Princeton, BC, Municipal Campgrounds, the work nightmares,

Gilbert let us sleep in till 5 am. He was coughing and his breathing was stressed.  I took him outside and  walked him. I was only wearing  a hoodie over my black underwear.  Laura has told me they look like bicycling shorts. Gilbert peed a river. The diuretics are working. He loved standing at the river edge below us drinking the mountain creek water.  He was then ready to mark his territory some more.  I was ready to go back to bed.

I let him up on the bed to join us.  Laura spoils him with tickles and massages. I fell back to sleep. 

In a bad dream, I was trying to get a judge to get funding for a guy to have an assistant and for them to set up a group for others to participate in a large community program.  The judge agreed to the money and then I turned to the counsellor and he was delighted with the high pay but hadn’t a clue what was expected now. He had no idea what oversight was   was needed. Like so many he thought it was all about him getting a job and him getting paid and anything like accountability and outcome not being important.  The fellow who I’d got the services for wasn’t even able to say thank you. I asked him in an aside, did you smoke up before this meeting, and he said,”lots and lots’.  He was totally gorked.  Such was addiction. The judge was suspicious, pausing for a moment to study me,  but finally signed the order. We had the funding. Substantial amounts. 

I had no time. The counsellor had promised they knew what to do and had complained that all they needed was money. But it was readily apparent that they didn’t know anything about what the judge expected.  I was fully booked in my own schedule for months ahead. Now I’d helped these guys and dozens more to have funding for recovery programs but  now it was apparent they just thought they were getting money and despite their education and training  hadn’t a clue what was expected. I’d attached my good name to their madness.  I had no time and yet I was going to have to make more time to babysit this program and ensure the judge had the paperwork he required.  I awoke from this nightmare.  

It really was funny when I awoke.  I smiled. It represented my constant battle of 30 years to get funding from authorities for the mentally ill and addicted and then the fight with the mentally ill addicted and their caregivers to get them to do something more with the money than buy natchos and sit around and talk.  The whole idea of accountability was a foreign idea and these people with supposed training had had so little scientific or economic training. It amused me as here on vacation I was having a nightmare of the constant insanity of  my life caught in the middle.  I really do think it’s a metaphor,

 All my work life I was challenged by ‘outcome’ measures. I knew in recovery the good standard for programs was the Navy Pilot Program.  Alcoholic pilots, flying multi million dollar planes, having cost millions to train.  One month of a recovery treatment centre, once a week drug and alcohol counselling, three meetings a week of AA and seeing an addiction psychiatrist once a month.  At 5 years 80% of pilots clean and sober flying planes.

I loved morbidity and mortality stats and working for positive results

At the same time it was always like moving through molasses with so many others making more money to ensure illness and addiction. I just remembered when the Canadian liquor store staff without education, were paid more and more compared to the drug and alcohol counsellor with 3-4 years university education.  Here was the government, our employer saying one thing, doing all manner of preening and lip service but their actions spoke so much louder than their words on the inside.  I made more money doing abortion than doing obstetrics with less hassle and risk.  The same with my colleague who does Euthansia today in the MAiD program.  She makes way more money, has less expectations and is considered sexy and happy compared to me plodding away in the misery and poverty of the human quagmire actually trying to heal and rescue people. 

All the while the College, the government police agency,  was giving the pass to the people who did nothing while I was constantly attacked using a standard of ‘political correctness’ which rewarded doing nothing and punished any activity. My colleague laughed and saw the same people without any improvement in their circumstance for 40 years.  I set various standards like getting patients to get jobs, housing, reduce or stop suicide attempts, all these measures of success, achieve abstinence, live longer than their cohort. .  Meanwhile we had a variety of much higher paid Harm reduction programs that maintained the status quo.

My favourite day was when the head of the multi millionaire program in Vancouver told me “Dr. Hay I know of your great work and how successful you’ve been helping people but we’re not on the same page. You seem to want to get people better while we don’t want to “interfere with the culture of addiction” but see our job as getting them money and other resources.”  

And here I am on vacation shedding the tension of this life of doing good against the forces that ‘aren’t on the same page’.  I imagine the peace makers really piss off the arms dealers. That’s been my experience in life and dealing with the government arrogance where they see themselves as holier than thou but have made a pact with the devil to have a soft life and acquire the most resources. I took comfort at times in reading Bonhoffer’s struggles with the Christian authorities in Nazi Germany and Arendt’s study of the Nuremberg trials looking at the Nazi bureaucrats, insisting they were just doing as they were told, and not responsible.   Arendt  coined the term ‘banality of evil.’ 

Joseph Campbell described my journey of the young fool as the ‘hero’s journey’.  Now I’m at the end of that and look back and see that like any good soldier I served. I was in the wars. I fought well. I had idiots for commanders at time, other times great leaders,  and the government was corrupt mostly but other times far better than expected. In my little sphere I did my best. I served.  I frankly don’t know what I could do better.  I stopped killers. I identified pedophies. I refused hundreds of thousands in bribes. By the measures of morbidity and mortality I outdid expectations. I prevailed. I had outstanding successes. I lived through having threats and guns pointed at me and stayed true. I am sorry my dog was killed. I suspect my care of Gilbert today is somewhat influenced by the guilt I feel for taking Stuart into danger and letting him be poisoned by drug dealers. I know my marriages were hurt by my inflexibility, my refusal to go with the flow, to take it easy, to focus on the money and a good job and not ‘fight city hall’.  

My colleague laughed and said “I stopped reading medical journals 20 years ago and took up studying real estate. You keep reading science and medicine and what’s it got you. I’m a millionaire. You’re a poor clinician and you still have fools telling you what to do. It’s the system.  You can’t do any more when the government is corrupt to the very top. The Prime Minister is paid by the money they take from drugs and alcohol and gambling.  It’s just a party for him and the others. “

My teacher said ,”when you feel you’re doing more work than the patient, you’re no longer doing therapy, you’re giving them your tit.”  He was the one who taught me the fisherman story and reminded me that the best caregivers burnt out because they thought it was a race when it was really a marathon.  I had such good teachers and parents and now after 40 years of work I’m finally registering their genius.  

I’m here in a camper on the side of a stream with no threat and I’m having nightmares about work.  In the midst of the trauma there’s no time to pay attention to the wounds, we’re all just trying to survive and get through the wars , the bureaucrats and patients create. In the frontlines where I lived we were constantly in the war zone while the critics and the activists, the College, politicians and the celebrities and television preachers were always with the ultimate leadership, far from the front, living in the palaces and dachuas.  

Now that I’ve begun winding down I’m on vacation and my unconscious is churning up these dreams that truly make me laugh. Despite the best training and best intentions I got caught in the same old traps. So here I am still dealing with hubris.  Pride and self pity.  I like the idea we’re all on the journey climbing the mountain in our various ways and the idea is not to compare and not to envy or judge but just keep on trekking. I was so easily distracted. How many times did I turn aside to help a maiden in distress only to see myself conned. How many times did I leave the beaten path to help a fallen comrade only to be shot while doing the rescue.  How often were my own mistakes the cause of my own distress and yet I always looked to blame something else, or someone else.  How often I did it ‘my way’ rather than the way my elders recommended. I listened to my teachers in the workplace but not my parents in my personal life.  I am blessed to have had ministers, teachers, elders and friends who set good examples. I miss having had the ‘children police’ that truly guided and dictated most of my friends good behaviour. My dogs have exercised me and reminded me of meal time and contemplation time. I’ve learned love from and through them.  Gilbert, blind, with arthritic back, valvular heart failure and congestive heart disease is making the best of the good moments.  I’m so admiring of friends who have cared for sick relatives and parents like my Mom cared for her mother in our home till she died.  My brother cared for my father.  Dad cared for mother.  It’s in living and caring that we heal ourselves too. I weary of the shallowness of mainstream media and seek the wisdom and depth of ages. 

I’m healing here. The forest is a healing place.

I woke this morning. Another day I was ready to go bear hunting. Today is the last day of the season. Instead I slept in. The problem is that if I shoot a bear we have to pack up and take it to a butcher on the way home.  I’m liking it here. I’m enjoying the down time and even though I’ve worked quite a few hours it’s been unscheduled and responsive to immediate needs.  No strangers either. No facing the unknown insanity.  Just taking care of business and lots of reading westerns.  The great allegories.  I want to get on my motorcycle and head into the backwoods but if there’s a bear I’ll just have to shoot it so by sleeping in I’ve missed that.  In the fall I’ll shoot a deer. I love venison. I’ve never enjoyed bear meat that much and it’s all so much work since I’ve grown older. The last elk I shot almost killed me though I loved the exquisite meat I had for nearly two years.  I’ve a rabbit in the freezer from last year still.  

I’d hoped to catch some fish but I’ve been rather lackadaisical. I’ve a freezer with steaks and smokies. Last night we had barbecued smokies and I made baked potatoes after getting the gas oven working for the first time.  It’s supposed to rain. Laura is easy on the eyes and easy on the mind and soul. She’s happy. Gilbert’s happy.  I’ll probably ride into town and buy a work watch. I broke the strap on my Swatch and even that’s been a metaphor.  I need something more rugged for these excursions since I passed on my Garmin gps watch to a wilderness loving friend who had patience for setting it up each time it was needed. I’d enjoyed it the first time but didn’t use it enough to keep up with the computer updates. I love my Apple Watch but it’s not meant for the back woods.  

It’s another day in paradise and I’m really happy, feeling each day I relax a little more.