First Friday Morning in March

My wake up song is the beautiful Christian song. “I believe”.  I can gauge m motivation for the day by the number of times I hit the snooze bar.  This morning I hit it once. Gilbert, the cockapoo, sleeps under the bed in his little dog cave, with toys and rubber bones. 

As the song came round for the second try at calling me to enjoy the day, I hit the snooze button and Gilbert pounced on my head. He’d climbed up on the bed. He’s my wet alarm clock.  He licked my face and squirmed all over me till I got up.

I just have to make the bathroom.  I like the expression “relieve myself.’  My bladder is always a participant in my morning ritual. It’s vote is always to get up and when I do it wants to have the first say.  Next I simply sit and meditate.  That whole getting out of bed, going to the washroom, greeting Gilbert is a whole lot of drama. 

 Now I pray, just a fancy word for talking with God and meditation is listening. My prayer and meditation usually begin with, ‘here I am, God. Thank you for getting me through the night and waking me this morning. Is there anything special you want from me.  I’m here to serve. You are my Lord. I’m ready.  Take all of me.”

Then I try listening to my breathing. It’s that simple.  I don’t last long. When I was young I meditated with monks from dawn to dusk but now I’m stretching it if I can get 15 minutes in.  

I love coffee. The coffee sings to me.  I end the meditation with stretching.  Stretching is the key to not having back pain. Dr. Stan Jung the chiropracter and rehab medicine PhD taught me some simple stretches, those bending at the waist and toe touching kind. Then I do sit ups.The great rheumatologists, Dr. Klingkoff,  Dr. Gillies and Dr. Chalmers before them always preached the importance of maintaining ‘core strength’.  Certainly Dr. Hamilton Hall taught this too. It speaks about the necessary exercise for a relatively pain free existence.  In his Back Doctor book., Dr. Hall had many great insights to managing back pain. The Canadian Back Institute teaches this too.

A day doesn’t go by at the office without someone complaining of back pain or some other soft tissue pain but are unwilling to do the exercises I simply had to do and continue to do because the pain is so great.  I’m thankful for the insights of these great doctors. My friend, Laura works with rheumatologists and shares their secrets with me whenever I moan.  

As a ‘psychiatrist’ I know it’s all in my head. I probably laid down some early memories and these ‘rituals’ address the need for self soothing and anxiety reduction.

Jesus said, Do not be afraid. 

I’ve a tendency to worry. Worrying is the basis of half the pain.  

Nothing is better for moving along in the morning than Ethiopian coffee. I get the green beans from an East African shop in Burnaby then roast them myself. I started with a frying pan but have moved up to an electric roaster. I grind the beans and so enjoy watching that little Italian expresso machine dripping pure black gold.  I add honey and just a touch of cream to that then sit down.

I have to check my mail each morning simply because I regularly get important mail that needs to be looked at. I get a lot of spam and am repeatedly getting rid of the spam mail. Then I grab a yoghurt and today a blue berry scone from Cobbs and read Facebook. 

 I really like the humor and I like seeing the regular Face Book friends, many of whom I’ve come to admire because they’re irrepressible.  I had a study group in Medical School and these guys and girls, a bout half dozen were bright and unusual people with sacrilegious ideas and spiritual insights, brilliant senses of truly off the wall humor and the latest insights into the world news. It was before everyone was offended and the level of academic an personal achievements had taught us not to play social sheriff. Canada was a free country then a new ideas and discussion was always welcome.The left wing emphasis on ‘ad hominem’ , the greatest evidence of low brow wit was meted out only in humorous amounts. Sarcasm certainly was present and even ridicule but never in the bullying thug life way that shows up today. 

 I’ve a group of folk on FbI’ve come to know who are like like and remind me of those heady heartfelt passionate and witty days.  Deborah, Sandra, Virginia, Reg, Nick, Virginia and of course Laura.  My friend Laura is forever posting ‘sweet stuff’.  Randy, an amazing man and nurse has interesting iconic humor and is presently posting a collection of the celebrities from childhood. I have a wider selection of recovery friends and enjoy seeing the recovery news and inspiration. I love the Hope Dealer. I like Shaila the FB outlaw. I love the Rob is ever creating in the welders cave. The Recovery jail comedian  has  humor that truly not what my mother would approve of but I can’t help but think what a miracle recovery is for this gentleman to be no longer drinking or doing drugs but out of jail and making people laugh instead. I love seeing guys I know from my home group years ago. They post of pictures of beautiful wives and children, like Darren and Cait, and it just makes me feel good.  Steve and George inspire me and Marty makes me laugh. I love seeing the photography of Kevin and the astronomical photography of my nephew Graeme. I love the painting of Ragina. I love the pictures of Children, Shannon’s limo shot and Anna sweethearts. I love the people from high school and youth. We’d is always a joy to see and hear. I love the great fishing buddy pictures, Bill and Doug and Duthie. They always make me want to get out. In the fall I love the deer and big  bird game shots and almost salivate seeing my friends success.

The nurses I know and the girls in recovery are the funniest with their zany off colour humor.  These are like the bad sisters I never had.  They’re also so reminiscent of the dancers I shared a coffee room with back in the early days when I was a dancer and taught dancing.  They’re funny but not in a church way.  I love that about doctors and nurses and am so thankful that I live and work in a real world.  So many people in academic and office worlds are living ‘lives of quiet desperation’ and are somehow immensely phoney like the marketting and politician sorts. They’re struggling to have power and money and prestige and I’m in this group of nurses and doctors where we see haemorrhoids brings down the best of the best and the death of a child ruin the greatest.  I have no time for the pompous and politically correct and those who worry about their socks and clean underwear.

I like the humanity of sexuality to. I know that our government and the courts and the masses of ignorant and filthy minded perverts are “offended’ and seeking to bully with sex, either aggression or lying.  The church left the the bedrooms of the nation only to have parliament crowd in and when they left the dirty judges got their porn fixes on thevoyeurism and discussion of what in a cultured society would be a source of humor and/or silence. I loved reading Malcolm Gladwell in “Talking to Strangers’ discussing all the difficulties in understanding any sexual interaction and how impossible it is if alcohol or different cultures and families are involved and mostly how arrogant and stupid judges are to even comment on this matter which is purely speculative and truly ecclesiastical. The hypocricy is that judges notoriously have been the sickest of society with regard to their own sex lives. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  I actually gave testimony in a court house named for one of the worst wealthy pedophiles of the day. It’s not much different from the all the télé evangelist preacher caught in orgies after years of smug superiority. Pride goest before the fall. 

I loved talking to an old admired Anglican lawyer who’d first practiced in England.  “I was immensely proud to be a lawyer as a young man when the law was about facts and contracts and actual laws that could be agreed on but every since Pierre Trudeau introduced the ‘social laws’ I’ve felt rather dirty as a lawyer and don’t blame people for considering our group to be little different than the communist police or clerical police of the old inquisition.”

I usually get triggered by some arcane political or legal event that a friend has posted to remind me that our government is no longer a friend of the people but some kind of nazi communist almalgam that no one voted for.  I’m of an age where I’d like to relax and feel safe about my future but I’ve watched these last years of government corruption and bankruptcy and fear for my future, reasonably. The sad part is that those who vote for ‘free stuff’ don’t realize that there’s no Santa and that budgets that aren’t balanced lead to bankruptcy.  I notice that there’s little about Venezuela or the politics of the countries that the migrants are fleeing from. The countries that have millions leaving are ruled by the likes of Justin Trudeau and I am so upset at the stupidity of Canadians who claim that the spiralling cost of living is not simply grossest mismanagement.

I liken the world to a hockey game. The team has the best players but we have a coach who keeps saying we’re losing because the ice is too warm but he won’t let the players have hockey sticks but instead says we all should have golf clubs.  The man is a narcissist, ignorant bully who is mad with power and acts like he’s always smoking massive amounts of marijuana.  

So my friends are kind enough to point out the latest evidence on Face Book of this Stasi Brown Shirt little Hitler Maoist nightmare.  

Were it not for them doing this I’d retire. Survivalists are growing cocky. 

I’m of the age where I’m constantly wondering what I should do.

I like my work. I’ve never been more capable and knowledgeable in my field. I’ve experience up the ying yang.  I know the answers and can advise people of what they need to know but mostly the management model of the health care is like the management model of the country, divide and conquer and ‘lick and kick’. 

So I go to work. I like that I’m making money. It’s a routine. I’ve been in office jobs leading hospitals, starting programs, working for courts, running all manner of things with greater status but instead I see one person after another in the front lines doing old fashioned medicine.  I feel like a little Dutch boy. The damn is leaking. We have massive incompetent administration and few frontline workers. 

What I do is ‘right’.  It’s so often not popular.  I tell people I think their problem is alcohol or drugs and not their wife or mother and they get angry but never as angry and lethal as the ladies who insist they need to drink, a couple of bottles of wine , because they work for the government.  I feel I’m in the minefield because we don’t have any resources. I’m seeing people at monthly and yearly intervals while the model is weekly follow up or as need be but there are no doctors.  The waitlists have everyone sicker and more tired and mostly now insurance companies have co-opted  care and want patietns and doctors to be filling out their beurocratic accounting forms rather than focusing on medicine.

I make a second cup of coffee. I usually can get to the shower and do the get ready for work and out the door because Gilbert needs a walk.  So I walk to the car. I love vehicles, motorcycles , cars , trucks.  Right now I’m so enjoying my Mini with the iPhone pro II interfacing with the sound system so when I turn on the car I’m also hearing the voice of John Cleese reading his humorous autobiography. I have exorcised CBC communist broadcasting corporation from my world and am immensly less homicidal and suicidal as a result of not listening to that disgusting propaganda news channel full of lies and sickness.

I drive to work. I go there because I get my third cup of coffee there.  Since I’m having a coffee I might as well see people and soon it’s lunch time. I really do enjoy seeing the people though there are always those ones who refuse to do anything for themselves, demand a ‘magic pill’ , blame everyone and are hoping that they can upset me enough that they can have an excuse for having a temper tantrum and breaking something including me in the  office. The women are just mine fields waiting for something to record to use against me.  So many more psychopaths and sociopaths seeing doctors. In the old days they would see me once and not come back because I told the truth. Now they come back and prey on me hoping they can attack me, waiting for me to screw up. I tell them I don’t want to see them and they keep coming back. I told this woman three times this year I have nothing more to offer and she keeps coming in angry. I know I have no back up from the government or police and I’m terrified by these individual psychopaths whose lies and blatant sexual and physical aggression have made them fortunes and given them all manner of power.  I have diagnosed them as having an addiction and they invariably want me to write down that they are the victim and that the problem is ‘depression ‘ and not the crack cocaine or fentanyl.  

If I don’t have one of those come in the office I have a lovely day doing a job without having my life and livelihood threatened.   Then I go home.  Gilbert has been with me and he gets me out for walks and reminds me that I’ll enjoy a nap.

That’s what the day is.  I see so many strangers. Every week I’m seeing a half dozen people at least I’ve never seen before and they’re always loaded for bear. I’ve doing my best to help and have had a life time of helping people but know that I am going to see someone who says “nobody helps me’. They’re have had a million dollars of investigations and medical care and they now blame me for their back pain and they refused to do sit ups.  They want magic.  

I keep asking myself what I’m going to do when I grow up.

1. I’d like a space ship. I’m on the wrong planet

2. I’d die but Gilbert needs me. Everyone else would do just as well without me. I’m not important.

3. I like camping and riding my motorcycle. I look for forward to fishing

4. I’m looking forward to being in a boat again. I love vehicles.

5. I’m looking forward to hiking and walking in the woods as spring comes

6. I think I’ll get a sex change. I would like to have my own breasts. I hate bothering Laura to touch hers. Touching breasts is a marvellous activity. just looking at them is a calming uplifting experience.

I like scratching my ass. I can’t imagine losing my balls because I like scratching my balls too. I don’’t feel I’m like my transsexual patietns who feel they were the wrong sex. I know I’m on the wrong planet. I’m not meant to be in this human experience. I was meant to be in some other place where I’d ‘fit’ better as the odd ball adventurer I am. I’ve enjoyed decades of great masculine joy but in Canada men are hated and there’s a low testosterone epidemic. I don’t feel safe as an aging white man. I’ve been attacked so many times in my life and don’t feel capable of defending myself against men or women and their lies or lying psychopathic women and their stupid evil champions. 

 I like the idea of having breasts and dressing in women’s clothes not as a permanent matter but rather like the book Black Like Me.  It’s an adventure. My transsexual patient described the difference between a transvestite and transsexual as the transsexual can’t wait to get home and take off the bra whereas the transvestite want to get home and put on the bra. 

I’m a transvestite or perhaps a failed actor. I feel after 40 years of medicine that they authorities want me to ‘act’ like a doctor. They say medicine is merely ‘entertainment’ and want me to act like them. I had this now outdated idea that my job was to reduce morbidity and mortality. I foolishly wanted to cure disease and save lives. I was so wrong in thinking that would be wanted and rewarded. The individual mostly liked it and I had great success keeping people alive and getting them back on track but so many of my patients were so near death and they didn’t know it. When they lived and got better they just assumed they would.They take it for granted but I’ve actually fought countless people wanted me do what would have killed them.

As a psychiatrist I’ve tried to encourage life and presence and yet now all the money is in euthanasia. Suicidal people are offered MAid instead. There’s always more money in killing. Abortion is so much easier and more lucrative than delivering babies. I found abortions I did technically easily. The UN is a killing machine. I see my government destroying the country and I fear for my life  and retirement. I don’t’ know what to do.  

I don’t want to be an old man and perhaps I could hide out as an old lady.  Become irrelevant and not feel the anxiety of watching the brown shirts and Stasi take over the government.

I miss the dance and acting days.  It was more ‘feminine’ compared to the aggressive authoritarian police regime that has taken over medicine and healt care.  With all the never satisfied angry lying women about screaming ‘how dare you! I just feel like ‘identification with the aggressor’ might be the answer. I certainly haven’t seen many women in my life accepting responsibility. All women leaders have taken their countries to war and more men have died. I thought it takes two to tango.

7.  I imagine I could sail the Atlantic. I’m ready to do that. Another adventure.  i miss my boat and being alone at sea nearly dying. 

I lack reason to live. I see my role solely as living to care for my dog because that’s clearly what I do best. My friend Laura lives for her children. My mother and father lived for us.  

So I work from morning to night and weekend to weekend living in daily fear that the authorities and their brown shirts will crash in the door and hurt me again.  I find myself having flashbacks to the times of terror in my life when people with power abused that power. It helps me understand and help those I see who too were traumatized by dictatorships and psychopaths and sociopaths in power.  I pray for these people and know that soon they will die and that they will go to hell. I struggle to forgive them.  I try to understand rapists and psychopaths in power but all it does is make me turn to God and pray.

I don’t know.

Please God guide me. Show me the way. Help me today.  Thank you for the good days. Help me to forgive and forget. Help me to survive and find what it is that you would have me do today. Thy will be done.  Free me from the nightmares and the fears of incompetent crazy people with power and greed and fear.  Save me from the Banality of Evil.