“What’s alcoholic dementia?”
“It’s when you forget everything but the resentments.”
Spiritually resentments are taking poison and hoping someone else would die. They are a gap between one’s own expectation and what is reality. They are in the past. Reality is in the present. Now is where God is and where joy exists. Fears are about the future. Even Jesus counselled “do not be afraid”.
Most people live lives of ‘quiet desperation’ because most of their ‘mental time’ is in the past or the future and little of their attention is left for the present.
Alcoholics are likely to complicate or overthink most anything so are encouraged always to ‘keep it simple’. When we do step 4 in any of the 12 step programs we look at each of the resentments we carry as a burden. We are asked to consider them as somehow upsetting us not for any terribly complicated reason but quite likely as affecting our ‘security (or financial position), our ‘sexual relations’, our ambition, our personal relations or self esteem.
In the exercise of going through one’s life and doing a page per year remembering the highlights good and bad one is doing part step 4 and part some other things. Each year for a biological creature must be more good that bad. Survivor depends on the organism being in the positive. It’s a fundamental of biology. St. Francis said “I’ll be there, Brother Ass willing”. He saw his mind and his body as separate but related. Our body, the vehicle of this soul that is me seems in this world. I have a whole other set of ideas about reality.
I have this tendency to view the past through a remarkable filter that can cause ‘retrospective falsification’. In sociopaths and psychopaths and narcissists in general they invariably see themselves as the central character in all of the dramas and perceive themselves as the hero if they are winning or the victim if they are losing. This is sometimes called the ‘paranoid position’ or the ‘manic depressive’ position. It’s Binary. Black and White. It’s also considered emotionally immature and sadly most adults and some whole cultures are developmentally not particularly ‘developed.’ The idea is that we are moving from the position of ‘self centeredness’ and ‘narcisisism’ the natural state of the baby to ‘altruism’ ‘with a sense of humor’ the natural state of the enlightened wise one.’ Anna Freud, the great pediatric psychiatrist, developed ‘lines of development’ such as this one from ‘narcisism to altruism’ and described these developmental phenomena in the journey of the child. Erick Erickson took some these and suggested they were the major tasks emotionally for the development of a person.
Looking back on one’s life it’s like looking into a pool and seeing what ‘floats’ to the top. Sometimes the resentments really are like those ‘floating logs’, Stool or shit that doesn’t flush but stays on top due to the constitution of the waste.
If you can’t let go of the ‘shit’ or ‘trash’ the sad thing is the hard drive of the mind remains constipated with old debris.
When we walk around in the garden of our minds resentments are like wreckage we trip over. The idea is to be able to be ‘joyous and free’. Joy is a present tense phenomena. Freedom is too. But if we’re carrying ‘baggage’ from the past we simply lack the hard drive space for the storage of the positive photos and videos. Also the mind can tend to go to those negatives . It’s a matter of retiwiring. When we have gratitude for life we wire the brain topull up the positive pictures of the pa
I find that trauma is like an explosion that causes one to forget all the good. To simplify this I ask people do you really think those who survived Hiroshima remember the great meal and the fun time they had at the park the day before the bomb devastated their city. Not likely. Yet if one allows Hiroshima to take over that year of one’s life all the other images and videos of the mind for all the other days of the year are lost.
So the exercise is always to ‘remember’ but not ‘selectively remember’ only the negatives. When people tell me they were divorced I ask them to describe the beauty and wonder and sexiness of the ex and they think I’m a nut case. The divorce has twisted their memory so they simply won’t remember that at an earlier time they considered that person the greatest most wonderful person on earth. Just like the Germans were the ally of Britain in an earlier time but after WWI and WWII it was hard for the English to think well of the Bosch.
I’m remembering the past now. It’s an exercise. It’s teaching me that despite psychoanalytic work and a variety of therapy I’m still finding my mind returning to the ‘paranoid’ state. I’m having these Hiroshima’s come back to haunt me. I have nightmares about some of the things I’ve seen and done. I’m generally a pretty good person, highly competent and said to be a genius. I don’t feel that way. I feel often that the very assets I see have been the things that have been attacked by soul suckers and thieves. I feel hurt. I have nightmares .I was diagnosed as PTSD. Post traumatic stress disorder. Every ‘sensitive’ person says they have this now. It was concluded that if you bayoneted or were bayoneted in the war you had a likelihood of say 99% chance of getting PTSD, compared to a person who pressed a button at a distance that bombed a village. The proximity is a critical factor for the development of this neuropsychiatric tradition.
The key to the notion of ‘freedom’ is ‘my part in it’. To be a victim there is this need for ‘involuntary involvement’. If one ‘volunteers’ for an experience then it’s not truly ‘rape’. The idea of whose ‘victim’ is critical because narcissists, psychopaths, and sociopaths will complain that their hands hurt when they were punching people to death. They will become angriest when they are stopped by the police when they thought they could break into a bank and the police stopped them. Many a ‘rape’ only became a ‘rape’ after the man or woman left and that person’s ‘expectations’ were not achieved. They then said they ‘didn’t volunteer’ for the experience. They call it ‘date rape’ or they say that they have ‘ptsd’ because they can’t get the image of the person they murdered out of their thoughts.
So in the 12th step program the key to understanding all resentments is to ask ‘what part did I play’ in that event where I had expectations that were thwarted. I’m asked to register where I was fearful, selfish or self serving. I’m asked to look at my pride. So I invest in a ‘get rich quick scheme’ with a con man and lose all my money. I’m naturally rather angry but as much at myself as I am with the other. I’ve been ‘duped’ but my ‘expectation’ , ‘my selfish self centered prideful design was that “I’d make a killing’.
I married the girl and hoped that she would love me ‘unconditionally’ and be ‘forgiving’ and ‘mature’ and found out that she was ‘human’ and had all the developmental deficits that I had . She was selfish, resentmentful and fearful. In love we put a person on a pedestal and some would say we spend the rest of our love life destroying that very pedestal we ourselves erected.
In the end there’s a dialogue in life between man and his God. That’s the central Binary. The aetheists would have fools believe there is No God. In polytheistic Athens St. Paul encountered the statue to the ‘unknown god’. That’s one of the first considerations of ‘aetheism’. The inability of the mind to truly comprehend or conceptualizer eternity and infinity is central to the idea of ‘You and I’. Martin Buber described this equation as “I” and “Thou’.
The original binary is Mother and Child. We began in a womb where all our needs were met without effort on our part. We dream of a womb like state. We conjure utopian ideals.Indeed the whole issue of drug abuse is the seeking of that experience of ‘free’ ‘effortless’ security.
Security is the central desire of humans. It’s been said that ‘anxiety is a measure of our distance from God and equally a measure of our humanity.’
Our suffering is described by Buddha as ‘Desire’. All suffering is ‘desire’ . That’s there in the expectations. Kierkegaard said that ‘life is suffering to death’. Yet we wish to avoid suffering.
I drove to work one morning. I’d bought a new Toyota Corolla. It was our first “new” car. It was also one of the first Toyota’s with the really sweet sculptured interiors. Everything about that car was engineered and made with considerable thought and care. The engine was a perfect machine. It ran so smoothly. Maureen’s father, though a terribly sad and tragic alcoholic, was the owner of a Toyota car dealership . He knew cars. My father as an engineer knew cars. Maureen and I had worked long years without much ‘pleasure’ in the material sense, all our money and our time going to become doctors to serve others. Because I was working in the country and committing an hour each way on the best of days we decided I needed a new car that was reliable and safe.
We were yuppies and would have bought a Volvo as Yuppies tend to but Maureen’s father was a car dealer and the Toyota Corolla was the best car that year. It really was a thing of beauty and wonder. It perfectly fit out needs.
I was driving to work because scheduled to deliver a baby that day. I think we were going to induce it because it was over due. I’d been called before I left home. This was before cell phones. On the land line I’d left some orders. I was really happy. I had the most beautiful brilliant wife in the world. I felt good. I’d picked up a coffee to drink. I always enjoyed drinking coffee on the way to work. I was focused on the highway. I was a good driver and enjoyed driving. It was brisk winter’s day.
It was a bit blowy. The wind was stirring up snow that was swirling across the road but visibility was great. The road was clear but with patches of what we called ‘black ice’, slippery patches, you needed to be aware of them because they could cause a vehicle to lose traction.
I remember a semi coming at me in the on coming lane. I remember this car pulling up beside me to pass. There were three young adults in it. When I looked at them they appeared to be having a party in the car everyone gesticulating and talking and the driver racing. The car was a old ‘boat’ of a car. (in my mind today likely poorly maintained with poor tires.) By contrast Everything about me and my machine was optimum and ready.
I was concerned about these people. I was doing 90 km. That’s the speed limit. I couldn’t imagine why they were passing in these conditions. There was black ice on the road. It was clear and cold day. The driver had not judged the speed of the on coming semi or his speed relative to mine. Everything about what he was doing was ‘wrong’. He accelerated on black ice.
He lost control in the passing lane because he realized the semi was going to hit him. The semi driver was already braking. Rather than slow down and let it pass he tried to ‘gun’ it. He lost control or just turned sharply into me to avoid the headon. I was beginning to brake to get out of the imminent danger. To avoid the semi he literally plowed into me. He hit my car head on in the driver’s seat. He’d swung over in one of those rapid turns that are shown on cop cars. To not be knocked aside I’d have had to swing back into him which would have resulted in his being smashed by the semi. I sacrificed my life and ‘went with the flow’. I didn’t swing the wheel back but took the hit and swung straight into the ditch.
At 90 km/hour the front end of my car went off the road and caught in the snow and ditch causing it to flip head over heels in the air.
I did 360 degrees. I remember in the summersaults, being a gymnast and a person who did summersault dives at the pool, I was fully aware that I was doing this huge circle in the air. I was upside down in the air. My car didn’t just flop over on it’s back. It did that but then it kept going with momentum to land up right and then flip over onto the roof again.
I remember distinctly that terrible experience of the car going over the first time. I felt my head and neck being bent forcibly to the side as my head hit the door. I never lost consciousness. I had my seat belt on but a weakness of the design of the Toyota was it was meant for little Japanese men. I’m 6 foot tall. My head almost touched the roof when I sat with the seat belt tight. The roof buckled in and my head was forcibly pressed against my shoulder. I then saw this same process occurring almost in slow motion as I went into the second flip.
I remember believing that “I’m going to die.” I did not know anyone who survived a ‘pitch pole’ accident at high speed. I went into that second somersault sure I was going to die.
I didn’t.
I remember the shock and relief. I was truly surprised to still be alive.
The car now twisted and spun sideways rolling another time 360 degrees to land up right. I took the roll well. I know people can survive a roll and while I was looking out of my window I was seeing the horizon return to it’s proper place.
I saw that the great boat of a car with the careless poor driver and narcissist at the wheel had not rolled or flipped but because of it’s weight had simply ploughed through me and come to a stop in the field.
Being a doctor or simply being ‘Bill Hay’, it’s what I do, I got out of the car and walked over to them in the deep snow and confirmed everyone was okay. I looked in. “Everyone okay?” They were sorting the,selves out. Everyone was still in what I ‘d call ‘party’ mode. The girl was laughing and the guys were talking and everyone was getting out of the car with no apparent mobility issues.
They didn’t once ask about me or show any concern about me. I was bouncing 360 degree turns in front of them, They were only concerned about themselves. That was obviously apparent. Grotesquely and obviously apparent. Sociopaths!
I was beginning to seize up. I was able to walk up to the road where a police car had stopped. I got into the back of his car and sat down closing the door carefully. I was going into terrible shock.
“Take me to the hospital.”
“I have to wait for the ambulance.”
“I’m a doctor. Take me to the hospital now. I can’t wait for an ambulance.’ I commanded. I was becoming scared.
I was stiffening up and tears began to flow down my cheeks. The policeman was a good man. His voice was caring. I was having trouble staying in my body. I didn’t know what was wrong, how I’d survived, where I was , what was happening. I just knew something really terrible had occurred. I needed desperately to get to a hospital. (I’m crying now remembering.)
My back and neck were in so much pain by the time the policeman got me to the emergency.
They put me on a gurney. I didn’t believe I would live. I was quietly hysterical. I’d stopped thinking rationally. I wasn’t even connecting with my body. I was in so much pain . I was terrified too. I had such fear and shock. I just stared. I couldn’t answer questions except with single syllable response. My bell was definitely clocked.
My friend was the emergency doctor. I had such waves of reliefwhen I heard his voice, saw his face and felt him touch my shoulder. (I’m crying again to remember that, sobbing and shaking) . I relaxed. I think he must have given me morphine. I’d not noticed the nurse setting up lines. I was inside myself really scared. My friend gave me relief. He’s a good doctor. Hates a good man. I had a little hope. A sliver of hope.
There were xrays. We didn’t have CTScans. I’d hit my head. I didn’t think I’d lost consciousness. I’d bashed my head against the side of the car but all that was secondary to the pain in my neck from having my head pinned to my shoulder by the roof being pushed in time and again by the crash of the whole machine onto the ground with me held by the seat belt as I was ‘bat like’ upside down.
I never saw the hit men and woman again. I believed they were drunk, stoned or just plain stupid. Who knows. I often say if you shoot me in the foot and I can never walk again it may matter to you whether you ‘intended’ or ‘didn’t intend’ to shoot me in the foot; it may have been an ‘accident’ for you but my foot doesn’t know the difference between intent and lack of intent.
The courts are silly. In the old days they developed the first law of mercy, an eye for an eye because it limited the retaliation I and my family could take. I could well want all these people dead because I was permanently irreversibly changed. But I wasn’t thinking of them, I was in excruciating pain then I was floating and looking at the pain. The pain was still there but it didn’t seem important,
I couldn’t think. I was sick. I was in a daze. I was devastated.
Maureen came to the emergency. I cried. She didn’t like me being anything but manly. She was very professional and abrupt.
When once I had a terribly unusual kidney infection and woke in the night peeing huge clumps of blood in utter pain crying out beside the toilet she’d got up looked at me and said ‘it’s proabably a kidney stone’ . Then she gone back to bed. I called the emergency myself and don’t know if I drove or got her up to drive.
Whenever I was hurt or needy she was angry and upset that I placed another demand on her. It was my fault I was peeing blood. What was I doing disturbing her. I was her’ wife’ and with her husband she was the coldest most hostile angry person at times. With everyone else she was Florence Nightingale.
I was thankful to see her in the hospital. Maybe it was the witnesses around. Maybe I caught her on a good day. Maybe she was truly concerned about me. She was increasingly totally wrapped up in her self and her family and I was living this auxiliary existence. I ‘d come back to Winnipeg from a week on call and she’d greet me at the door, with repeated demands like “the garbage needs to be taken out’. ‘We’re out of milk, you’ll need to go out and get some’. Never was I greeted ‘hi honey, I’m so glad you’re home.’ I came through the door to an onslaught of complaints and demands. I had this expectation that she’d be happy to see me but instead she would tell me all about her mother’s problem s and all her health concerns.
Now she showed compassion. I was still in shock. I was told that my neck wasn’t broken. I was dazed and Maureen I guess took me home. I was now on anti-inflammatories and Percocet and flexeril muscle relaxants. I went to the bed. We were in the rented house, I believe. We’d not buy our house till later I think. That was a really big thing. Buying the first house.
But now I was in bed wearing a neck brace and in pain.
I was home unable to work. Maureen went too work. Hardly able to get out of bed to pee and feeling such pain. My solution was simple. I got a bottle of whiskey. I began drinking a bottle of whisky and popping Percocet and flexeril and Naproxen. Things got immediately better, I think about half bottle of whisky and a handful of Percocet and the pain was bearable.
Then I was able to address my near death experience. I phoned Encyclopedia Britannica. I told the salesman at the end of the phone that I wanted an encyclopedia and he had to come over now. Obviously this was the shock of a life time to an encylopedia sales man. But he came and I bought the encyclopedia. Maureen was furious.
“I almost died. I always wanted an encyclopedia britannica. I am stuck in bed. I can’t do anything. I am going to read the encyclopedia . We have the money. I’m working all the time. I don’t care that you wanted the money to buy your mother something. I have spent it on myself because I need this now. I felt I was dead. I died . Don’t you understand.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. You shouldn’t be drinking on pills. You’re being crazy. You didn’t die. I’ve got to go see my mother.”
She laughed too. The encyclopedia arrived and I unpacked these great boxes. We had the black boards with bricks and the brown leather bound top of the line Encyclopedia was displayed prominently in the living room. I sat up for the next week sipping whisky, popping Percocet and reading the Encyclopedia cover to cover. Things were getting marginally better. I liked reading and learning. The Encyclopedia Britannica is one of the greatest wonders of the world. Morning to night, I’d . Maureen would come home frazzled. We’d eat. She’d sleep.
She had severe PMS. Each month she’d be on the couch for days. Often she couldn’t go to the university. She was always angry and depressed and sleeping. She would do her work and come home and moan. Sometimes she could’ve go to work. AT the time Naproxen came. It was a break through for her. She took the naproxen and suddenly she was no longer in bed but able to carry on. It was a tremendous relief because there’d been concern that she’d not be able to complete medical school because of her PMS. She had an abortion or been raped or both but this all began to unravel. She’d never go for therapy. Being in an alcoholic family they all were crazy. I’d study alcoholic families later and think hers’ was a text book example, classic: the quiet angry drunk husband ,the drunk oldest son, the crazy angry smiling mother, the silent angry lost son, the happy daughters, one the caregiver of the mother. The other escaped.
I was merely competition. I was alone in my pain and couldn’t move for at least a week. Any movement and I’d have splitting headaches and pain all down my side. It was ugly. But I read the encyclopedia , sipped my whiskey, popped the Percocet , and didn’t feel so stupid. IT was hard to concentrate. I was forcing myself each day to get my brain back on tract. The pain of concentration was inexorable. I meditated through the pain.
I didn’t pray. I thought God had abandoned me. I prayed to God about my wife’s absence but he didn’t reply. I just felt that when she was through medical school and internship things would be better. I prayed the pain would eventually go. It never did. I’d have chronic pain. The concussion cleared. The neck remained a problem until a few more accidents seemed to change the nature of the pain. Like God’s chiropractics. I went to chiropractors . I went to physiotherapist. When they hung the weights on my head and pulled my neck I had a brief relief. Massage did nothing. Maureen was always in rage. Quietly impatient. Angry.
She’d been around sick people all her life. She’d been the care giver for her mother and father and brothers and there was no room on the rosters for me. She had her patients. Her sister and she supported each other.
Nothing could be done. I just had to wait. I’m the worst patient. I waited and drank whisky and took Percocet and read the encyclopedia. The view out the windows of the winter, the snow drifts, people walking by , the neighbour shovelling snow. I liked them. I remember a bird singing in the snow out side the window and for the first time wanting to live again, I had died and something had died inside me. I didn’t know why I was alive. I couldn’t survive something like that. But it wasn’t something I could discuss with anyone. I was just in shock. The whisky helped.
About a week later I thought of going back to work.
I’d begun to have trouble with the government insurance agency. They didn’t want to give me a new car. They insisted my brand new car which I’d driven for a couple of weeks was just fine and ready to drive. I was in pain and talking on the phone to this person who was acting like a normal human being while being an alien insect in the shape of a human.
“What do you mean there’s nothing wrong with the car. You want me to just have a body shop take out the dint’s. The roof is stove in inches. The side is smashed. The frames twisted. It was brand new. I’m not taking $1000 for the repair of my car. It’s a $10,000 car and I want it replaced. “
The problem with really severe whiplash is that any anger tenses the muscles in your neck and these people in insurance set back healing by years with their ‘funny business’. I felt so utterly vulnerable. This prick was attacking me and I was in my bed and couldn’t get out of bed to kill him. He was taunting me. He was taking advantage of my being an invalid. He needed to be killed. How dare he call me up all so happy, acting like he’s doing me a favour , with that you’re lucky I’m a good guy voice,if it was someone else you’d get nothing. My head was throbbing my neck was frozen.
I had never before felt I couldn’t go to someone and literally physically dismember them until this moment. I was unable to get out of bed.and this prick was putting the boots to me. I took another Percocet and flexeril. I popped a handful of aspirin. I went back to reading the encyclopedia learning about tropical birds and their mating habits. I had another whisky.
My dancing friend had just become a lawyer. He had graduated weeks before. I called him up. I asked him to take care of it. I was his first case.He never was very good.
I’d also had my own encounter with an insurance agent in the Morris Hospital. I”d had a fellow who flipped his tractor and hit his head. I don’t remember the details accept he was the innoscent victim and had had really bad injuries. I’d admitted him because he’d had a head injury and some fractures. His head injury was bad and he was really out of it. Delirious with meds, on IV with q 15 minute monitoring. There were no visitors. His family had come in and seen him with me and he’d hardly recognized them. He was so weak and confused. . In those days all we had was a skull X-ray. His head injury more than mild. Nothing was fractured. We watched for signs of hematoma and waited. I was terrified about neurological cases and called the top neurologist in the city and talked with him daily moving him when he was stable. The whole question had been whether to transfer him or keep him but beds were always tight and I managed most major trauma, infarcts, gun shot wounds etc in the country hospital with phone consultation with the Winnipeg General ICU, cardiology, neurology. These were all my teachers. They were great. I’d just phone anyone I needed help from and they ‘d be perfect. I’ve had the very best colleagues with rare exception. My life story is the one bad apple scenario, Jesus and the one Judas. The vast majority of people are really fine,m
So this old guy was in my hospital and I was checking on him every hour or so.
That’s when I encountered his insurance agent. There were no visitors and this little weasel was telling him he just needed to sign ‘here’ and he was leaving him a check. I’d been looking at his chart before entering the room and overhead this conversation. When I came in I saw that this insurance guy had the obtunded patients hand on the tray and was beginning to push it in a signature while the patient drooled and stared. I actually saw this. No word of lie. Something out of a black and white 1930 movie.
I grabbed the insurance agent and literally threw him against the wall. I took the paper and saw that the signature had not been signed just the first line had been pushed up by this guys hand on my patients hand.
“Get the fuck out of this hospital. If I ever see you again I’m going to thrash you so hard you’ll need an insurance agent.” I had a nurse as witness. He ran away down the hall. Really a true little weasel.
The check was for $5000. I spoke to the patients family. They were incensed, They immediately got a lawyer to protect the poor old guy. I really was glad to see that lawyer come into the hospital, black suit and tie, white shirt, brief case, and talk to the family. The farmer was worth millions. Land and equipment rich, money poor. The accident claim gave him a million more in the end. He’d been totally innoscent and this insurance guy was trying to save his company from the costs for his tractor and his injury. He’d be disabled for a number of years my patient, this farmer who wanted nothing but to get out of hospital and get back to his farming. He would be the nightmare of physio wanting to walk before his leg healed, get the shoulder and arm working and slowly but surely had his memory and brain functioning return.
Now I had my own insurance agent issues in addition to being unable to move without the knife like pains stabbing my neck and brain.
I began doing yoga again. I’d never stopped. I was a yogi. I meditated. I was a dancer. I did all the exercises. I had a town to serve. I was back at work in less than a couple of weeks. Maureen was glad to not have me around. I’d stopped drinking after a week and stopped the Percocet after a couple of weeks but I had to lean on her to do somethings. I’d not been able to sit down without steadying. She didn’t like weak men.
I’ve never been a good patient. I hate myself and everyone and want to die. I’m best left alone. I think drones are a good advance. Drones could bring chicken noodle soup to guys like me and drop it off. I’m not a happy sick person. I moan.
Maureen was kind of like an old intolerant nurse on her best days. Mostly she ignored me like I was a nose booger that couldn’t be reached.
I got this Ford Mustang. It had head room. I couldn’t get into a lot of cars because I couldn’t bend my neck. The Ford Mustang was a great car. It was that Ford that began my love affair with motor vehicles. Most guys get it earlier. Certainly my father loved cars and trucks as did my brother . I came to it late. I loved my Mustang.
I still have trouble getting into cars because it’s hard to bend my neck. It never got better despite years of all the right exercise and chiropractics. Maybe the ligaments were stretched like in those torture machines. I had other things to consider rather than the chronic pain. I had patients and a hospital to run. I had to relieve Bob and Mike.
My patients were thankful I came back. Lil was as usual unbelievable taking care of everything.lil was a beautiful soul.
After a year of fighting the lawyer got me a total package that paid only for my car replacement. He was new. He lost big time. The three guys in the car had no consequences of note. I don’t even think they got suspension for reckless driving. Maybe a warning. I think in a loving world they’d all be shot against the wall without blindfolds.
I suspect I have some resentment from this time.
Angry wife. Lousy new lawyer, my friend. Shitty insurance agents. A true psychopath. He’s somewhere in the third world knocking people out stealing their kidneys and selling them back to them when they wakes up.
I never thought much about the devil. I’d heard a lot about him growing up. I’d still say our Baptist minister seemed to know the devil better than he knew Jesus with all his hell and brimstone sermonizing. But that whole experience with pain and suffering had me considering the “forces of evil”.
I have this idea of love and God as love and all of us returning to love. I had to reflect a lot on death and suffering that year.
The incubator was the Waterloo.
I’d deliver babies and there was no incubator in the hospital. So it was difficult with premature babies. The nurses and the mothers were great and Bob as always was a mensch. He explained that a baby incubator was supposed to be here and that it was on the requisition approved and the money was supposedly ear marked for it but somehow it just hadn’t arrived.
I had a delivery. This was a native girl. I had a lot of deliveries from the nearby reserve. It was notorious in the country. ironically the dirtiest most dangerous reserve with every kid sexually abused and RCMP’s and doctors unwilling to go there. Today’s it’s a spiritual centre for natives. Amazing how places and people can turn around. There’s a whole story about my saving all these kids lives on that reserve I wanted to talk about the incubator but the meningitis story has way laid me. It’s popped up in the pool of my mind like a lost life jacket and now that demands telling. I’ll come back to the incubator. The meningitis story shows what wonderful people worked in Morris, this incredible public health nurse, these amazing nurses who cared for the babies, this great native elder, and the pediatricians at children’s hospital and the amazing infectious disease department.
The public health nurse approached me very concerned in the hospital. She asked me , then begged me to come with her to the reserve 25 miles away. Bob had had some really bad experience there. He and the previous doctor had some threatening situation and Mike’s wife wouldn’t let him go. So she’d come to me. The babies were sick she said. “I think one may have meningitis.”
“Bring them here.” I told her.
That was our policy. We’d see anyone at the hospital but we weren’t going on to the reserve. The RCMP wouldn’t go. Mike never went and Bob hadn’t gone in a year or so since the doctors felt their lives were unsafe there. It was a real drunken criminal reserve. Hell on earth.
“They’re too sick to come. I can’t convince them to come. I think they’ll die.”
She was a great public health nurse. I”ve only known good public health nurses. They’re a tribe of crazy caring people.
So against better advice I took her in my car and drove out to the reserve.
There was a big, really big Indian standing in the middle of the road blocking it. Holding his hand’s up.,
“He’s the problem,’ the nurse said. “He won’t let the mother’s bring their babies to the hospital.” Over the years I’ve found even the best women can leave something critical out of the story.
I’d learn later this tall lanky monster was with the American Indian Movement. He was a communist rabble rouser come up to organize Canadian Indians for war. In my hippy days hitchhiking back and forth across CAnada nad the US dropping acid and smoking dope I’d hung out with these guys and their Black Panther brethren. Crazy dudes.
Now I had a job to do.
I got out of my car.
“No white men allowed, whitey. This is an Indian reserve. Turn around and go back to your mommy, little boy. This is an Indian reserve. No white man allowed.” He snarled at me with contempt.
“I’m a doctor. The nurse says there are sick babies here. I’m going to pass and see the babies.”
“No you are not whitey. I don’t care if you’re a doctor. You get an Indian doctor to come here.” He was all tough body language belligerent.
“She thinks the babies have meningitis. There’s only one Indian doctor I know. He’s Mohawk in Ontario. There’s no time for me to get him here. “ I was matter of fact calm in my “it’s a good day to die” mode.
I was standing in front of my car talking up to this guy. There’s a dozen Indians around but most of them are old guys. Only a few are young punks already drinking in the morning. The old guys are silent ,watching., listening. A lot of watching and listening goes on on reserves. The neighbours are entertainment.
“Turn around whitey. Go home. Get an Indian doctor. Get the media. Get the TV and radio here. Show everyone the sick Indian babies because of the white man. No white man comes on this reserve.”
I’m not known for my patience.
After I became a psychiatrist my ex wife used to say. “Bill doesn’t tolerate fools well, unless they’re his patients.’
So I move in on this guy, face to face, inches apart, it gets you inside, an untrained guys swings, gives advantage to a trained person. Counters bullying and intimidation. People are tough at a distance but back down when they don’t know if you’re going to just talk to them or tear their face off with your teeth. People call me Crazy Bill and Wild Bill. I don’t see it but in retrospect they might have a point, just a little one.
“I know that if I don’t see the babies they could die. If I need to I’d rather kill one big stupid Indian asshole and save a whole lot of cute little Indian babies. Get the fuck out of my way or I’m going to kill you right now asshole!” I guess I raised my voice a little. My spittle kind of covered his face.
He backed down. Not real quick but pretty quick. He’d expected to have a photo shoot. He was going to be a big shot on t.v. He didn’t care if the babies died. Assholes like him never do. They just use people and situations to for fame and money. Being a bully he thought he’d make a name for himself. Instead he was now running away with his tail between his legs. The public health nurse looked at him like a mother looks at a bad little boy.
I drove another block or two to the nursing station .The crowd followed on foot. There were three mothers and their babies all there. I’d take them all back with me in the car.
The babies had meningitis. One was obtunded. The Public Health Nurse was right. She saved their lives.
As I was about to get back into my car and leave,my car now an ambulance with mothers and babies, an old Indian guy, he’d been sitting at the entrance said to me,
“Thank you doctor. That guys a joke. He’s not an Indian. He’s an apple, red outside, white inside. Indians care for their babies. You’re more an Indian than him. Take Care of our babies. “
“Yes sir,” I said. “Thank you,” He was a man deserving respect.
Back in the hospital I’d be thankful for the best nurses I ever knew. One older one was so loving with babies. They all were so incredible with keeping the needles in. The problem with meningitis is you needs lots of fluids and lots of antibiotics. The trouble with babies is they’re constantly moving. I was good with a butterfly needles and good with getting the needle in the scalp veins. That’s looks like the Hollywood tough job but it’s not. It’s where the glory goes but the unsung hero is the nurse that keeps that needle in place. That requires the correct bandages and these back pack contraptions the nurses made up. The older nurse had incredible experience compassion and love and this younger nurse stayed with her and was the quickest study. I remember those two because they kept the butterfly needles in the longest. When they came out I’d make the little baby cry, the scalp veins would stand out, I’d slip in the needle and hand them back to the nurses.
I’d be up 24 hours for 4 nights and days. We had all the regular hospital stuff that weekend but the babies needed 1-1 attention from the nurses and I was putting in IV’s time they got pulled out. There were 6 babies, maybe 12 all together sick in the hospital but with 6 sick and a couple really sick. I was doing spinal taps and sending of Cerebral Spinal Fluid on all of them. The labs came back Meningicocus. Fuck!. Life is not fair. These poor little babies had the worst luck. Fucking epidemic. The first tap I did on the sickest baby was thick with pus. Later with fluids and antibiotics the CSF cleared.
The meningitis wasn’t just here.
I was on the phone with the pediatric ICU and infectious disease. They had no beds. Maureen was working round the clock in the children’s hospital with the A team keeping the sickest alive and I was out in the country with mainly these two nurses and 6 babies with meningitis. There were dozens of cases that year. I was coached by the greatest head of Pediatrics to manage on my own till they had a bed.
I was only concerned most about one but this older nurse pretty much loved the little baby back to life. All along all those beautiful Indian women nursed their babies minding the IV and everyone said prayers. The priest was there too. It was crowded. It was crazy. I was spinal tapping and voodooing and putting in butterfly needles in the scalps and running IV’s full of antibiotics till the tide began to turn.
It’s like that, a tide turning. We didn’t know that littlest one would make it but she did. The others pulled together and 4 days later I slept more than an hour through the night.. Until then I’d got a half hour here and there.
Bob and Mike came back after the weekend and were great as usual. Mike went over the labs and helping with IV flows. Bob who’d done this alone for a couple of years was such a wealth of reassurance. He never stopped telling me what a smart clinician I was, how impressed he was with how I saved lives. Meanwhile he was the one we all leaned against. He was such a solid all round good doctor. His heart was as big as his town.
He’d talk to the reserve chief after this epidemic and arrange a truce with the public health nurse so that they would ensure the safety of the doctor. I’d begin driving out to see patients who couldn’t come in, one particularly famous and tragic boy in a wheelchair, for one. My show down with the AIM guy hit the news locally . Mostly it was American Indian tries to stop Canadian doctor saving native baby story. I think they interviewed he old guy who told them asshole wasn’t a real Indian. The AIM guy went elsewhere looking for fame and glory.
I was loved after this. All the babies lived. The one baby, the first who came down with it, whose care was delayed by politics, was a little slow for a while after but kids are amazing and resilient. With the meningitis treated the body’s own immune system could take care of the clean up. I don’t think that slow baby was slow a year later. I was doing neurological tests on them all for a year and by then I couldn’t see anything wrong. I couldn’t have told which was slow. Maybe years later the kid might have attention deficit in school but otherwise they were going to be fine.
The paediatrician thanked me by phone. Maureen said how everyone thought it was amazing that we’d handled a meningitis epidemic in the country. She was amazed because she’d seen us at our worst and didn’t realize how great the nurses and Bob and Mike were and what incredible work we were all doing in a town where there was supposed to be 6 doctors and a surgeon and an anesthetist.
We didn’t have an incubator.
The Indian girl was only 18. She came into the hospital emergency saying she was 5 months pregnant but thought she was in labour. “It might be labour.” She said shyly.
She was in labour. She was going to have a premature baby. She was eclampsia. She had a fever. She was coughing with pneumonia. She was really sick, looking near death and she was in labour. When I looked with the speculum she was just beginning to dilate.
It was in the dead of winter. A blizzard was blowing outside. I called the ambulance. We didn’t have an incubator. We were supposed to have an incubator but we never got it. I was concerned the mother was going to survive but was really concerned a premie couldn’t be maintained without an incubator and paediatrician.
The ambulance drivers are ‘volunteer’. It was the most dangerous driving conditions imaginable.
We began the hour drive to Winnipeg.
The woman began to deliver. I was down on my knees in the rocking sliding ambulance.
Couldn’t have been a half hour into the trip when the tiniest baby just slid out. The smaller the baby the easier the passage. This was lightening quick with lots of muconium. The baby wasn’t breathing and no heart so I resuscitated him. Bouncing swaying ambulance , merconimum and fluids all over the floor , ambulance driver slipping and sliding in the ice and blizzard, and me with a baby, not breathing. I hit it. That’s what you do. It wakes them up. It’s not just Hollywood. I cleared the airway. I tapped the baby and the baby breathed . It’s the happiest moment. The baby arms stretching and the tiniest eyes trying to open. Another big baby breath. My huge stethescope hearing happy little sounds. The baby stretched again.
We were in parkas and the ambulance was cold and this tiny little baby needed heat. Meanwhile the mother was bleeding out. I snipped the umbilical cord and handed the baby to the second ambulance driver in the passenger seat. He reached out for the baby. He was a huge guy with this little baby hardly taking up one of his hands. He immediately opened his shirt and had that baby skin to skin under his shirt .
“I delivered a few colts. They like the skin to skin and heat too,” Doctor “ . Big rancher smile on his face. I loved the farmers and ranchers in Morris. All incredibly powerful Christian men full of love . Love for Jesus, love for their families and love for their farms and livestock. They were all so competent and so very helpful.
I was back getting the placenta out and sweeping my fingers around the uterus to get the bit that was helding causing the gushing bleeding. I had the line in and was pouring in fluids and oxytocin. She was still grey with a the whispery heart beat. She needed blood. The floor was soaked. Puddles of blood and mucus and merconimum and urine. She was hardly breathing on the gurney hardly conscious. Her very premie baby was under the armpit of the one big guy. The other guy was hunched over his steering wheel trying to see ahead through a blizzard white out , trying to go as fast as he could ,an amazing driver considering the conditions, us sliding around on the icy road.
We got to the emergency.
The paediatrician was there with the incubator. T he obstetrician was there. The nurses surrounded us. I was covered in blood and merconimum. The ambulance driver retrieved this tiny baby from under his arm and handed her to the paediatrician. The driver was shaking. The mother was still alive, more white than white for an Indian. The nurses had other large bore lines in. There wasn’t any more bleeding. I’d stopped that. She got more oxygen and blood. She was in the hospital with the baby for a couple of weeks. Both survived . Both left well. That was a post partum visit I really enjoyed. Healthy tiny baby. Shy smiling mother holding her child.
After handing off our patients The ambulance drivers and I headed back to the hospital in Morris, the blizzard continuing, drifts on the road, but nood need to drive as fast as possible
I put in the bill for service. A couple of hundred dollars at the time. The government refused to pay for my return hour ride. it was $50. They said I wasn’t working and that they’d only pay for the transfer and delivery but they nickel dimed on the return.
We’d saved these two lives. The ambulance drivers almost died themselves and some paper pusher in an office would say doctors didn’t deserve to be paid for the return ambulance drive. It was insane. Some Bureaucrats are chosen for their greed, brown noses ,utter stupidity and insaniety. How was I going to get back to the hospital? What was I going to do? Have a party on the way. How could that not be working.
I wrote one of my many ‘in famous’ letters. Writing these letters has saved me from hunting down all the recipients and wiping out their genetic strain and to do the world a service. In later life I began writing the letters and not sending them. I’d grown more jaded.
I phoned a few colleagues.
There was. Helicopter Service near Morris. I found out the cost of emergency flights between Morris and Winnipeg.
I called a paediatrician and asked him for his on call and his private fee per hour.
I did the same with an obstetrician I knew.
I then wrote the letter explaining that I appreciated I had made an error in leaving the hospital as I could have missed another emergency. Because of the concern of the government for the town they did not pay doctors for return visits in ambulances because they didn’t think it was good for the emergency department and town to be unattended.
I described the ambulance ride, the reason for taking it, the lack of incubator, and the two ambulance drivers saving the baby while I stopped the woman’s bleeding and kept her alive in this blizzard which had the advantage of causing the fewest trucks to be on the road for the ambulance to avoid. I hadn’t thought it would have been fair to a nurse to send her.
However, In future such cases I’d arranged for the alternative services which came to about $30,000 for the two to three hours of the actual emgency but explained that having an ‘on call’ service might cost another few thousand a month depending. I’d nearly tabulated the helicopter costs, obstetrician and paediatrician Services.
I received a special delivery envelope. express the next day. It contained a government cheque for $50.. I have never had an apology from the government and I have never been paid the thousands of dollars of time and energy I’ve had to put out because they have such poor training, incredible incompetence, lack any human experience but treat people like they’re numbers.
I had an old Jewish guy who showed me the number he had on his arm from Auschwitz, the slave work camp he’d survived.
“I’ve spent my life trying to be something other than this number , “ he told me.
I have so many times identified with him when dealing with Canadian bureaurcrats, like they missed that whole lesson on the Nazis’ and the Communists with Gulag and Arendt’s brilliant treatise on the burocrats that made the Nazi death camps, what she called the ‘banality of evil.’
There’s now an elder woman and another adult, the baby I delivered , somewhere today, probably having kids because I’m a doctor and trained as a doctor with heart and soul was and encouraged by my teachers to care.I’m not a bureaucrat . Neither were the volunteer ambulance drivers.
Which brings me to the incubator.
This event like so many would get me wondering. I wondered why we didn’t have an incubator. I looked into the matter and got an inkling of the problem. Because Bob had been working his butt off doing the work of 6 doctors the hospital administrator with a board of business men and farmers and a sketchy head nurse had been up to mischief. It’s never just one person. It’s always a nest when there’s evil being done.
McLean described the human brain as developing from first being Reptilian, then Mammalian and lastly Human. As humans we have the reptile and the mammal brain. When we dissect the brain the brain structure of the reptile is essentially very like the basal brain of the human. That’s where the breathing and eating and other basic mechanisms are found. The higher functions of the mamamal the socialled ‘emotional brain’ are found in the ‘mid brain. There structures like amygdalla nad hypocampus are well developed in dogs as they are even more so in humans. These are kinship factors. A reptile doesn’t have friends. She lays her eggs and leaves. Mammals,, the warm blooded, care for their young and have attachment. Humans, the last developed brain have the capacity for agape. Love of God.
I think of some people as not yet reptilian. They’re so evil they’re insectoid. Hence the recognition of them having a ‘nest’., like wasps.
It turned out that the hospital didn’t have an incubator but the administrator had a new desk and new carpet and new walls and art and all sorts of things had been done around the hospital to make it pretty.
When I was talking low and slow to the administrator he tried to argue that he needed all this ‘appearance’ because people wanted to see the hospital and him as prosperous so they would support it.
He was politically correct. Politically correct people are insects.
He thought he could lie and dress it up and make things look like something else when they really were what they are.
I was furious.
I met with the board and listed all the problems I had with the administrator. He’d concealed all this from them. They didn’t know about the crash cart, the oxygen bottle not having oxygen, my bagging a cardiac arrest until I realized the tankhadnt been filled, the lack of incubator and all this.minor stuff that I’d reported theough’official channels’ but never got to the Board.We had been having all manner of things go missing and things not being bought and just a whole bunch of passive aggressive covert aggressive behaviour.
The board members said, ‘This is the first time we’re hearing all this. Bob has raised some of these concerns but the administrator and head nurse had said they were all addressed.” He gave a sharp look at the administrator who like all sociopaths was non poised preparing his next set of lies. The nurse at least squirmed in her seat.
Generally I was feeling like I was fighting the disease of the enemy on one side and being stabbed in the back by the administration. The patients and the town wanted them and their babies to live. But the administration had a whole other agenda.
We’d meet as doctors and present our concern in committee and give it to the administrator and he’d shred it. The Board never got any of Bob’s or my concerns we’d submitted in writing till I showed up with the list of concerns and copies to distribute to each of the board members.
I eventually laid it all out for them. Three pages of nigh on criminal events. It had all begun with the incubator. I ‘d also taken the time to speak with the College of Physicians and Surgeons who said it wasn’t their ‘jurisdiction’. Government is all about everyone saying “I’m going to do nothing and look like I’m doing something because it’s somebody else’s problem’.
In Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy they want to drop a person off the space ship which was the size of Manhattan in New York. They wondered how they’d disguise it. The answer was “No need. Everyone will say it’s an SEP.” What’s an SEP. “You know, somebody else’s problem”
I had a contract for a year.and was into a new contract.
I spoke to the Minister of Health. He said he would look into it. I am blessed with knowing a lot of good people in high places. Mostly people at the top don’t know what’s going on.
Bob meanwhile with his consummate wisdom and love of his town had approached the Kiwanis to get an incubator. The Kiwanis would have a fund drive and the hospital would get an incubator. Bob had that thing we’d later call ‘Emotional Intelligence’. He was not only very bright he was also a very caring guy.
He thought the administrator creepy and didn’t like that he was believed to be sleeping with the nurse despite them being married. There were always these unholy sexual alliances in the community which over rode good sense. I became so cynical at times as to conclude. If you want to find out why some idiot, male or female, is still in a place of importance it’s likely they are particularly good in some way sexually. I’ve solved countless problems by finding out.
“My wife or husband never does oral sex but he or she does.” That explained why one nightmare kept their job in one hospital.
“She lets me fuck her up the ass or he ties me up and fucks me up the ass.” I’ve Lenard dozens of these. Then I go. There that explains it.
If I could write a history of the world I’d be sure all the crazy bits of mystery could be solved if we knew who was fucking who and who was doing what.
This administrator was a creepy fucker and that was apparently one of the ways he maintained his position. He was a lying smooth taker, very well dressed, and glib.
The board was slow. They had all the information they needed to fire the guy. Hell, he could have been put in jail with what dirt I exposed. But the best part was finding out from his former boss that he’d stolen money there and fucked the staff. She loathed him and couldn’t believe he was still around.
‘I fired his ass for doing the very same things at another hospital,” she told me.
So I believe the world will evolve when men and women not only get their heads out of their assess hut out of their own and everyone else’s genitals.
People who knew me when I was younger said I was kind of like Dr. House. Arrogant and impatient. I know my friends loved me but I’d have this administrator who’d hate me for life. I’ve caught a whoe group of pedophiles and they all loathe me.
I gave the Board an ultimatum saying I’d break my contract and leave unless the shit the administrator was doing stopped. Otherwise I was leaving. I didn’t feel I had time for committees and all that shit. I was always in a hurry. I had places to go and people to see. Life was too short for sociopathic administrators. Passive Aggressives kill as many as Active Agressives. I was still the hippie wanting to make love not war. I was a physician and a healer. I just wanted to practice my trade without interference.
Bob, the mayor and the board would ask me to come to Morris a year later to repeat what I’d told them the year before. It had taken them that long to investigate everything. They fired the Administrator with the help of his former boss who I’d introduced to the caring Morris mayor.
His political cronies would like take care of him as pedophiles take care of each other. Sociopaths regardless of their differences share similar modus operandi. I have this thing for patterns and pattern recognitions.
Everyone was sorry they’d not responded at the time and wanted me to return but by then I was elsewhere. I was sorry too because Morris was a wonderful town, the people the finest, Bob and Mike great doctors and the nurses and staff collectively wonderful. Without the bad apples the whole place could and did soar. I missed Lil and her husband . It’s not often you meet a person as fine as Lil. But there were others too. I missed patients and would remember so many always I actually made time to have tea at the end of my day beginning my psychotherapy practice, wanting to know more. A WWI vet gassed at Vimy, would kindly take the time to educate me about the Ross Rife and the ‘bullet having your name on it’. Even now my cup over flows. I”m so grateful to Morris and Morris Hospital and Bob for our time together.
When I turned thirty I was depressed. It might have been the car accident but it also had to do with just turning 30. As hippies we wanted to kill everyone over 30. We really thought 30 was the age when people stopped thinking. We also thought if you’d not made your ‘mark’ by 30 you’d live a life of mediocrity. I want to be someone. I want to achieve. I was writing for the Medical Post by then But I wanted to cure cancer or save the world or build a space ship or experience nirvana or levitate or write the great Canadian novel.
I was instead arguing with an asshole about where the money went that was ear marked for the incubator and so much had somehow gone into his favourite shredder. Meanwhile my patietns needed a doctor and I was not reading up on diseases but looking at old committee notes and going through the expenditure files doing other peoples jobs.
I was a doctor and my life in Canada always seemed like I’d be doing the cleaning and the bottle washing and everyone elsse’s job, like the accounting and administration jobs. Yet I was also doing the thing no one but me could do, which was decide the baby needed a spinal tap, putting in a butterfly IV with just the right antibiotic and stopping meningitis before it kills a baby. I’m always without the A team that my ex wife said she needed and found in the pediatric hospital. I like curing illness. I like all I do except taking out the garbage and having to deal with political hacks in positions of power.
Yet that’s what I’m still doing. And at 30 I was depressed for months. Soul searching. My wife wasn’t spiritual but I had spiritual sickness. I felt Nearly suicidal. No fun for my wife that’s for sure. Just lost and sad. The car accident left me in constant pain and I felt impossibly old. I also didn’t know what I was going to do when I grew up.
That’s when Dr. Jack Hildes came to see me. He stalked me and hunted me down. That’s what Jack did when he wanted someone. Jack Hildes told me he wanted me,
“I heard you wanted to be a missionary doctor and go to Africa. You don’t have to go to Africa. I need you right now in northern canada. You can go to Churchill Manitoba and do more than any missionary can do in Africa here in Canada. What’s better I’ll pay you. I’ll even feed you steak for dinner.” That was Jack.
I left Morris Hospital and joined the Northern Medical Unit. I eat steak in Churchill at the “Hildes Hilton” under the most glorious northern lights a person could ever hope to see. I’d barely manage not to get eaten by polar bears.
.Jack became my mentor and inspiration. He was bigger than life, humble with a heart of gold and a true genius. He worked with a character Dr. French who had a wry sense of humor attached to a very big brain. They made the division of Community Medicine. I had so much to learn.
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