Golden was wonderful. I did my virtual doctor clinic facilitated by Royal Columbia Medical Clinic where the staff and other doctors are the best. I also work virtual and in person out of Doc-Side Medical Clinic where staff and colleagues are the best too. I know there are strictly virtual medical services now but I’ve worked with these clinics for years and years and simply enjoy the relationships and the care. This trip has been a challenge because it really stretched my endurance. I drove 3-4 days and worked 3-4 days but my schedule when I arrived was indeterminate. I was visitting with three different fully employed nephew with their kids and high ranking jobs and uncertainty about when I’d arrive.
Now that my eyes are catching up with my ears as a problem I can’t drive at night too well. I can see the road and centre signs but can’t read the signs to either side at speed. Apparently the cataracts are affected by the refraction. Whatever! I drove 6 to 12 hour days and understand truckers getting hooked on amphetamines. Staying alert was truly a challenge in the prairies and driving north of Lake Superior.
It was all worth it to see my beautiful sister in law Adell, the great nephews Finn and Elliot and my nephews Alan, Andrew and Graeme. What great men they are. I’d not seen any of my family’s since before Covid when my sorely missed brother died and I felt bereft. I’m impossible to think of me as the elder. Psychologically I’m seventeen inside and yet increasingly invisible and irrelevant in a country that would vote for the Liberals yet again.
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I’m pleased to be back on time. If I don’t drink by the grace of God I celebrate 28 years sober in a week or two. This camper needs repair and when that’s done the truck oil change can happen. The engine sign, engine oil change required came on last couple of days and each place I stopped told me they couldn’t handle the truck and camper but with the strut/happy jack needing repair I’ve not been able to take the camper off. The insurance and repair folk looked at it all before and June was when the work could be done. So many of my patients are waiting exams and procedures with their lives on hold whereas I’m blessed that personally physically I’ve not been limited as such but my vehicles have been the outer defensive shell and taken the ‘hits’ for me.
I really enjoyed seeing and passing through Roger’s Pass. I’ve travelled that way since a child and been through there far more than the northern way I came. I was a bit on a time clock wanting to get through Calgary and Banff because the G7 was meeting and I feared traffic delays. As it was even highway construction delay was minimal.
Honda Generator, star link and Apple laptop and IPad on side of mountain road to communicate with office. Space age.
The scenery was maginficant. Seeing ducks lifting en mass off the mashes in Saskatchewan, the antelope in Alberta and cowboys and cowgirls riding horses on the open range where cattle dotted the foothills was wonderful. The lakes of Ontario and Manitoba had me always wanting to stop and spend weeks fishing. Then I was in and through the magnificent Rockies and loving the Sorendo and Okanagan. Fruit trees and farms in heaven. I always imagine explorers coming first to these areas and being awed by the abundance. I think of my Grandad arriving from northern Scotland to farm northern Manitoba. So many immigrants drawn by the ‘land’. That’s such a difference to the modern immigrants coming to cities and money and hustle. The agricultural folk made this country back then while so many today are merchants. The first generatoon and second generations are so often all it takes. I have such a mix of friends and enjoy them all from all over the world and we laugh about traditions and parents and age old struggles.
Now I’m back in the lower mainland which I’ve made home mostly since the 80’s with periods of time in the states and moves from island to mainland, and north to south. I’ve always thought of Vancouver as merely an okay city, but British Columbia is God’s Country. Canada is god’s country really. It’s just that the politics are 19th century while the science and technology are 22nd century. I’ve been blessed to be here. I’m blessed to have been able to drive across this country and see it while my eyes still see. I fear for my vision. I have what my dad had and lived the isolation he experienced as my mother grew more deaf. We joke and say aging is not for the young.
I pray. I really pray. I listen to suffering and talk with pain all day. My darling sister in law was kind enough to say ‘it must be difficult to listen and talk with people who are suffering hour after hour for 6 to 7 hours a day all day.” I was thankful she understood. I miss general medicine at times when one is in and out and orders are left. As a general practitioner I was never more than minutes with patients and yet here I am with the so many of the most difficult people, addicts, alcoholic, chronic depressives, dying, chronic pain, head injured. I watch them be stigmatized and sidelined. A third of my patients are really personality disordered and are quite dangerous looking for fault and wanting to get under your skin with coping mechanisms that last worked as teen agers. These are loud people whose families have rejected them. The psychiatrist is stigmatized with them like the leper doctor. Everyone wants me to ‘control’ and ‘smarten up’ these ‘incorrigible’ ‘complainers’. The government and insiurance people blame me for the lifelong pouts and refusal to eat beans. They do everything to have me treat them as they behave to have me reject them and prove that they are the beasts they see themselves as. I muddle on. Motivation therapy teaches me that there are those that are not ‘ready’ to change and I should triage my time to those who are in action phase. Meanwhile the government is my bugbear as they give away health care to the world without paying or increasing resources for the millions of immigrants with sick families and all too often attitudes.
I don’t know who to talk to about the sense of hopelessness that comes over one addressing the constipation and diarrhea in the system. It’s all about my pay grade. I’m in the trenches and always have been. I’ve been outed the cushiest jobs and couldn’t have gone far way from the maddening crowds but no I always chose what I thought was the greatest need. A third of my patients are ‘normal’. They are successful and issues of mental illness are acute and they have resources to get through the travesties of existence. This was the group I saw when I was a family physician , a nice slice of the world, a positive take on existence as compared to the mentally ill and addicted and psychopathic and psychotic. I actually miss the asylum and jails at times most because the colleagues were all working on the same page. The staff weren’t blamed for the disease or disorders but I feel I am. Then I realize I’m the one that is supposed to be grateful and thank God for the opportunity of being of service.
And now I’ve seen my family. I was so alone in Covid. It was such a global evil a war by the aetheists against the godly. Now the Luddites are back. It’s good to have seen first hand the life and breadth of this country and realize so much more the lies of media and social media. God is good all of the time. There is no catastrophic emergency except political and corruption. That’s the evil. War has always been a problem . It’s Martha and Mary and workers and slackers. I don’t spend enough time in prayer and mediation and I let the evil and anxiety get to me. I’ve had a wonderful drive , the struggle to stay away, only a half dozen near death situations driving, the semi that nearly crushed me, the dozing and waking on the curb, the down hill speed increasing before the tight turn and the brakes screeching to make it. It’s life. I had my puppy with me and I believe God saved us because I prayed for him to be safe every day and God could have let me suffer my stupidity but thought kindly of this glorious little companion with the wagging tail and growel. Such a character.
I’m going to head in now. I’ll drop off camper and truck and pick up my car and get on with the next step. This journey is almost complete. Please be with us this last little bit God . And thank you, thank you, thank you for being with us all the way.
Thank you Jesus.
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