected laundry yesterday, did some cleaning on the boat, bailed the dinghy, dropped off stuff at the storage locker and that was Saturday.  I got a computer repaired on Friday yet I feel like I’m not doing anything. I work a full week. I’ve written chapters in a book. I’ve dealt with a half dozen emergencies in the evening. I ‘ve cooked my own meals and cleaned. I’m self sufficient.  I ‘ve walked the dog and managed him. I’ve showered and prayed, read , completed another book, watched some movies.  It’s not like I’m a slouch but I feel like I’m not getting the important things done.
This time on earth is to come closer to God. God acts through people. There are Godly things. I’ve done a lot in life. In Ireland and Turkey I was uplifted by visiting the shrines.  I’m talking with god. I read inspirational books, Richard Rohr, Emmett Fox, right now.  I’ve been reading so much theology over the year. I got the master of divinity and am working slowly on a book on spirituality. I’ve one trip left to complete the travels I’ve done specifically to form the basis of a Christian book on the dispersal of the message.  I would go on perpetual pilgrimage.
Then I’d be happy to be an emperor in a brothel with a maiden feeding me grapes. I would even at times have a valhalla heaven where I fought with swords all day to feast and fuck all night to start all over again.  I like lust and gluttony and sloth and all the character defects and don’t have a whole lot of discipline these days against ice cream. I remember when younger I flogged my body till I was a provincial champion athlete and then flogged my body a whole lot more to bicycle across europe and sail across oceans.  I am content right now on this couch with the dog beside me and the toilet nearby. I think I’ll move to relieve myself then make another cup of coffee and face the challenge of whether to watch a movie or read a book.
I’m thankful for this. Sometime today I’ll move further than the fridge. It seems to happen. I’m active for several hours on my days off doing applied activities when I was really doing nothing like the chores of yesterday, maybe 4 to 6 hours in total.  When I was sailing it was common for me to do at least 3 to 4 hours a day on some applied thing, maintenance, chores whatever. I expect if I was retired that would be the pattern.  Working now I’m doing 10 hour days. Wouldn’t it be great if I could be paid the same as I am for 10 hours for half the time. This would be human.  I’m a workaholic, wage nigger as it is.  It’s not the money that drives me as much as history. It’s just the way it’s been but now I’m older I’m having to rethink things because I ‘m tired more.  While a change is as good as a rest, I’m more into resting on weekends these days than I am in getting out and doing something.
The things I could do
1) Go through the storage locker and get rid of anything that is no longer being used. Get the  boat stuff on the boat. I’m not living on the boat so I might as well get all the boat stuff I moved off for space back on it. I could even get my scuba gear on it.
2) Get out in the woods on the 4x4 and set up targets and do some target practice. I have joined hunting clubs but the rifle ranges are full when I’ve gone so rather than pout get out in the gravel pits with pieces of plywood and get the rifles precision firing. The rifles are sort of entered but you really could use the practice and it’s a gas to ride about on the 4x4
3) you should be fishing. You’ve got the equipment and licenses but you’ve not gone this last year.
4) You haven’t used your golf clubs in years. Just because they don’t accept Gilbert on the courses doesn’t mean you couldn’t leave him at home and get out to a driving range. You love driving ranges.
5) Dancing. Now that you’re running and walking with less pain you could get out dancing.  You’re still a bit fragile but a night of dancing would do you good.  The guys are always encouraging you.
6) You have to learn Biblical hebrew and you should keep up with your spanish. Your spanish speaking friend wants you to visit and you’ve been meaning to get down there again. Your’ spanish speaking teacher has online courses. You should keep this up. Maybe read ST. Theresa and ST. John in their spanish language.
7) You really have to get on with writing the books you’re working on. I know it seems to be enough to get 2 or 3 pages written and that exhausts you but you could do more.
8) You have to visit some friends. You don’t see John enough.
9) You’ve not been playing guitar either. And you certainly could use lessons.
10) Theres the job of getting the files digitalized. You have to get started on that.  You have so much to do and you’re just not moving very fast on anything.

All in good time. God is good.  I’m so thankful for all I’ve done and all that is in progress.  I’ve not made it to church but I’m thinking about God.  I imagine God with me and imagine all is God.  I would be his eyes and nose and fingers too.  Right now Gilbert is licking my feet.  Jesus washed his disciples feet.  Gilbert is God like in many ways.  I don’t know what the ball fixation is. Is this an earth metaphor?  Now he’s stretching and hoping I’ll take him out where he can sniff butts.  He’s giving me that look. One paw on my arm.  He thinks a lot of what I do at the computer, the iPhone and various screens is not nearly as good as walking him.  I could do that more.  There’s a sedentary compulsion that takes over. I think I’ll get up.  Enough of this.
Praise the Lord.  yes.

Journal - Saturday

I couldn’t believe it.  Gilbert let me sleep in. Everyday, around 6 or 7 am he lays his little body across mine.  This weight wakens me and when he sees I’m away he attempts to squirm forward and lick my face.  I counteract this and push him away.  Normally this results in a delay. He lets me sleep a few minutes or a half hour later.  It’s the snooze bar on Gilbert.  When he comes back the next time, he slinks in and goes right for the sloppy face licking alarm clock routine.  During the week when I have to go to work this usually works and I get up before the actual alarm. Gilbert is ecstatic at my wakening and jumps on my chest and crotch making the getting up part for me a tad complicated.
This morning I only recall pushing him away once maybe twice.  I never got the face licking.  I got up when he was lying on top of me and got through the happy dog gauntlet. On the other side of this morning welcome I looked at my watch and found to my surprise it was 9 am. I’d gone to bed around 10 to 11 so I must have been really tired.  As I ‘ve aged the long days at work, sometimes still 10 and 12 hours really whack me.  I get home and collapse after making and eating dinner.  My mind feels like my body used to feel when I did construction. By Friday I’m drained.  Often I have difficulty concentrating on detailed numbers and avoid doing reports Friday now, fearing making errors in complex details.  My work week continues to be about 50 hours of patient contact. There’s administration and research and calls on top of that.  I can’t get over how the paper work has multiplied and ads so much to the burden of work.  I’ve dozens of faxes from mostly pharmacists and then there’s all the reports that are necessary.  My assistant is always on me for notes. The courts and college have an endless demand for more detailed notes and more irrelevant reporting. So much doesn’t serve the patient or me but is the political correctness beaurocratic ‘fashion’ of  the week.  When I see these latest demands for documentation I am certain without a doubt that the committee that came up with them didn’t have enough work of their own to do or they wouldn’t expect others to do such petty and ridiculous recording.
The failure of the legal system of the west is found in the fallacy of the ends against the middle. One person burns themselves in one location on a too hot cup of coffee and everyone everywhere has to have a ‘beware of hot coffee’ sign written on the cup.  One day in the future the scientists will conclude that space flight and colonization of the solar system, all poverty and all disease in the world would have been possible before 2000 if it weren’t for the stupidity of the peace time legal and beurocratic systems that continue to work as if time was not a factor in their activities.  Where all judgements occurred in hours to at most a week, judges today take years to come to a decision.  Beaurocracies work at snails pace. Government works move at a tenth of the pace that those in private industry work.  Some have said that wars exist to revolutionize the legal and beaurocratic systems which become increasingly ineffective over time.  Work at the legal and beaurocratic levels expand to fill the time available.  As someone else usually is paying in the court and the bureaucracy there’s no incentive to move at anything faster than the slowest speed. Only in war is this changed when the winners of wars usually are those whose legal beaurocratic processes were superior as much as technologically.
This is a resentment.  It’s an institutional resentment.  Defensive medicine accounts for as much as may 90% of the cost of health care.  When I look back on my life I see this onerous costly soul destroying process of interacting with legal beurocratic systems that seemed primarily to parasitize the central process of doctor and patient and the ‘medicare model’ .  The frustration of my work for a decade has been getting patients what their illness warrants by fighting individuals and systems who have grown with the pure intent of delaying.  Legal beaurocratic systems are principally covert aggressive systems.  They become rich by attrition and siege.  I can’t recommend anyone go into medicine anymore because the frustrations far outweigh the compensations. If I was young again in this present system I’d do what so many of the young doctors do, which is the least possible.  Increasingly medicine and psychiatry are defined by reductionist processes and cherry picking and avoiding sick people is the most rewarded.  Indeed the richest doctors increasingly are doctors who don’t actually see patients but focus on administration, policing, and business aspects of care, not the clinical basis.
Now where the hell did this nonsense come from. I was just thankful that I slept in.  I was really happy to that I got dressed in shorts and t-shirt and runners and ran with Gilbert for a couple of miles.  Maybe it’s a mile. I don’t know. It’s about a half hour of running and I used to walk 5 miles an hour.  When I was younger I ran a ten minute mile.  More and more I’ve been actually running the whole distance. Today I walked for a few minutes halfway because Gilbert met another dog. I pull him on a leash. He wants to piss and sniff everything which we do when we walk but running is all about forward motion.  Today I was dragging the poor little guy, thanks to his crying wolf stops before that, and here I looked back and he was of course squatting and trying to shit.  We have his daily walk for a shit in the early morning which he’s very happy with but the long walks or the runs are an added delight.  I feel badly though when he gives me that face he gives me when I realize he’s stopped not because Fifi left a love message but rather because his bowels are active.
I have been thinking about the boat and the RV and houses.  I write more on land.  I loved sailing and anchoring but I ‘m not as relaxed and able to work in the sailboat as I am when I’m on land.  I do my writing here. I can do reports and work on land better. I can read and watch tv and relax and journal a bit on the boat but I don’t tend to do the kind of writing that I do on land. Flying I’ve written a number of short stories that went on to be published.  I’ve been blogging for a few years and naturally I can do that. But I’ve also been working on books and that doesn’t seem to progress on the boat.  I used to hate stationary living but I’m beginning to really enjoy it.
When Laura’s been over for the weekend I’ve really enjoyed sitting outside with her and the simple cooking and cleaning around the RV.  I find myself incredibly nostalgic about my first house, a little 2 bedroom bungalow with yard and one car garage in Riverheights Winnipeg, that my Dad helped me pick out.  It was so very functional and not that different from the house I grew up in.  I’ve had huge houses and acreages since but that’s the one that I think I enjoyed the most. I did love the acreage and turkeys and chickens with the clinic on site but today I’m just enjoying this RV and think a lot about that first house.  I’ve not particularly liked apartments though my last one I have fairly fond memories of.  I think my feelings about it began to change with the crazy neighbour coming around and complaining about noise when I hadn’t been home.  Then getting away every weekend the storage locker and the elevator problems in a first class apartment buildings, it all got to me. I loved living on the boat after that.  The condo I had was really nice.  I loved the elegant living. That was in Riverheights in Winnipeg too and I liked it better than the house in Shaughnassey.
Now here I am after a run, having really enjoyed the morning coffee, having had a shower, dressed in t shirt and underwear, my favourite clothing combination next to t shirt and sarong  or skirt. I just loved wearing wraps in Mexico and the Marianas Islands.   My favourite all time clothing was my worn sailing shorts.  That’s all I wore sailing in the heat and it was freeing.  We sailed nude in the Sea of Cortez but kept our wraps handy for chance encounters with other sailors.  Nudity is great.  But I’ve resisted the temptation and kept out of jail or public records.  I loved the halloween costumes and dress up as a kid.  I fully understand the kids and adults who are running around in superhero costumes.  My favourite halloween costume in recent years has been the witch.  That came out of a costume I wore for a night at Rocky Horror Picture Show.  The most fun was when the girls and they guys all got into costumes and went to dances and parties.  There’s always been someone socially incompetent who doesn’t dress for the occasion but more and more there’s been participation in the those who are good sports.  Even at hockey games it’s seen in those who go the extra little bit and wear team colours.  Gilbert had a canucks sweater which he doesn’t like to wear.  He doesn’t like to dress up at all.  My nudist friends have said how onerous it is to get back to clothes after a weeks retreat.  I wish I’d done that when I was younger and my body was toned.  It’s not really about that though. It’s a state of mind. It’s about maturity and freedom.  I miss the YMCA days when we all swam naked as guys. The best times were the nude swimming with the girls in our 20’s and 30’s .  The girls were so beautiful in the moonlight. I remember those times so fondly.  It was fun too.  I imagine if I ever stop working and retire I’ll get back to the simpler life and times, those camping and canoeing weekends and weeks.  Now I’m outfitted with RV’s and quads and trucks and motorcycles. Then it was hiking with a back pack or canoeing. My father got into canoeing again in his 70’s and 80’s loving it until it was too much trouble to get the canoe off the van.  I imagine seeing myself doing that. There’s a fellow I met who had sailed the Atlantic ocean back and forth a few times in his 80’s. He was so inspirational. 85 years old when I met him. I imagine doing that. I hope I can do that.
My lifestyle is fairly expensive today yet I had the finest time in my student years.  Travelling on bicycle and staying in youth hostels was incredibly inexpensive.  I suppose when I quit work I’ll scale down and have time to breathe.
I reflected last week on work and realized that there are hundreds of people right now whose lives I make easier.  I’m not indispensable but I’m an integral part of their lives.  I have a lot of very sick people I care for and have known for many years.  Theres’ importance to this longevity and reliability.  I’m wanted. I’m the known substance.  I’m trusted.  I might not be the best but I am far from the worst.  I’ve been reliable and often I’ve ‘saved’ lives. I’ve certainly gone above and beyond the call of duty, and always been unconventional. I regret this some days because I could be a millionaire today if I had done what I was told rather than doing what I thought was needed. Certainly more people would have died but I’d be richer and more successful.  I’ve given far more time to people than the system paid for. I even have some people who think they’re very clever in taking more time than allotted insisting on it only as an entitlement but we’re working on that trait.  It’s been a problem of how I see myself. The woman at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC condemned me for caring so much for my patients insisting ‘It’s just a job, Dr. Hay”.  I had this weird sense of ‘calling’ and have always thought the profession was more than a ‘job’ but those who treat medicine and psychiatry as “Just a job” have become rich and been promoted to the highest ranks. Those who practice the ‘business of medicine’ giving the ‘least for the most reward’ and focusing on the ‘maximum profit’ are now the ones who mock me.  I’m a has been and my life is a waste.
Then I think of how my marriages failed because I focussed on my work over my home and if I’d just gone to work like it was just a job I could have been a better husband . I could have had more money to buy women gifts and had the time to meet their demands for attention and luxuries.
I’ve roughed it a lot in my life.  Living on a sailboat for years. Living now as trailer trash.  I wonder now what my life would have been like if I’d just stayed in that first house.  Sedentary. None of the adventure and experience.  Safe.  None of the risk and perils that I’ve known.  But at the end of the day when friends and family seem more important I find myself nostalgic for high school reunions and family suppers.  This moment I don’t even want to get in the truck yet I have to go over to the boat to pump the water out of the dinghy. We have had a lot of rain these last couple of days. It’s necessary for the vegetation and to stop the forest fires.  It just means I have to make a trip to the boat when I’d rather lie about and maybe watch tv like we did as kids on a saturday when the black and white westerns were on.  We didn’t do it often but it was a treat like going to the BDI ice cream parlour, the hike there along the river bank making the ice cream sundaes even better.

Now I’ve written a chapter of the book and blogged this drivel. It’s time to get dressed and do something else, or maybe just lie down for a bit and read more of Cornwall’s Waterloo.  I love historical fiction.
Yes I think I’ll make lunch and read. Apart of me is counting the days till IDAA, the annual addiction medicine conference I attend where I get together with mentors and colleagues and celebrate working and being alive another year.

Morning, Friday, July 24, 2015

I’m awake.  Dreams were a mix.  Walking in shit one moment, being with friends the next.  No feeling of dread on a wakening. But not that deep spiritual peace either. I love those dreams where dogs  I’ve loved joined me or I’ve been with family now passed over. I love the big meeting dreams and the adventure dreams.  I have this recurrent sailing dream associated with a river and a peninsula.  It’s always an adventure and every time I dream that dream I’m further ahead or some aspect of the puzzle is fulfilled.  Last night I slept well too.
I’d watched Jerry Maquire on tv.  I don’t know what’s happened these last months but all these old movies are enjoyable to watch again. Especially loved the Quiet Man with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara made in 1952. Usually I’m interested in the latest. I’ll see the new Bond movie for sure.  I even like going to the theatre to see a movie on opening night. There’s a buzz that’s happening then like being in the front row at a rock concert.
I used to pray the times of the monks.  I’d wake early and read the Morning Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer.  I’d recite my rosary at those special times. Then I’d know that there were thousands maybe millions of us worshipping together. Prayer is this beyond time and space experience.  I loved going early to church in Saipan with Dr. Willi Gutowski and praying.  Morning prayer is the best.  The birds are wakening and the sun is coming up.  But there’s Compline too.  So many times I’ve enjoyed going to Christ Church Cathedral in Vancouver to listen to the chanting and join in that special time of prayer, Evening prayer.  Now I say the Lords’ prayer on wakening and going to sleep. Sometimes it’s just enough to say please and thank you.  A day in my life has become it’s own life. I try to live as if this is the day.
I’ve been worrying lately about loved ones. Praying hard.  Sometimes crying.  Having conversations with the universe about my will and thy will. Sometimes I feel the burden of the universe is on me.  I feel a failure because I can’t resurrect the dead or walk on water.  Perhaps I can and perhaps I have but this moment I’m moving through molasses, fearing I’m off and missing something.  There’s too many moving parts.  Then it’s okay.
Today it’s raining. I normally walk the dog first thing and he has his dump after I’ve had mine.  He hears the rain and lingers in bed.  Such a suck.  I opened the door and he turned around and went back to bed.  I think it’s Laura’s spoiling him that’s made him such a luxury lover. She rubs his chest and back slowly for ever. Looking at his eyes you can see he’s just melting in side. His tongues lolling to the left.  Totally decadent. Now it’s raining and this tough hunting hound therapy dog goes back to bed.
I’m glad. I’ve had my share of softness in life,as well as the hardness so I’m glad to have my coffee sooner.
I’ve gone through the mail and Facebook.  The political propaganda is filling the pages before the election.
I’ve been fond of posting what our Prime Minister is doing.  Our media only presents partisan critique so I don’t get the first message of what the event or activity was, just constant opinion.  The media presents the country as a civil war yet we’re a democracy and this is our elected.  Had I not signed up for the 24/7 ‘news’ from the PM I’d not know that we’d signed trade agreements with Israel, South America and European countries. I’d not know about the meetings with India and Ukraine and Poland. I read BBC news because it’s a more reliable reporting of Canadian news and tells me what ‘events’ are going on around the world.  I’m tired of these ‘opinion’ pieces masquerading as news.  I’d like the facts.  There are no facts in that old time sense but at least the stating of events.  Like Canada signed a trade agreement with Poland.  Not the evil politician trying to gain votes and wasting taxpayer money ignoring he plight of women and children and especially aboriginals was serving the rich corporate interests on a pleasure jaunt in Poland.  I’m forever left wondering what the hell is going on in my own country because I’m not in on the Ottawa CBC jokes, the sides that their overpaid out of touch, fat cat CEO pushes.  Oh well I can wax poetic about the failure of the news department of our national media to inform citizens of ‘news’.  Their reporting is so utterly unethical that they make any government look saintlike.  The filthy kettle calls all stainless steel pots black.
I’m late.  I’ve got to run.  Shower.  Drive to work. Grab umbrella.
I’m thankful for the day. The rain is a godsend for the forests and firefighters. Hopefully people’s homes will be protected and wildlife will be saved by the rain. I don’t care about lawns. I liked the recent joke, what do you call the guy with the green lawn on a block of brown lawns, “Grasshole”.
Thank you God for this day. Thank you for family and friends. Thank you for work. Thank you for Gilbert. Thank you for the air and the water and this glorious little blue planet.  Thank you for all your blessings. May I serve you and my patients today. Help me do the best I can and be of most use to others this day of Grace.

End of day, new office

I’ve done more than a day’s work but I’ve had a lunch hour. Normally today I’d drive out to a meeting but I didn’t wish to face traffic.  Besides Gilbert was here so we stayed together. Angel has brought a new Bosch coffee maker that takes the Tossimo coffee packs. I bought some cafe latte last week and had the first this morning.  It tastes like the coffee my sister in law, Adell makes me at her place.  I’m drinking a second cup now.
I don’t know why I woke at 4:30 this morning. Friends and patients described the exact thing.  Something in the atmosphere or matrix.  I’m tired today.  A long day of work but not as tired as yesterday. Wednesday was a tough day. Not surprising it’s called the ‘hump’.  Today was definitely downhill.  I’m sorry I got behind and people waited.  I wish somehow decades ago I’d learned to be harsh with time, kicking people out of the office at the strike of the clock.  I wish I was more regimented, more military, more businesslike. Looking back I realized I passed over so many opportunities for money and power squandering my time with patients.
The lung surgeon I worked with told me that. “You’re an excellent doctor, great hands. You’ll make a great surgeon. You just have to spend less time with patients." He’d do his rounds before the patients woke, waking them with his good bye.  A smart man. A rich man."
The administrative doctor at the College of Physicians and Surgeons told me I had to stop caring so much about patients, “It’s just a job, Dr. Hay’.  I feel like I never have enough time. I feel like I have to make sure the patient is not going to kill themselves.
When I took the job the government promised me there’d be beds for emergencies.  There haven’t been. They promised me that there would be nurses and community workers for support. There haven’t been. They promised every patient would have a family physician. That’s a lark.  For ten years I’ve done as much general medicine as I did when I was a family physician but the government doesn’t pay. I’m a mark.  Why pay doctors when they won’t strike, won’t let their patients die, won’t stop caring.
Give all the money to the bankers, administrators and judges. You have to pay them because they wouldn’t work for free.  Doctors, nurses, teachers, and even lawyers work for free. The police do too.  Now I’m juggling to pay for surprise expenses and resenting all the past mistakes.  God will provide. God always has.  This too will pass. I have no real reason to be afraid.  I have wealth beyond my wildest dreams. There’s endless resources with God. I will pray.
Others are working hard these days. There’s Greece and a whole bunch of countries struggling with the financial situation.  Austerity and depression are being written into the history books.  I just came from Ireland where they were starving in the potato famines. Always there have been times of disease and need. I’m growing old like the rest of the baby boomers and we’re looking seriously at death.  Perhaps we’ll dream an immortality, call ahead a resurrection, watch the planet transform into a spiritual dreamscape of love.
Otherwise it’s the same old same old and as the day goes it’s more and more tiring. Vancouver is a costly city.  I’ve done a day of work and will pay an ounce of blood in taxes.  The white collar and blue collar welfare are a burden that can break a man.  There’s all the demands.  Then times of easy sailing.  l resist decisions, delay and because of delay face more challenge.
There’s nothing I can or will do today.  Time to go home. It’s been nice though in this new office, sitting at my desk, writing. I think how my fingers have been worn out for bureaucrats and legal documents. I’ve typed a lifetime of mostly silly drivel and I thought my fingers would have been much better employed writing a play, like the one we saw in Abbey City.
I’m coming to an age where my fingers are already hurting and I might not ever want to see a written word again. I’m used up in the beaurocratic endless increasing demands.  When I began I wrote one word, a diagnosis and a billing code.
Now they threaten me and call me a liar. The courts are bullying doctors and the pay master. We should have had a union that held out insisting that we’d not write only a line for a thousand, like the new CEO. I learned they’re making $5 to 6000 an hour.  There’s never been an equivalent productivity in public sector performance.
But it’s so easy to scapegoat the father, scapegoat the parent, blame the CEO , blame the government, throw out the king, kick out a president or primeminister

We just want ‘Change’.

The politicos learned years ago that nothing need change except the face on the coin.  I’m weary.  These thoughts assail me when I’m tired. In the morning I do gratitude lists but now before dinner I’m just weary.
Self pity and resentment are common at the end of the day. Addiction flare for the working man.  The drunk stops at the bar on the way home from work and misses supper with the kids. I myself worry and fret and write drivel that in summary is just self pity and fear and negative and envy.
Character.
That’s what I need.
A little back bone. A little more character. A little more stamina. A little gratitude.  Don’t compare with the few rich above you but compare with the masses. Somewhere there are millions of people that only made a couple of dollars today.  You’re going to eat like a king. You’re going to ride in a car. You have a pet.  You’re here after a day of work writing on a computer that’s connected to high speed internet.
That’s why I’m here. I want to download a movie at work with high speed internet and play it on my apple tv at home. That’s a cadillac problem.  I found out that it would cost me $500 to get satellite wifi and if I wanted satellite tv I couldn’t move my RV.
So here I go trying to find a way to watch a new movie.  Poor me. I have netflix but those are old movies and I’ve seen so many. And Turner Classic Movies is on my tv.  I watched so many of those in Saipan. But I downloaded ex machina right off the presses for $5 and would love to do that again. It’s like being at a friends with shaw cable rent a movie or being in a hotel room or on a plane.  Luxury.
That’s my challenge to day, to get more luxury and I’m complaining.  Poor me. Right, you idiot.
Thank God for Grace.

Soul

We are all interconnected.  That connection is in the infinite.  The infinite is God and our part of that infinity is called our soul. All else is finite.
My brain is an anatomical structure. It’s an advanced animal model but insects have a rudimentary brain as well.  Some people have bird brains but they look human. Others are quite brainless but thanks to a soul they to are human.  Being human means having a soul.  Being homo sapiens means having a brain at least.  People with bigger and more efficient brains are smarter and more clever.
The mind can be best understood as the brain with soul. Wisdom is a coupling of the separate finite individual computer brain system with the infinite.  
The heart is an organ for pumping blood throughout the system.  The heart was once thought to be the seat of the soul. This is the ‘nous’.  We continue to refer to the ‘heart’ in the sense of the nous despite using the same term for a structural anatomic organ. Just as we vaguely associate the brain with wisdom so we associate matters of the heart with the heart.  It’s the ‘centre’ or in Eastern terms the chakra or energy centre associated with love.  People described being heart broken and loss of a loved one can cause death through heart attack or myocardial infarction.  The autonomic nervous system relates to the chakra system and to the acupuncture meridians.
It’s an intuitive centre and is associated in history with emotions.  The emotions today are understood however in the brain in the limbic system, i.e. the amygdala, hyppocampus, thalamus, cingulate gyrus etc. But even a child would more likely point to their chest when asked where love is, or where to you feel, rather than pointing to their brain.
The heart is mostly associated with love.  The love referred to when we speak of the heart is that of brotherly, sisterly love and agape, the highest love. Erotic love is thought a combination of heart love and the love of the loins or lust.  In eastern systems there is a lower chackra centre and acupuncture addresses loin issues in this region which coincides with another junctional area of the autonomic nervous system.
Oswald Chambers famous meditational book was called “My Utmost for His Highest”.  These were his ’soul’ thoughts.  Theology has had much to do about the rational ideas about God whereas religious ‘rituals’ and “practice’ have more to do with heart matters.   The best known 'practices' are prayer and meditation.  Scientifically they have been shown repeatedly as highly beneficial.
The soul is eternal.  When we die it’s thought that all that is organic dies, of course, but our soul goes on.  In computer terms this is considered as a program that will join a greater program intact like a usb stick memory drive or an ‘iCloud’ memory.  There is no reason to believe that we don’t continue.  It’s not essential to intelligence or advanced science to conceive of a non material core being of ourselves persisting with immortality.  Increasingly sciences sees the world as energy matrix and communication.  Religions collectively speak to this ‘after life’.  It is the soul, already a part of the immutable, a part of God, that persists.
With the soul goes love and wisdom.  Those who have near death experiences, and these have been post death of heart and ceasing of brain waves.  No one knows where the ‘self’ or ‘consciousness’ has gone but it comes back. These individuals report experiencing their whole life much like we would a memory card. What they were fearful about here was in that post death state somewhat silly because of the eternal all loving nature of existence as they now understood it.  So fear is temporal. Fear is finite while love is not.
This is why we say we are spiritual beings living in a material world. This is the perennial story. This is the central journey.

Wednesday Morning 7 am

I don’t know what to write.  I woke at 6 am.  It didn’t feel like I slept much.  It was chilly.  So much heat in the day and chilly at night.  I was in bed early enough. Tired from the day.  Stress having it’s toll.  So many demands.  So much to do.  Confusion.  Muddling through. Moving in molasses. And always the self pity gnawing at my heart like a cockroach.  I would walk in the light.  Gravity has it’s hold on me though.  I’d be weightless and lift off.
I’ve been running.  It’s a joy that I can.  For the last few years injuries made all activity acutely painful.  The knee injury and ankle injury and foot injury. The feet still hurt. Funny for a dancer to have sore feet but this from a crush injury.  Orthotics and new shoes and physio all served to restore me to walking pain free (relatively) and now running. But the body is fat and older and complains with exertion. I can only run a couple of times a week. The period in between is recovery.  I ran last night.  I was in shock after. My body watched tv in paralysis. We’d only just exercised on Saturday.  My body was utterly unprepared.  A surprise run.  Trying to sleep at night my eyes wouldn’t close. Open staring up at the skylight crying, ‘why me, why is he doing this to me.’  I’m confronting sloth.  There’s a war within. One part of me wishes to curl up in the fetal position and eat hagen daz till I die while the other says this exercise thing is good.  I was doing tai chi in the woods too. My knee is shouting out it’s concern angrily.  Parts of me are in rebellion.  My waist is smug though. Not budging.  I do have more energy.  I feel more alert. I’m less likely to be suicidal with all this cardio. If I have to be homicidal I’ll be more effective.
I guess I slept.  The night before I dreamed of sex and was young again.  Last night I must have been in a futuristic war zone. I feel all beat up.
Now the coffee has helped. I’ve put on the heat. I’ve walked the dog.
I’m supposed to write.  I told myself I 'd write. I tell myself to write. I'm my own robot.
I was meditating on Julian of Norwich, remembering something St. Theresa said that was the same.  An intellectual I know annoyed me as I whizzed through the hundred or so emails and references.  I have less and less time for conceit and drivel. I’ve been deleting arbitrarily, withdrawing from face book ‘interests’.  I’ve found I’m increasingly less interested.  The fact is I’m just a tad grumpy.  The self pity is palpable. It’s like a shark now rising out of the unconscious. Big teeth.  The very big teeth of self pity and the gaping maw.
I’m supposed to be working on the great canadian novel.  How will it ever get finished if I don’t contribute. Instead I’m blogging.  I’m a modern day ‘diarist’.  This was a thing of the 18th century and before.  Self indulgent wandering mental vomitus on page.
I could comment on the news. There are forest fires. There have always been forest fires.  But these forest fires are said to be worse forest fires.  They’re the worst forest fires. The media is hysterical.  They are even saying it’s a drought and those farmers who didn’t put in irrigation equipment are demanding that we the tax payer bail them out.
I’m unprepared for my day. I want a bail out.   I didn’t become a banker. I could have been a lawyer. I could have focused on the lucrative aspects of medicine. I was wrong.  Assassin would have been a more monetarily fulfilling term. I compare myself with others financially.  I’m a mere doctor.  I could have saved better. I could have bought houses. I could have focused more on finance. Read financial magazines rather than comic books.  The price of meat is three times what it was. Fuel prices are up now that the environmentalists have destroyed Alberta and want to return us to the communes of the 60's.  I didn't like the communes of the 60's .  I've done my time tenting. I wanted to die quietly in a fine nursing home with clean sheets like the Gods of old England in Dick Slaterly's Holistic Detective  Agency.
I wasted so much time I could have spent on becoming an evil materialist genius. I'm unprepared for old age. My generation were meant to die in the Cold War. Silent Spring promised that we'd be a burnt out planet in 10 years.  We've survived all these catastrophes. I should have died from an STD.  My penis should have fallen off from masturbating. I should have gone to hell for thinking about women'. I should have gone to hell by now. The Rapture didn't take me.  I'm not supposed to be alive. Aliens abducted others.  I paid attention to everything about Roswell.  I wanted my own space ship. I astral travelled. I sought nirvana as a pretzel. I prayed for salvation. I sat twisted up in search of samedhi. I was with the greatest women the earth ever knew. Cleopatras and Dulcineas have been my lovers. I've known the best of men.  But I wasn't supposed to live this long.  If I did there was supposed to be a cyborg body or I'd be lisfted up into a Tron universe.  Why must I continue with limited income when others have helicopters and old small countries and private armies.  I don't think CEO's should be paid more than hockey players. I had just adjusted to hockey player getting paid so much then I realized there were golfers too getting a whole lot and rock stars and I was the doctor whose salary was fixed and everyone loved 'rent controls on doctors' but I was poor. And yet I wasn't. I was rich in experience. I was driving my Miata sports car and living in a trailer park. I have all I could want but for a private jet and a mansion in the south of France and a rocket launcher.  I have been blessed beyond my wildest dreams but I'm haunted by self pity.
I could have done scams. Instead I was a wastrel. That’s one of the terms my self pitying mind throws up for me. I ‘m on austerity in the diet compartment and austerity in the budget compartment.  Greece is withering beneath the gaze of haute germany.  Hollywood is putting out constant television about it’s worst excesses. I have no tv that reflects on me, leave it to beaver, seinfeld , friends. I can’t relate to the Kardashians.  All they bring to mind the idea that physician assisted suicide is necessary.  Imagine an hour in the company of such drivel.  Death would be better.  Yet they show that there’s something wrong with Hollywood, like Michael Jackson sleeping with boys.  Pedophilia is now being called a ‘sexual orientation’.  Are there no limits.
The skies the ceiling.
Pluto pictures are coming back from NASA’s probe.  The Mars studies continue.  Tesla is said to have communicated with aliens.  The geniuses thought the aliens were friendly, not like our human neighbours.  ISI keeps beheading. Syrian refugees increase.  Boco Harem keeps stealing virgin teen age girls.  China kills more dissidents.  All over Christians are persecuted.  There's a whole lot of really stupid people in the world and the self pity tells me it would be better for me if I didn't know so much. The corruption that perpetuates the insanity en mass is mass manufactured.  It's probably not their fault that they're so stupid.  They probably realized in high school what a racket it was. Better to focus on fast food and fucking that politics and changing the world.  There's more substance in a hamburger from Wendys.
The Canadian elections are coming up and the politicking continues.  So much bombast.  So much deceit.  So many people wanting more taxes and I don’t want to pay for more corruption. All I’ve seen of government is corruption. My 5 years of Downtown Eastside was an incredible drowning in city and provincial corruption.  Now 46 pharmacies and pharmacists have been closed down.  So few arrests.  The weed wacker goes through and the stalks come up again. No one addresses the sources.  NDP corruption is the worst and yet so little of it gets to the media.  The profit is in drugs and guns. Everybody is pushing marijuana. It's at the highest state levels.  
And Troudeau wants more taxes.  I wish they'd drug test politicians and Supreme Court judges like the do athletes.
I loved the surfer who punched the shark while the soccer players get thousands for falling and crying on tv. So much corruption.  No wonder old time ruler cut off hands and penis'.
And Harper is vilified.  Scapegoated for everything. This is an anti father society.  The problem is always the man. Blame it on daddy. But the provinces are in charge of health care and instead of putting their money into health care waste that money on million dollar Supervised Injections Sites building palaces for the drug addict society and claiming that housing is health care while letting contractors steal more millions of government money. Every slum land lord has his hand in the pot. it's a feeding frenzy. And how many millions spent on residential schools and pig farmers and revenge and past redresses while children go hungry and people die today of diseases that could be cured if the talkers and the pontificators and arguers didn't want the lions share of money.
Now in the US there’s more election developments with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren facing off in the new sports spectacles of democratic shuffles board.  While the Republicans might have someone but so far all I’ve heard is Donald Trump.  It’s a circus.  There seems to be little more than reality tv to all the entertainment called politics especially in the lies of the ecology and the false pretences, with corporations the new medieval lords and the elections relevant only to the vestiges of left over citizen states.
I am grateful for coffee. I’m grateful for cars. I’m grateful for my family. I’m grateful for my friends. Thank you especially for Gilbert. He licked my face this morning. Thank you for the alarm clock in the iPhone. Thank you for the iPhone.  Thank you for this apple computer. Thank you for my fingers. Thank you for my breathing. Thank you for the air. Thank you for my sight. Thank you for my arms and legs. I especially like my asshole. Thank you for the shitting.  I feel sorry for those who bloat and have obstruction. I’m so thankful for a dump. I really appreciate peeing too Lord. Good engineering. I don’t know why there wasn’t a separate function button for these but then you also used my nose for breathing and smelling so I suppose there were some design decisions.  It’s been a pretty good package.  Probably a beta version. I am enjoying the robots themes on tv and realize that this particular human model has gone a hundred thousand years with lmitted glitch fixes.  Certainly the brain has had it’s moments. I’m concerned about my heart. I seem to have less intuitive and compassionate function these days. I’m tired too so thank you for the sleep function but please make the necessary adjustments so that I can awake feeling young.  I’d like that sexual passion function returned. I’m kind of disinterested .  I’m more afraid and I’d like the stupid courage function beefed up.  I am thankful for everything Lord. God is one , three in one, and we are all in God and God is love and God is good so all is love and all is good so thankfully I can surrender to your love and trust and feel less sustained dread.
Thank you for the sunshine. Thank you for the blue sky. Thank you for the work. I like that I have a place to go thats no longer so chaotic and disorganized. Thank you for the sorting out of all the chaos. Thank you for my assistant . Thank you for the movers and workers. Thank you for telecommunications and wifi.
Please heal my family members. Help them in their illness. Heal my patients. Help them in their illness.  Guide me that I might better do thy wil. Help me be a better doctor. Help me to say and do the right thing.  Thank you for the journal articles and the web studies and the conference in Ireland and the coming conference in Virginia. Thank you for my colleagues who I learn so much from and who inspire and sustain me.  Thank you for these years of experience and that the challenges are wholly different than what they once were. What was once a race that seemed a sprint is now a marathon and much beyond. Help me as I travel this new terrain.
Thank you for doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, bureaucrats, police, lawyer, judges, the military, our leadership, journalists. Thank you for all the guilds and artisans. Thank you for the entertainers, artists and dancers.  Thank you for sobriety, Thank you for spirituality. Thank you for God.
Thank you for the colours Lord.
Thank you for the flowers my brothers photos remind me to see.

Thank you.