When I think of 55 yo I think of my Mom dying. I’ve returned to Vancouver and opened up a practice on Broadway. Opening a practice is the most difficult time with countless new patients and so many borderlines sent to you by doctors fed up and overwhelmed and hoping the ‘new kid’ will have a solution when all else have failed. It’s the greatest strain on the nervous system too. Each of these new patients vying for attention and obviously desperate. I open myself to people when I see them. I drop the barriers and defences and let them in. I ‘lend them my ego’ as we say in the trade and I ‘walk a mile in their moccasins.” I join their insaniety. I ‘feel their pain’. There’s always some psychopaths and sociopaths early days. It’s a matter of seeing and sorting out those people who one can work with, who needs simply medication, or a letter, or only a consult and those who are right for in depth psychotherapy and in the ‘action’ phase of change.
People come to see the new psychiatrists for the following reasons
1. To get relief from emotional pain
2. To prove to him and themselves and their families that they are untreatable
3. To get a new diagnosis because they don’t like the diagnosis their previous psychiatrists gave them, some people I’ve know have disagreed with 30 plus psychiatrists.
4. To spar.
5. To have an ‘episode’ of television in their boring narcissistic self loathing lives. Entertainment.
6. To complain to, to have yet another person hear how horribly wrong they’ve been done by and that it’s not their fault.
7. To have someone more to blame
8. To stop the thoughts of suicide and homicide.
9 To stop having sex with their sister, cow, dog or mother in law
10. To ‘show’ their spouse that they’re doing something about their problem when they aren’t doing something about their problem
11. To lie
12. To threaten an educated upper class person when they want to kill another educated upper class person, like Justin Trudeau but he has body guards and psychiatrists are soft targets
13. To get drugs.
14. To get off work.
15. To get disability forms completed. They don’t want to get well, they want money. Money is the solution to their problems and the insurance or government have coopted the psychiatrist to ‘rubberstamp’ the bullshit
16. To be able to get a complaint for human rights or the college to show everyone how they are offended
17. To stop the voices telling them to kill
18. To get a pill that will make their horribly unimaginative lives seem less desperate and bleak
19. To avoid getting a partner or a life or a job.
20. To talk about why they are an aetheist, vegan, and communist and (fill in the blanks) and how everyone should be like them but they’re clearly miserable and none of the antidepressants are working
21. They don’t want to change or do any work at all but they want the psychiatrist to work and change and even take the pills for them or read the literature they bring for him.
22. They want to steal from him and are there to case the place and access his building or his other patients
23. They want to have sex with him because they’ve always wanted a doctor and they stalk doctors and if they had Sex with a psychiatrist that would prove they weren’t batshit crazy
24. To have sex with a psychiatrist because they’ve already had sex with a lawyer, a priest, a teacher, a football player, a psychologists and their mother in law and they’ve never had sex with a psychiatrist but it would up their score.
25. They want to change.
26. Others say they should change and have said this for 20 years and they don’t want to change but maybe they should consider it.
27. God told them to go to the psychiatrist and tell him he is an abomination
28. They were sent to the psychiatrist as part of a government ‘sting’ or are being paid by someone else to evaluate the psychiatrist for some nefarious scheme..
29. Their husband wife or father or mother or boss or the police sent them and they don’t want to be there.
30. Other people complain about their having sex with children and they like having sex with children
31. The police don’t like them
32. They can’t afford the heroin anymore so they want the cheap government drugs
33. They need housing
34. They want a million dollars
35. They want the psychiatrist to kill their ex husband
36. They want to be on television.
37. They want drugs they can sell for the drugs they want but are tired of doing blow jobs for them
38. They hate everyone
39. They can’t feel
40. They have tried to kill themselves a dozen times in different ways and can’t seem to do it right
41. Women don’t love them.
42. They can’t find a millionaire husband, Men just use them.
43........
I have opened a half dozen psychiatric practices over the years. I have some colleagues who have opened one practice (business) and the trauma of that experience has kept them there terrified of opening another.
It takes months to sort through the patients. Mostly this is a time of rejection and hate.
“You won’t give me opiates or speed or benzodiazepines! You’re no good as a doctor. I’m going to complain to the College of Physicians and Surgeons and say you sexually harrassed me.!”
“You wont say I can never work again. I’m going to complain to the College of Physicians and Surgeons and say you sexually harrassed me.”
“You won’t have sex with me. I’m going to complain to the College of Physicians and Surgeons and say you sexually harrassed me.”
“I”m going to tell my husband you say he should hit me. He’s the best friend of the Mayor and he’s going to ruin you. I just wanted pain killers not some sermon on my marriage and life. We like S&M. It’s what we do. I just need opiates and you’re supposed to give them to me.”
I have had hundred of threats that people will complain to the College when I have made the following diagnosis
1. Alcoholism
2. Substance Use Disorder
3 Malingering
4. Anger issues
That year I was 55 I hired a minister who was a lazy cow and didn’t do an ounce of work in the office, talked on the phone to friends, family, sponsees and never did any ‘billing’, or ‘correspondence’ or ‘book keeping’ or filing. She’d told me she’d worked for her ex husband who’d been a counsellor and that she knew all about billing, book keeping and filing. She answered phone calls and booked appointments. She double and triple booked me and I saw hundreds of patients which I never got paid for. The government has a convenient system which is that they only pay for a half of their bills with a variety of ways of delaying paying doctors. We get paid in one to 3 months ,however if we bill after 3 months they will deny the bill and after 6 months they totally deny the bill but if your secretary isn’t putting in bills you don’t know that she’s not doing this till months later.
I’d opened the practice on Broadway investing all my income into the new business paying all the staff and overhead costs. If I’m a labourer I can get paid at the end of the day. If I’m blue collar I can get paid every two weeks. If I’m a professional I have to pay tens of thousands of dollars upfront in education and licensing costs and commitment to the system and when I open a practice I will start getting paid in 1. - 3 months. I will likely get all my billing paid in 6 months if I constantly write and demand and beg to be paid, because of all the ‘dickering’ the government does to ‘steal’ money from doctors for ‘short term’ investment.
I then had the accountant who we assume was a drunk and went into treatment but his throwing his records in the dumpster and on the street cost me tens of thousands of dollars and being garnisheed by the government because of him and my secretary not doing billing cost me tens of thousands of dollars in fines and losses..
There is some thought that the woman the minister brought in to help her, who she insisted she vetted and said was clean and sober over 5 years and had worked in offices before and was good at billing and filing and typing was actually ‘targeting my practice.’ Her biker boyfriend and her were said by those who knew them that they did ‘shakedowns’. They both within months would steal from me and threaten me. My new accountants book keeper would ‘teach’ her how she could make ‘false claims’. She put hundreds of hours of ‘overtime’ in the books which she’d never done and the office had been closed.
My mother was dying. My patients were sick. My staff were stabbing me in the back and stealing from me. I was working night and day and weekends and I didn’t know that my staff was stealing and stabbing me in the back or that my accountant was lying , psychotic and not doing my books.
I paid a lawyer tens of thousands of dollars and got a new staff to go over all the government claims this skank brought against me. I only learned after this that the new staff I had, this horrid hateful person who’d been so two faced, had actually ‘shook down’ all her previous employers. She’d gone to human rights and all the mass of agencies that exist to ‘serve the public’ but all this meant was that I was paying these two people who hated doctors and felt doctors were rich people and entitled. I made ‘zero’ money that year, faced with theft and shake downs and all along the government agencies were publicly paid institutions that served to destroy entrepreneurs and private enterprises and hated doctors. They loved ‘salaried people’. It’s been shown since that they prefer communism.
I was grieving my mother’s death and all I was doing was fighting these agencies who were the worst bullies. Government employees today are dominated by these communist minded entitled people who see their job as destroying others. There’s also this ‘first come first served’ industry. The skank had complained so they were all on her ‘side’. I was male and she was female so they were all on her side. I was older and she was younger so they were all on her side. I was educated and she was not so they were all on her side. I was conservative and traditional in appearance whereas she was tattooed and edgy (the crystal meth addiction certainly helped) and I was staid and pedantic. It’s all about the victim card and old white guys who are professions don’t get one.
I spent a year of meeting the lowest humans I have ever encountered in my life. So many highly paid government workers who would ally themselves with a lying active drug addict theif who’d apparently worked as a prostitute and her references were previous Johns. Meanwhile her biker boyfriend was barging into my offic and threatening me but was a terrible coward who I’d simply throw out of my office. I was building and maintaining my practice despite these evil sick people and their evil sick government allies. She actually went to the college and made a false allegation that I ‘sexually harrassed’ her. The CMPA made it clear that the College was right out of bounds. “It’s a disgruntled employee complaint. It’s none of their business. She was never your patient. They have no boundaries. Their behaviour is so unprofessional.” But he college is above the law and even their own lawyer would leave saying they were appalling.
It was during this time the CMPA told me I was the ‘most persecuted doctor in Canada.” I’d already learned that there was this person in the college who absolutely personally hated me and abused their position of grotesque powers to act out their evil.
My mother had died. I felt it was a year before I was out of the war zone and could cry. I still cry.
It’s a measure of the civilization of people and society how they deal with their poor and old and sick. I was not allowed to grieve. There is an epidemic of doctor suicides in Canada and burn out running 60 to 70%. I have never met more cruel people than those who worked in government with their pettiness and pomposity and their lack of care for other human beings. My mother had worked in offices and my aunt had been the assistant to the Ambassador. I had worked in a dozen offices in England. I was never cruel and uncaring like these absolutely heartless bureaucrats. Barbarians. There are no words to describe their insensitivity and the horror they do to good people. I’d be vindicated time and again but though proven innoscent I’d go through this gauntlet of party boys and girls with no dog in the game getting rich and slick on tax payer money serving their own self centred needs and destroying the health care system and country with their arrogant stupidity.
I am still working on forgiving them. My mother’s death was defiled by these subhuman sociopaths and psychopaths. I would have killed myself a dozen times over if I wasn’t a Christian and knew that my mother and father raised me better than these callous Cretans. I am appalled today at the number of people killed by these bureaurcrats and how they deny accountability no better than the government who maintained the murdering nurse I’d reported years before. The negligence and sins of omission and corruption are the problem in the system. After that year of being exposed to the hallow men and hollow women in the burearocracy I concluded that only God made sense. There was only hope in Jesus. My Christian faith grew and my appreciation of sobriety was immensely rewarded by seeing the ego addicted narcissism of the truly satanic. I loved reading C.S. Lewis’ Screw tape letters again. I loved when the grief lifted I could have at least black humor. I loved carrying on. My father needed me.
During my mother’s sickness and dying a woman neighbour had thrown herself at Dad. My mom hated her. She was always asking him about his money and pension and when mom died she was there telling us that he could move in with her and she’d take care of him and could we help her to transfer his pension to her to help her with the costs and what was his bank so she could do all this. Dad was crying at mom’s loss and this lady was flaunting about half naked and just a pig. I was so thankful for my sister in law at this time. She and my brother and I knew that Dad couldn’t remain here. He was blind and old and weeping with sorrow and this predator was circling. Her daughter was a nurse drug addict and we actually figured that the mother was just trying to get money for her daughter but she would have killed Dad for his pension. It was an ugly thing to see. My sister in law Adell was the strong one and a saint and she saw through all these machinations and insisted on taking Dad home with her. My brother and she would arrange for him to be in assisted living nearby them and Ron with his incredible capacity for business and finance would take over all the family affairs. I’d go back to work glad to be part of the rescue of my father and now able to focus on defending myself from the female psychopaths.
Women don’t fight one on one but work their wars and evils through proxies, institutions and men. They also gang up and tag team. The fact that I’m alive and things worked out eventually though they’ve cost me thousands, is that there’s a whole group of good people mostly behind the scenes supporting good. They don’t like the skanks and psychopaths and they limit their violence. I was also supported by the Canadian Medical Protective Association and the good men and women who worked there and saw that the system was flawed and these pseudo legal institutions were increasingly out of control.
Dr. John White the Christian Psychiatrist I’d trained with had written metaphorically about the spiritual war and seeing the evil in the institutions I fully appreciated the spiritual war fare on a larger basis. I actually met Vorgons in government and saw all the characters that are the bad in Lord of the Rings. At the same time my sister in law was a fairy queen during this time and there were others like Laura and Aim and Joanne and Elizabeth. All these beautiful people that counteracted the darkness that seemed to be growing. My brother was a regular Gandalf while my nephews were definitely Hobbits. It was the metaphors I had to deal with. Sometimes it’s was Luke Skywalker and Obi wan but I just kept telling myself that God prevails and in time these bottom feeders would let go.
It was so easy to see the darkness but there was always light. Coming back in the sailboat with the broken mast and the lousy battery bank I’d listen over and over again to that great Christian Rock BandThird Day’s song “ There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”
I’d become ill one week, I’d had acquired tubuculosis working in the northern Indian reserves , been treated, but my lungs were never the same. I thought as I was going to die from this horrible pneumonia so I’d might as well buy a motorcycle so I had something to live for. I’d taken all my lessons and loved my Ruckus but now I almost bought a Honda Shadow but a Buell Blast went on sale at Trev Deely. Laura loved motorcycles and had had a dirt bike she adored as a teen ager so was 100% behind my return to motorcyling. After I’d crashed a Norton on the back roads drunk and stoned getting rocks in my finger joints I had to pick out I’d decided against motorcycling for fear of losing my fingers. Now sober and having all the fun we’d had with the Aprillia and Ruckus motor scooters I graduated to the Buell Blast 600 cc. Laura had her motorcycle license and I’d do my training with her driving my car and me riding behind her on the country roads. Eventually I’d have my full motorcycle license, after only one crash in the exam where the fleet footed examiner escape alive. I’d drive that Buell all over the province before I graduated to the Harley 1200 cc Roaster which Laura and I would take motorcycle camping all over the province. I wanted to go to as many round up camp outs as I could and did. We’d fall in love with Salt Spring. I’d loved it as a sailor and now loved it all over motorcycle camping.
Every weekend and every evening of that year I was ‘defending’ myself and my practice and my patients from disgusting low life in low and high places.
I’d eventually have this lovely young lady who was pure and honest and Christian join as staff. In addition I had this very savy young man who’d worked in accounting and banking sort out the mess for me
He was also ‘mr BC’ in this hilarious society in which the men dressed as women and women dressed as men. Each year there’d be a ‘drag queen’ ball and that’s when I spent the evening with the mayor in a magnificent gown with my hair done up , my make up perfect and even my friend Barbara didn’t recognize me. Laura laughed at all the shenanigans. 95% of cross dressers were heterosexual so our group was husbands and wives and rather hilarious. We’d have these dinners with challenges as to who could dress best from Value Village with only $20 . I was living on Beach in this fabulous apartment with balcony and loving going to the great pool every other day and eating out on Davis. I rarely drove and lived downtown. I even got roller blades and almost killed my self because my friend Dr. Anna said it was fun. I had more padding than the Michelin man but still couldn’t stop. Stanley park was a marvellous extension of my experience with great walks and cycling tours at this time. I’d take a little ferry to Granville Island to shop and really loved the city. The problem was camping and hunting. I had everything in storage and would bring everything back only to find the elevator broken and me faced with climbing 20 plus stories. It was a truly ‘city’ time though and I loved going out to clubs and dances and having a whole network of eccentric and wild friends from my elite club and downtown church.
As it was with me the office buildings where I worked had cataclysmic events. They got sold and the new owners took over the floor I was located on. The whole floors got evicted twice in my experience. I was a very little guy and watched a Dentist and Opthalmologist get the same shaft as I experienced. The next time the lawyers on the floor couldn’t resist so I just went with the flow. Everyone just doing ‘business’. I couldn’t complain. I had a year to year lease and had to vacate. It was the best thing that happened to me
I moved to China Town. The secretary that I’d had who was this horrible angry person who abused my patients who all complained about her, lasted with me less than 6 months because ‘I don’t like seeing people that aren’t from West Vancouver. I don’t want to work with people with drug and alcohol problems.” I suspected she had a major alcohol problem after a while but who knows. She was perfect in the ‘honeymoon’ and then her ‘true colours’ showed. I was glad when she said ‘I don’t want to work with people with drug and alcohol problems or crazy people. I thought you saw people who were a little depressed. Half your patients are lovely people but some of your patients are just disgusting. They don’t respect and appreciate me or treat me as they should. I certainly am not going to work in China Town. That’s so beneath me. You can’t move there.”
Well I could and I did. I was tired mostly of the parking gouging on Broadway. I ‘d had a horrible experience at this location with the evil minister and her evil friend and the evil government agencies. I wanted to go to China town and have different places to go to lunch at noon. I worked from 8 am to 8 pm and would only get out if I had a cancellation or a lunch. I loved Chinatown and wanted to be able to explore at these times. I’d been on the Broadway corridor for years and eaten in all the restaurants. There was nothing wrong with it but I wanted a change.
Because I moved I’d hire new staff. I’d keep more than half my patients. Some from the university area didn’t want to make the trip down to the city but I really didn’t have to ‘start over’ with the practice but had had more and more ‘medical legal’ requests. I’d taken an interest in neurology and head injury just bccause I’d been seeing so much of this in my alcohol and drug addicted patietns. The best part of all was having Aim, Joanne and Hannah come to work with me. After a year of theft and attitude and downright evil I had these extraordinary women come into my practice as a gift of God. They did the work and they did it well and they always ‘cared’ for the patients. I’d had the skank and her boyfriend and this horrible old lady who simply lacked empathy and didn’t seem to ‘care’ for the patients.
Now I had these amazing ladies who really were mature and emotionally so highly developed and cared for the patients.
In the summer before I’d move and meet Aim and Joanne and enter 5 golden years of practice reminiscent of the days of Lil, and Laura and Suzanne, I’d decide to sail my boat back with my friend Tom. I”d pay for Tom to fly over to Kona and spend a couple of weeks checking out the systems and replacing what was needed. This was all good but he refused to replace the batteries which I’d paid for him to do. He insisted they were fine when indeed they weren’t. He did however ensure all the other systems were working and when I arrived we were able with only another week or so and massive outfitting with my credit card get on our way.
We were a hundred miles off Kona when the rudder connection broke. I contacted the Hawai Coast Guard and sailed back. Homeland Security had become involved since 9/11 and ‘permits’ to sail the islands were highly restricted. We were a boat in distress and I only motor sailed daily from island to island during the day rather enjoying this ‘sailing’ of these tropical islands. I’d enjoy it more but I was paying for a secretary and an office and had a whole lot of patients waiting for my return. I’d planned 4-6 weeks off and it would actually take another 4 weeks. I’d sailed solo to Hawaii in the worse conditions in 24 days but now sailing back in the best conditions with crew took 34 days. 30 days was a reasonable plan except for the equipment breakdowns.
We arrived in Hawaii main island harbour. That’s where we saved the pacific fleet by finding they had a ‘hole’ in their defence at low tide. This impressed the Navy and the Coast Guard but nothing impressed Homeland Security who treated me like a “terrorist to be”, the whole time I was there. She did not like ‘yachties’ and thought everyone should be in uniform. I was thankful that the Navy and Coast Guard countermanded her order to leave insisting I couldn’t because my boat’s rudder needed repair. We had to order the part. I rented a lovely white convertible and Tom and I had an idyllic week going for coffee, lying on the beach and reading. When the part got in, thanks to Tom’s engineering skill, we replaced the rudder coupling and restored the autopilot function to the rudder.
We were off again.
It was perfect sailing conditions. Wonderful tradewinds. Great sunny days. We’d met a couple of other boats going back and kept in touch with my Hamm radio. Then my crew got his crazy impulse to race at night. A gale had come up and he’d put up all the sails. Sleeping below I’d felt the boat lean too far and woken in fear, ran up on deck to start screaming and pulling down sails. That’s when the mast cracked. I’d had to repeatedly tell him that the maximum ‘cruising’ boat ‘angle’ had been x when he wanted to have the ‘gunwale’ in the water. “We’re not in a fucking race. I’ve told you time and again I reduce sail at night. If anything goes wrong we’re alone at sea at night.” I was really quite furious and my crew would joke about his having only 40 feet to stay away from me that night. I just was angry that he’d take risks with my equipment and pull that whole anti authoritarian , adolescent ‘acting out’ with the full sails at night routine and now I was paying big time for his inability to simply follow orders and respect my equipment and my desires on my boat. The old mutiny and why I understand the ‘lashes’ that lasted so long in the British navy and weren’t such an issue on land. I certainly wasn’t Captain Bligh who really got a bad name because his crew mutinied.
Spanish Turnbuckle. We were going again. 70 miles a day rather than the 100 to 150 miles a day and more weeks at sea but really a good time was had by all though my costs and losses for this all would be $150,000 but I’d have my boat back and we would be alive. My crew would oversee the repair of the mast having created weeks of work for himself and I’d eventually have the boat back as a home and a true joy. My tugboat captain friend arranged space for me on the commercial dock and I had a shower in the China Town office. It was a rough existence in some ways but I truly loved the SV Giri.
But on the boat coming home we’d had this wind generator problem. I had the wind generator from hell. It was huge. Tom in a fate of redemption stood on the precarious strut and lifted this beast off. He tried to fix it and for days we had this killer monster taking up our cabin and then in another feat of despair it was lifted back onto the pole when I was arguing we just chuck it overboard. He deserved a Victoria Cross for his bravery and contribution to the boat even if it didn’t work any better after that. My solar panels had all the input they could get but the problem remained the batteries. I had a water maker and for the water maker to work we needed batteries. The batteries ran the autopilot as well though we were able to get the wind pilot working a lot. 2 guys at sea. Lots of challenges.
I have a friend who brings yachts home and now appreciate his amazing skills. I’d sailed solo starting with a fully tested ready to go ship but now this boat had been on land for three years and things corrode and gum up and such. The rudder had broke and the mast had broke and the batteries wouldn’t hold a charge. But I had a Honda 1000 generator though it was problematic with intermittent air flow issues. Nonetheless we made it. The tuna we caught was delicious. Tom baked fabulous bread.
Coming into the Strait of Juan de Fuca my cell phone rang and I realized that now we had cell phone coverage in the coastal passage where I planned to be sailing now that I was home. I immediately thought this means I can do a methadone clinic. To be a methadone doctor you have to be on 24 hour call but VHS radio is not private so until this moment I couldn’t be because I didn’t want to give up sailing. Now I could.
I’d phone Gary and begin working a day a week at his methadone clinic a few blocks from the new China Town office I’d arranged after the Broadway building was sold. All my money was going into the boat or the practice. I was functionally ‘poor’ but rich in so many ways.
Now in my China Town practice I’d become so rich in heart. I’d decided I could have another dog. I was over the murder of Stuart as much as one gets over the murder of a friend.
I made the decision to meet Gilbert. It all happens first in a spiritual realm. My prayers were answered.
My cousin Wayne, logger and rancher, who bred Appalachian horses, hunted and fished, and lived in a beautiful log cabin he’d made himself in the north had a Cockapoo. I decided that a cockapoo was what I wanted and found a retired American Navy Commander who bred them on Whitby Island. I contacted her. Laura was keen on helping.
I’d go off to meet Gilbert in my truck and return with wonderful bundle of love that Laura and I continue to be blessed to know.
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