Insomnia night

Three times this month I’ve been criticized for my patients behaviour. 

My patients are mentally ill.

One has a complex addiction problems and multiple psychiatric diagnosis

Another has mental illness and is an IV drug users.

Another had multiple organ failure and multiple surgeries and has depression and declining memory. They’ve had falls and head injuries and periodic delirium from chronic organ failure and the effects of this on brain function.

I’ve done the best I could. I’m a front line worker. I ‘ve seen 30,000 patients and worked all my life.  The systemic failure of the health care system lack of resource and general shit show is a polictical embarrassement of horrendous leadership corruption and incompetence.  A man’s was dead in the hospital waiting room and the incompetent hospital administration tried to blame everyone else but themselves and ultimately a just blamed the whole problem on racism.  This stuff is the stuff of zombie movies

Management scapegoats and blames individuals while denying accountability taking immense cuts of health care funding for their talk fests and meetings orgies while Rome burns

I’m a psychiatrist and I have not been able to admit a patient to hospital except for homelessness, suicidal or homicidal psychosis.  I am routinely doing madication management and managing suicidal patients in the community without back up or support.

My patients are supposed to have GP’s.  80% of my patients don’t. At most they go to a variety of walk in clinics.  Most of my patients especially the elderly have major physical problems.  So many are on disability .  Most have chronic pain.  Many are obese.  

Over half of my patients have major addictive disorders.

Right now I see about 6-10 patients a day mostly for medication management , crisis intervention, motivation therapy and elective supportive therapy all dictated by when the patient wants to make the contact and contacts at anywhere from 1 to 24 months.  

I’m supposed to ‘fix’ these people and I am stigmatized as my patients are. Menatl illness and addiction are dirty illnesses.

Historically I remember and this is common still, when the mental health teams , government funded and supposedly ‘universal health care’ refused to see patient with addiction. They also commonly refused to see borderline personality disorder.

I was moonlighting in charge of a detox when I was going through my psychiatry training.  I subspecialized in borderline personality disorder.  The wisdom teaching at the time was borderlines were so demanding that a psychiatrist should only have maximum 1 or 2 in their practice. At one time I had 30.  I also found that most Borderline Personality Disorders were Post Traumatic Stress Disorder until proven otherwise.  No one looked into their history of traum and found that their behaviour was the coping mechanisms that they had learned in child hood and that these that had kept them alive through often horrendous trauma were not acceptable as adults.  

I was trained as a psychoanalytic psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist, marriage therapist, group therapist and hypnotist.  The key to avoiding adresssin the issue of Borderline Personality Disorder and PTSD was for many psychiatrists to focus solely on the mood calling them ‘Bipolar II’ and ignoring the whole trauma relationship therapy issues to simply consider various changes in polypharamcology, a triangulating technique at some level.

My research interest was noncompliance. Non adherence to medical regimen.  It’s estimated that 30 % of people don’t do what the doctor recommends but in the psychiatric practice it’s 80%. 

A third of my practice at least are stifling characters, the kinds of patients that psychologists and counsellor cream off from the collection.  These people have a particular problem like anxiety disorder, or depression but they don’t have other medical illnesses, they have jobs and families and friends and are generally really good ‘therapy’ candidates. We called them YAFie’s.  Young, attractive, family oriented, intelligent, interesting, and emotional.  I’ve treated a dozen Olympic champions, a dozen or more millionaires, a dozen or more models and many famous celebrities, professors, doctors, engineers, etc.  They are what people who ‘cherry pick’ their practices focus on.  They avoid people with drug and alcohol problems and especially the poor.

It’s the business of medicine The sharp smart operators ‘limit’ their involvements and establish ‘boundaries’ and aren’t particularly focused on ‘curing’ or ‘healing’ but rather providing a set ‘service or ‘protocols that are recommended in general.  Most of my patients don’t fit these protocols.  

One gp told me that he’d had his patients rejected by 20 or more psychiatrists and was sorry to be asking me to see another ‘basket case’.  

Many of my patients have criminal records.  Several have tried to kill me.  I’ve been held hostage and my life threatened .  I was in charge of the dangerously insane ward of the state asylum and consulted to the mentally ill in the jails. 

A lot of my patients are dirty and smell.  As I said a half to a third don’t.  Obviously the models and millionaires don’t.   I have a number of my patients with addiction living on the street.

There’s a government service.  It’s has immense resources . When I worked for mental health there were psychologists, social workers, and administrators and we had meetings all the time and saw very few people. One mental health team was utilized by one patient who took up something like half the services.  So many of the people I’ve worked with are afraid of the mentally ill. The burocrats are terrified of the mentally and will give them whatever to keep them out of their office and to focus their rage on others. They routine attack doctors from behind. They’re like the famous communist “leaders’ in WWII who stool at the back and shot anyone who didn’t go forward 

I’ve had patietrns who I saw 40 years ago and when I saw them they were chronically hospitalized and with proper psychiatric care went on to be professors never hospitalized again. I care but what I do is what my teachers taught me and I had the best teachers and have seen the best of psychiatric care. What is occurring in British Columbia and Canada in general is a shit show. I saw better care when I worked for welfare in the US than I saw people routinely getting in Canada.a

Trudeau and the Liberals are given euthanasia as ‘health care’.  They call it ‘Maid’ medically assisted suicide and the elderly and the mentally ill are targeting.

Nothing I say can be said. 2/3 of my colleagues are afraid to speak.  The last 10 years has been censorship in Canada at the highest level.  Many doctors and others working in institutions sign ‘non disclosure agreements’.  They won’t speak if they see someone kllled .  A man died in the waiting room of Winnipeg General Hospital and was dead 2 days and the hospital administration was exonerated because it was attributed ‘racism’.  We are all surprised it wasn’t attributed to ‘climate change’.

A million people came into Canada one year with only 200,000 housing available, no infrastructure management, no increased hospitals or doctors or labs.

When I order a test it routinely doesn’t come back to me even though I’m the ordering doctor.  MRI,CTScans, labs work go routine ly to a ‘family physician’.  British Columbia is a family physician town and specialists are commonly denigrated by comparison. I am a family physician. I delivered a hundred babies and did surgery and have treated thousands of general practice issues .  But when I order a test it goes to soemewhere else.  I am routinely asking my staff to find the reports or results. The gp who receives the pscyhaitric labs etc commonly is a walk in doctor the patient saw some years ago . But I’m the ordering psychiatrist and rarely do I get the lab work or X-rays or whatever back to me. This is an administration issue. When my patients are admitted to hospital rarely, but they are seen in emergency, commonly even though I’m the psychiatrist and specialist on the pharmanet and the patient says I’ m the psychiatrist the institutions send their discharge notes to some disconnected community walk in clinic where the patient had some contact so that name is somewhere in the history. The doctors and nurses and institutions are doing extremely good work but the communication (administration) issue is abysmal. The trouble it ‘communication’ institution and community etc was a problem 40 years ago.  We as doctors share among our self’s. However Lawyers don’t and beraurocrats don’t and they think information is power and their power .  It’s a nightmare.  Patient records are everywhere.  It’s a shitshow.  That’s all the glorious incompetence of health care administration at the government level in institution primarily while private doctors do the majority of health care.

Private psychiatrists are a principle reason our patients are not in hospital and are able to work and return to work.  My patients have chronic illness. Most specialists are dealing with chronic illness . What we do is get the patient through another week or month. The patients are amazing.  They are like the Duracell bunnies.  Despite being stigmatized and preyed on the mentally ill and the addicted keep struggling forward.  Thankfully many especially when the follow medical recommendations not only mange but prosper.  

I love working with my patients the beautiful and ugly, stupid and brilliant, clean and unclean.  What people don’t realize is doctors are a special breed who unlike lawyers, engineers, accountants or others are committed to understanding disease and treating sickness. I’m not research or business oriented .I’m a clinician.  Most of my colleagues are like me. We love our work and we love our patients. But we don’t like the criticism and scapegoating.  We have had a prime minister who would get at most a ‘c’ on a prime minister exam where as most of the doctors are A or A+ by world standards despite the increasing departure from clinical medicine to other more lucrative fields where doctors can work.  I tell people that if I see a person with a fracture and see a cut and fix it I get $50 but if I review this for an insurance company or government I get $500 but if I review it for the courts I get $5000.  I get the most money get the furthest away from patients with drug and alcohol problems or mental illnes but where I get to give talks and go to meetings and even become a. GURU.  I am especially rewarded if I have a niche and I tell addicts they need drugs or tell paranoids they aren’t paranoids. The more I can join the patients in the their delusions and the more agreeable I am the more rewarded I am.  

Increasingly patients used doctors not to get well but to get a letter for money or for some third party service.  Patients tell me they don’t want to see a psychiatrist but that they want to see a holistic healer but psychiatrists are free and holistic healers cost too much money.

My dog peed on the neighbour recliner. The neighbour complained to the authorities and a man visited me and told me to keep my dog on a leash. He escaped that one time and I’ve had him on a leath a thousand times. I knew to smile and say thank you.  My patient whose child died was abrupt with a client at work and written up and seen by several management people and HR and the union and they don’t have more sick days and they’re not dealing with the death that well. It’s been 2 months and they’re back to work because they’re paying for their mother who gets food from the food bank .My middle class patients are going to the food bank because Trudeau/Liberal money doesn’t buy anything. All my patients on fixed pension and disability are having problems paying for food and rent.  Mental illness and addiction devastate a persons capacity to care for themselves.  The Liberal government specializes and platitudes and their highly paid propaganda media say they’re helping the marginal people and are giving out ‘fish’ everyone once in a while with wonderful look at me press rallies.  My patients don’t just have a problem for a week. They have been declining over that last three years. Many of my patients haven’t rebounded since Covid.  This woman wants me to speak to her employer. I do that. I’ve done it hundreds of times. I’m saying please , give them another chance. Meanwhile they’re not doing well. Who does well after their daughter overdoses.  But it’s an unkind world.  I’m asked if I can give them a medication to help them focus and get better. I’m not allowed to prescribe cocaine.  I m even criticized for prescribing opiates, benzodiazepines or stimulants. Repeatedly my Addict is tell me their doctors wouldn’t help them their pain or whatever and they went to the street. Like they go to soothsayers and snake oil salesmen.

I have another patient who escape from his third treatment centre and was in and out of hospital suicidal over night.  But the law won’t let me Cerritos this addict and require that he be on injectable depot medications.  The richest civil rights folk fight to allow this person to destroy his life. You’d think these guys are getting kick back from the cartels but I was a members of the Civil Rights Asdsociation and I know that the government under the liberals have been censoring and attacking freedoms and declaring martial law for peaceful demonstrations. Kent State is happening in Canada today. Forget about the Buffalo Spring Field. This the Maoist Culural Revolution and I want my individual patient to have restriction put on him but I know this government would be a police state in a second if it could and people le the Canadian Civil Liberties Association are necessary to stop tyranny of second class PM’s .  It’s all above my pay grade.

i do the best I can. Really. I’m educated beyond my intelligence.  I’m studying medicine all the time. I’ve devoted my life to psychiatry and addiction medicine.  It’s cost me big time. I’m getting older and I’m frankly afraid seeing the horrendous neglect and abuse of the elderly and mentally ill in Canada. Terrorists get better treated and criminals get better treated and illegal immigrants get better treated than some of my patients and I’m criticized not by people on the front lines or doing better than me but you know, those ‘critics’ , a dime a dozen.  When I worked in government I hated the meetings because they were so stupid and the critics were a dime a dozen and didn’t do any work , indeed their principle skill was avoiding work. I know one doctor in government medicine didn’t see one patient in 6 months but were being paid full time as a clinician.  Another person I know ran an insurance agency out of the government medical office. I would love a DOGE of the Canadian government. Trudeau wants us to teach climate change to medical students and talk climate change in our 15 minute visits.  When I worked in the asylum we told the patients that the bars were on the wall to protect them from the outside, from the insanity of Ottawa.  

Hearing that tone of disdain, arrogance,superiority and ignorance, without experience or knowledge and just the inferiority complexes with their ‘judgemental mess’.  Judgement is so easy.  There’s no right or wrong in real life. We don’t get to decide ‘terms of engagement’.  These corporates are trying to impose their intellectual rigid profit driven constructs on humans who obviously they don’t worker.  The FDA tests medicine and almost all my patients including the brilliant beautiful celebrities would not make the jury selection rigor of the clinical trials. I’m doing psychopharamacoloy with medications that  over laps and are influenced by other medications diet and exercise and I have patients seeing a half dozen or more specialists and we’re not getting each others reports or note and there’s no system in the community for paying for us to interact so the junior group stays safe in the institutions are the multiple meetings and shared accountability while clinicians so often are out in the community alone struggling.  That’s where I’ve been but I specialized in wilderness medicine and worked as fly in family physician and psychiatrist in northern Canada and the Polynesia islands. Years of my life without resources doing what I could.  Now Canada is like a third world wilderness medicine place and my patients are falling through the cracks. All of those best practice models gps are supposed to follow aren’t getting to my psychiatric patients or my addicted patients. I imagine half my female patients have n’t had a breast exam and so many haven’t had stool samples. All the brilliant Canadian preventative health care isn’t happening to my patients because they don’t have a family physician and walk in clinics aren’t able to manage the demands.  

Besides more and more patients are Dr. Google and have a false idea that AI does good diagnosis and treatment .It doesn’t . There research is definitive. But the management sorts are frightened of this fact.

I’m worried because I’m on the dying end of the equation and know as a doctor I’m not getting the kind of health care that was normal 10 or 20 years ago. Today is a shit show and of course people are lucky if they get good care and they do but it’s so sad to see how poorly managed it is. But we have had a prime minister who says ‘budgets balance themselves’ and while he’s been at his perpetual party and spending spree he has also thought ‘country manages itself ‘ and ‘health care heals itself’.  

Now there’s nothing I need fear except fear itself.  I must forgive the arrogant and grandiose especially the narcissistic and psychopaths who don’t know they are assholes, but I must be the best version of myself today because the person I was talking to might have just learned they have gonorrhea and their dick was going to be amputated or the woman that her lipstick was a carcinogens. I must be understanding.  I am a sinner. I’m a person who fails too. I’m not a saint. I’m not perfect. And yes I could have done a better job.  I could have typed a pretty little paper like I do for the courts and spent the time doing that but I was dealing with trying to get my schizophrenic patient care because a number of companies are interfereing with his care and I don’t know what to do since I don’t have resources. I ordered an MRI for another person but the MRI place last the requisition., I’ve consulted a neurologist twice because the patient has something groiwning in their brain and yet I can’t get anyone interested because they guy is an addict or more likely everyone like me is over extenders,.

Canadian doctors outside of Quebec have 80% burnt out but French Canaaddian doctors are better paid with less case loads more breaks and more money and look down their noses at us especially us in western Canada which is wild.

But I’m trying to focus on being in the present. I’m trying to pray for enemies and forgive and let go of conflict and live in the present and develop acceptance. The problem is me and my perception This is God’s world and when I criticize it I criticize God and God is great all the time and God knows what’s best and me being criticized for my dog and my patients rude behaviour is just the way it should l be and I should rise about all this. I remember when the landlord wanted to kick me out of the office because my patients who I refused to give opiates to Keyed the walls of the office and I had to pay for the repair but that wasn’t enough others were afraid of mental ill people in the office buislling.  The addicts are even less welcome and have often been shouting in waiting rooms threatening and I’ve been told that I am not wanted if I can’t control my patients or ensure such patients don’t come to see me. But then the patients complain to the government and the government hates doctors and is superior and elite and aloof and wear expensive suits and don’t get woken at night are rich fat cats with the best pensions and they cost the doctors thousands of dollars and the patients who complain about the doctors are violent bullies in the community but there’s a shortage of doctors and the administration is supposed to care but at any time there’s doctors playing that administration game that costs the private practitioner tens of thousands of dollars whereas the institutional and salaried doctors are rewarded by time off and collective angst since they don’t have to pay overhead and staff. 

The PM called me and all private doctors criminals and said we were stealing from patient with our RRSP program. I don’t have health care. I don’t have pension. I’m making less that the patient who have unions . I lost 12 years of earning capacity to education and this guy told me ‘a thermostat has degrees and we stick that up your ass’. 

I also have to resist poor me.  when I can’t sleep and something like this has triggered me I go into self pity mode. Thank god I have friends who say ‘get off the cross, we can use the wood’.  Really I had teachers who talked like army sergeants and I have seen doctors do the most egregious things to doctors. I have had the worst and best medical care known in my time . But now I’m blessed.

I’m right now in paradise and can only imagine that I’m so relaxed and blessed that I’m sensitive to this shit which I normally take like water off a ducks back.  The abuse of caregivers in Canada is legion. In Covid times we all had to put up signs don’t attack medical staff. Meanwhile people we banging pots and pans in other places saying thanks for taking the risk. I was terrified at first remember the year I was the emergency doctor that first year of aids when friends were dying. A couple of friends died of Covid last year too.

This getting old isn’t for the young.  

I’m tired enough to sleep I hope.  All shall be well. All shall be well.  All manner of things shall be well.  I miss the head of family medicine and the head of neurology and the head of psychiatry.  they all referred to me and now they’re retired or dead.  Ageism is alive and well in Canada.  Racism not so much.  My older patients aren’t going to get even good assisted living since everything costs and those with assists saved are punished because the street people get the same and now illegal immigrants get first in line.  

I’m fucked but that’s God’s will. So thank you Jesus.  God came to earth and they killed him and it just keeps on going.  Tomorrow is a new day Jesus will be born and die and arise.  The aestesist will evangelize and push their religion of communism and their silliness and I’ll thank god for waking me up. I’ll be confused.  I’ll do the next right thing. I’ll no doubt convince another person not to suicide while I think of it and tell my patients stop talking and being distracted by America the problem is closer to to home. Like the adolescent who can solve all the world’s problems but can’t clean his room.

I’m awake at night because God and I are having a Jakob struggle.  My back hurts.  I’ve losing body parts.  Everyone is dying.  I’m paranoid.  I am hopeful.  I’ll keep Madigan on a close leash and maybe I’ll clean his bum and wash him because his poops getting stuck in his hair.  That’s really what I should focus on.  I will get in the mineral springs and that will be wonderful .  Now I’ll go back to bed and hope to turn over without screaming pain .  Fucking plan crash.  I can take Advil but my stomach gets upset.  I tried some cream and that helped.  This is paradise.  I’m blessed to be hear 

A terrific pit stop for an old car one a wonderful journey.  Thank you Jesus. Thank You God. 

Yuma - love

I ward off fear every day.  I like that religion is for those who have never been to hell and spirituality for those who have been and don’t want to go back.  My very life and being and mind were threatened by a satanic man .  I knew fear. I’d seen the torture provided in the name of justice. I’d witnessed the grossest abuse of power.  I was afraid. I was experiencing ‘incomprehenible demoralization’ and cried out to Jesus.  I had felt beyond Grace. I felt every path I took was blocked. I thought ‘how could all these bad things be happening to a good guy like me’.  I felt the depth of betrayal and knew terror and despair.  I cried out to Jesus.  I cried out to God.  

“My God  My God why hast thou forsaken me?” “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’  I was in the long dark night of the soul.  

I survived. Later I’d be in a hurricane in winter at sea, days inside of the washing machine like sail boat unable to find comfort, totally at the mercy.  I  felt then the  same physically as I’d felt imprisoned by enemies.  This time I did not feel I was alone or that I had done wrong. I felt close with God.  I’d not turned my back on Jesus but knew he was with me. I had faith and trust in the Lord.  I’d clung to him in the darkest of times and been rewarded.  I’d confessed my sins. I was no longer alone and alienated. I’d been the Prodigal Son returning to my family. I’d sought the guidance and leadership of  Christian missionary doctors and Christian professors, and spiritual friends.  I’d begun the path back to the god of my understanding. I once again sought to know daily God and God’s will for me. I prayed daily and eventually ceaselessly as St. Paul had taught. I meditated as I had long ago learned.  I lived.  I humbly turned my will and my life over to God. I accepted I was powerless over alcohol and drugs and that my life had become unmanageable. I found the lost strength and hope within me. I attended church and meetings and studies.  I pilgrimaged to the Holy Lands and prayed in the places of worship of the holy.  I literally let go and let God.  

I contrast the time I have today with that turning point decades ago. I’d put my faith in romance back then and looked to sex and drugs and rock and roll for answers. Today I talk directly with God and ask for his forgiveness and guidance.  Each day I begin the day in gratitude and ask for the presence of Jesus Christ in my life.  I pray to God and the saints of all religions . I am a seeker and yet trust in the Hound of Heaven. I know the footprints in the sand and see the hand prints of God in my life. Theres’ a fourth dimension I often stumble into. . That flow or consciousness that is beyond all human understanding, the transscendence.   I fear at times I am a spiritual consumer seeking the nectar of God. It is a journey and destination. I accept I am in this life and enjoy food,  .exercise, sleep and fellowship that  is itself Godly.  I live in this world but I ‘ m not of this world.  I am a child of God but I am vigilant, less naive, older. 

I dreamed of being given marijuana by a taxi driver last night. I took the package and woke.  I still have dreams like that, not using, but as C.S. Lewis say thinking that God could be found in the wall of his creation. I want direct contact with God . The old tantric path was thoroughly explored. The journey is forward not back.  It served its time back when.  Now it has no future.  I don’t know why it came to me out of my memories, as a tease or temptation.   I imagine it was because I ‘ve been watching 007 and revisiting the 60’s.  I’m remembering youth and love and dancing in the streets of San Francisco with flowers in our hair.  I’m reading a book on the history of Northern Africa and remembering being in the Kazbah, me and Bobby McGee. I’m grieving my youth.   

Today I’m old and life has been a grand adventure with my Doystoeyski encounter with the sophisticated devil who offered me a choice. I look the road I did and the one he din’t not know. Now I’m feeling sometimes that I’m in Heaven’s waiting room but I know that’s decades a head.  It’s the weariness that assails me now sometimes.  I remember the single footprints in the sand then. I say All shall be well, all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. I remember Hal’s teachings on an Attitude of Gratitude. I try to get over myself.  I try to keep my head in the same room as my ass.  I know God is in the present. 

It’s best then I go for a walk.  My dog is always happy to walk with me. He’s a great teacher.  

Thank you God for rescuing me from myself. Thank you God for loving me as father and mother and giving me a father and mother who loved and taught me love. . Thank you God for this life of mystery and adventure. Thank you for the journey, companions and memories.  Help me do my best today, Grant me serenity, courage and wisdom. 

Surrender

AA teaches that we surrender.  We cease fighting everyone and everything.  Righteous anger is a dubious luxury in those in recovery.

I probably wouldn’t have joined AA a quarter century ago if it weren’t for reading that American soldiers continued to fight the Nazis in Italy while remaining sober in AA.  I did not believe e in pacifism. I believed in self defence.  I feel Trudeau is attacking Canada and Canadians and has placed himself above the law.  But is it my fight? 

 In my work and personal life I’ve met hundreds of individuals personally harmed by communism first hand.  Even as a representative to youth parliament I spoke out against communism in my 20’s in the Ottawa parliament.  Even now my patients have described Communist Chinese police and military in Canada spying on our soil and threatening citizens who speak out against the latest invasion of Hong Kong by the communists.  When I met with the Dalai Lama he was still speaking against the genocide of Tibetans by the communist Chinese, the invasion and ethnic cleansing of the local Tibetans replacing them with Communist Chinese.  

The Uyghurs continue to be imprisoned and the organs extracted for communist Chinese officials,  It’s like Auschwitz continues, but in China.   I read Solzinitzin ‘s Gulag about the slave work camps in Communist Russia.  My colleague survived the Concentration camps of the communist Pol Pot.  The Cambodian communists murdered millions, half the population of Cambodia.  I listened in horror to his personal story and his individual courage.  I was just in Ethiopia where I heard of the horrors when then the Communist overthrew the government and killed so many before they were again overthrown,  I talked to survivors sitting and sharing in the churches I was visiting, 

Working with refugees from Communist regimes I heard first hand accounts of torture and terror.  It’s horrifying to know that Trudeau has invited the communist Chinese military to train on Canadian soil while he treats Canadian veterans and hero’s with utter disdain and disrespect. 

I am taught, Let go and Let God. Having a resentment to Trudeau  is said to be like taking poison and hoping the other guy dies.  I am old. My back hurts,  I’ve given my life to service and caring for others. I’m the original hippy.  A peacenik  I don’t want a war.  Make love not war.  As a Christian I am taught to pray for my enemy and turn the other cheek,  Jesus’s disciples were armed and his message appealed to Centurions.  I loved. CS Lewis’ Christian messages to the troops on BBC.  The fight against fascism was like the fight against Communism.  Christians are slow to anger but the disciples were armed and defensive and protected the women and children in their midsts from the robbers, murderers and kidnappers in their journeys.  

Though my father was Air Force and my uncle Military Police I chose medicine and healing. If the Vietnam war against the Communist north Vietnamese as a proxy war was expanded  by Communist China I’d work as a doctor not as a shooter. The Korean War in which Canada was so successful and admired was another Communist Chinese Proxy War.   Korea was divided with the north still firing missiles over Japan and over Guam where my friends live. 

Communism is the ideology of perpetual war.  Yet even Putin claims his ‘invasion’ of Ukraine is ‘defensive’.  There is no truth in Communism.  Whatever the Central Communist Committee says is true.  With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the exposure of the Stazis files the reality of the massive deceit and terror in Communism was again exposed,  

CSIS says the Communist Chinese have infiltrated the Canadian Education, Media and Government to the highest level, 

Jesus commanded ‘do not be afraid.’  Worrying in wicked. I’m admittedly anxious but I lived under the threat of Cold War.  We did drills during the Kennedy Missile Crisis curled up as children under desks and by school walls,  When the city siren went off we filed to the basement of the Hudson Bay fearing separation from our fanily.  Our city was just north of the American missile sirens on the direct route of the first strike Communist Inter continental nuclear missiles,

Communist China’s latest missiles are aimed at the west coast and can and will strike Vancouver and Seatle,  Xi Jing Ping has threatened this.  Once again I’m living in a nightmare with Trudeau singing Queen at the death of Queen Elizabeth a monarch and world leader I had so admired,  During WW 2 she stood up to Fascism and would stand up against the Communists. She worked as a mechanic in the war effort.  Pierre Trudeau flew Nazi  flags , trained in Communism in Russia and celebrated Communist Castro.  His son celebrates Xi Jing Ping.  

I probably have PTSD still. I have waves of anxiety and need to accept that God’s divine retribution will take care of Trudeau.  I wouldn’t want his karma.  I need to let go and let God.  

What’s also true is I really haven’t much of a clue about Trudeau or the Liberals today because it’s all hearsay.  Elon Musk has exposed how warped and bizarre Twitter became with the FBI with Hillary’s campaign creating a false Russian disinformation dossier and deciding what and who could be heard.  Conservative voices were blacklisted like in Canada.  The CBC and other Canadian media have been bought by Trudeau so they are little more than government public relations,  Canada’s “People’s Daily’.  With all the misinformation and disinformation in the media, Trudeau might well be a good guy, just another victim in the horror show of Canadian politics with Communist Russia’s war in Europe,  Communist China’s war in the China Sea and Covid leaked from the Wuhan lab. The Pangolin were falsely accused along with the wet markets which didn’t sell bats.   So whose to know if what we are told is Trudeau, is Trudeau. Maybe the actor is replaced by an actor.  Reality is crazier than fiction,  Who is the real Justin Trudeau?  

I believe those I know personally have sufferd at the hands of the Communists.  I have seen and touched their scars.  I may be a Conservative Canadian today but when I drank and smoked I was a liberal. Today I have liberal friends and know so many who are pro Liberal anti Trudeau.  I even have patients who know Trudeau and swear by him. Just as I met Turner and Chrétien and Harper and swore by them they swear by Trudeau. They see him as loose and a flake but not inherently evil, At most what Lenin called a ‘useful idiot’.  So why am I doing feeling such negativity for him.  Isn’t it as much my counter transference issues.  

I didn’t cause Trudeau, I can’t control Trudeau, And I can’t cure Trudeau,  God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (Trudeau) , the courage to change the things I can (me, my attitude, my fear and resentment). And the wisdom to know the difference,  

In my work I ‘ve had guns pointed at me, Ironically by criminals and police.  I was held hostage and my life threatened so badly I have nightmares still so admittedly a lot of the media and threats and fears of the last few years have touched and triggered me. I’m blessed to have colleagues and friends who have supported me, I have my faithful little dog Madigan and Laura has been a comfort along with my family whose lives are so creative and loving,

I do listen all day to patients who are suffering mostly these days from inflation and negligence and lack of resources.  It’s getting harder every year to be on the front lines, working in the complaints department of life. .  I can only empathize with those who escaped communist countries and are here seeing their safety once again threatened,  Younger I was better at carrying on but older I find it harder to forget the stories of the victims of communism.  Hundreds of millions were murdered in the USSR and similar numbers by Mao in the communist cultural revolution which began as ‘cancel culture’ and ‘gag orders’.  Any doctor who disagreed with the horror of totalitarianism  was called schizophrenic and locked up in the Russian asylums. When I was a member of Canadian Civil Liberties and Psychiatrists against Political Abuse I heard so many first hand accounts,  Only a decade ago I was asked to go to China as a missionary psychiatrist meeting with Christian psychiatrists and hearing first hand the horrors of the Communist Chinese regime. 

Today my back hurts.  I fear its anger turned inward. I believe everything is psychosomatic.  I simply have to let go and let god and pray for my enemies,  I’ve found when I pray for my enemies I don’t want to do that so I stop thinking about them. It’s time, Trudeau doesn’t need anymore Fuddleduck Trudeau sentiment. Today I’ll start praying for him, He and his fanily do need prayers. Mostly I need to stop fighting everyone and everything,  I have to surrender and accept my position is overrun.  

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou aren’t with me,  

Hallelelujah!

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?:
Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?
Oh my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night and am not silent.
I opened my Bible to this page. Today I thought I should use my new big print edition Bible for this exercise. I just open the Bible somewhere and reflect on the words that first appear to my eyes.  This is what I saw today.  The fact is my Bible is worn from use. It is likely that I’ve come to this page over and over again. The Bible falls open here. It’s the opening of Psalm 22, the first words of which were said to be the last words of Jesus on the cross.
I have to be cautious though because this is a verse of self pity. In my narcissism and isolation I am prone to self pity.  I work as a healer, I’m a physician. My humility is that I insist the medication and charms and incantations cure but somehow I believe still that it is in the relationship.  I love the St. Francis prayer “Make me a channel”.
I feel this as I’m healing. At the end of a day of work I feel like I’ve had all the strength and energy drawn out of me. I can work differently. I can be removed and have the beurocratic boundaries up around me like the barriers lawyers and businessmen erect. But I don’t. I took an oath and I do the best I can to heal.
In psychotherapy it is as if we share spinal columns.  There’s a merger that is borderline in the pathological but yet is akin to walking a mile in another’s shoes.  In shared stories and vulnerabilities I meet the defeated in their wound.. I find the pain and shadow and go there. I am one with the nightmare. I find the nightmare within myself.  Then I reassure.  I rally. I cheer lead. I exhort.  I see disease as an enemy and I’m the Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain, Commander encouraging men and women to go another day.  I have magic potions. I have special ‘tests’ and ‘rituals’.  I have ‘names’.  I am Adam in the garden. I have a wealth of experience and secrets.
But now government has lost faith.  They are dishonourable.  They admit to defeat for the country. Like Nazis we find they have put their money overseas and are running to Argentina. That have plunged the country into inexorable debt and given themselves wages. They are spending recklessly overseas and buying future homes to flee to.
First they brought abortion and killed the children of our forefathers rather than paying mothers a living wage.  They lied and cheated and defiled.  They gave their Order of Canada to the greatest Nazi killer of our time Morgentaller, a survivor of Auschwitz who identified with his aggressor and hating catholics encouraged their abortions.
Today abortionists make more than those who deliver babies.  I am punished for keeping people alive. I am a fool. I am ridiculed in high places. They have stopped seeing patients and gone to committees. Everywhere committees gather to discuss the other. But no one wants to see the other. They take the money for the other and give themselves awards and celebrate each other in an amazing circle jerk but all the other has are waitlists.
Bombs are where the money is and dreams.  It’s Matrix all over.
Now we have physician assisted  suicide.  In Holland euthanasia began in compassion and then it developed into a profit centre like our jails.  Corruption is everywhere.  Especially in Quebec. The Liberal government of Ontario has the greatest world debt for a sub nation. I am sent letters upon letters for finding brain tumours with MRI challenged to justify my spending on the war against disease.  My patients can’t afford the medication.  The sick are impoverished while the leaders of democracy strut about like Czars and emperors.  The new Napoleon with his Sophie are a Hollywood favourite with million dollar jaunts and flaunting their wealthy living like Rothschilds in the 30’s .
And the UN has given us Agenda 21 wanting to kill off billions of people rather than celebrate the life we have.  People are the enemy.
Or so it seems.
I cry to God because my brother has cancer. My patients have cancer. And we’re all aging and death is nearer in years than ever before. I didn’t think of death like this since I worked with Aids patients.  Now in the epidemic of luxury I work with the drug addicted and they die.  I know them personally intimately and I am up against a wall.
My spiritual teaching is ‘surrender’.  I am to ‘accept’.  I pray the serenity prayer. I acknowledge my lack of omnipotence. But Jesus resurrected and resurrected Lazarus. He healed the unsealable.  I believe in miracles.  I have known so many. I have seen so many patients live who others said would die. I have truly known and walked in the sacred.
All around me the atheists are loud and they reduce everything to the limits of their own imagination. I am a scientist but their pseudoscience and their science business frauds are rampant. I am gifted in my theism by the science I have learned. I walk in Heisenberg and Planck and enjoy the multiverse and immortality. Yet as I withdraw and observe I recall Arjuna talking to Krishna about the war.  It’s not about the war but it’s about ones own participation.
I pray for my brother.
My dogs back was hurt and he was near the point of needing to be put down. But today he is well enough. I fear for his future. His hind legs lack the strength they once did but he is older as I am and my back legs lack the strength.
My life is harried. I am always trying to do so much. I’ve overwhelmed. I’m daily encountering emergencies. I’ve worked for decades in the areas of greatest need with the most vulnerable alone, without so little support.
I saw a couple of men yesterday and introduced them.  They had both suffered catastrophic brain injuries and were never thought to be well in anyway again.They really belonged in institutions but somehow struggled on the outside. I saw them.  I read literature night after night, studied journals attended seminars, asked colleagues, and did my best. It’s beyond anything I ever learned in school and there is no clear answer. Each is unique.  I was thankful for the wisdom of colleagues. Only a few of us work here and it’s not my thing though everyone says it is. It’s just so hard and no one else wants to do it.  Over and over gps tell me the called dozens of my colleagues and they’ve been turned down. There is no wealth in seeing sick. Everyone is cherry picking the well. But a decade later I watched these two interact and so enjoyed their laughter. A couple of soldiers who shared a common battlefield. I love their families. I love the community. I love health care. They epitomize all that is good.  I was so glad to be apart of it.  But there’s been so many tears.  I cry myself to sleep at night unable to help.
The rich and well get the first tier of care. There is Betty Ford for them and now they’re just opening places for the other to inject their existence away.
I am thankful. The sun has come out again today. I was so sun sufficient. For weeks now coughing all day and all night, exhausted, chest hurting from the work of coughing.  Pain in the intercostals.  Feeling in the morning like an elephant has sat on my chest.  Thinking I’m dying. Every night at 3 in the morning thinking I’m dying.  One night dragging myself to the couch and finding the phone and preparing to phone an ambulance but then I could breathe.  Breath, like everything I take for granted. Going to work embarrassed by the cough. Wondering if it’s a cold or just allergies.  Suffering and feeling the suffering of those I try to help with so few resources.
Always there are critics. The parasites abound. They are so far from the front lines but in their space station air head wisdom they can criticize but they are utterly incompetent in face of danger and lack the humility to admit to the depth of their cowardice. They are dying to. Their fear is ever obvious in their attempt at control.  I watch them cross their legs , the wrinkles at the edges of their eyes. They are in shock. I ‘d like to talk to them, reassure them. but they have gone to hide in their positions.  They have lost their humanity and take solace in the machines they worship. It’s the money. I can not but envy them. They are driven by the rankest of forces. Money buys them.  And I am little different.
I say I would be sailing if I were rich. But I am able to flee to the sea and still I linger asking myself how come God doesn’t heal me. I only ask for a miracle. A cure for cancer. I will die but let them live longer and suffer less.
I am suffering for not. I am on a cross and friends are calling, get down we need the wood. I am here another day.
There is another complaint.  I never had a complaint when I worked as a general practitioner. I never had a complaint when I worked as a general psychiatrist. I was so admired when I was in surgery and community medicine.  But now I’ve worked for years with the addicted and alcoholic and criminals, sociopaths and psychopaths.  I am alone so much in the community, one to one in a little office.  I have been attacked. Guns have been pointed at me. I’ve been held hostage. I’m afraid more easily.  A young man told me that some doctors get more complaints. I spoke with the forensic psychiatrists about ‘rate your doctor’ and how their patients loathed them.  I spoke with the head of addiction and physician care and he had two complaints against him and one to the human rights.  So I thought it was the field. I’ve had a complaint each year this last five years and each has been because the patients drug addiction has caused them to be denied work.
The last two have insisted that because I ‘named’ them ‘substance abuse’ and that because I did the urine test that showed positive then that was why they were given a DUI and that was why they were not allowed to work.  I’ve known dozens of doctors who covered for patients, colluding with their addiction and causing them to be a risk to others. There are no complaints of ‘sins of omission’.  I’ve done exactly what I was required to do and this young doctor , incredibly inexperienced, working in a beurocratic job suggests that I could somehow know better how not to get a complaint.
So it’s ‘blame the doctor’ and I really don’t want to be one any more.  It’s the soldiers fault who gets wounded in war. There’s someone in Ottawa or Washington who is avoiding the frontline themselves but studying grafts and showing how certain soldiers are the ones that get wounded.
I know this is a resentment.  The young man is a grandiose arrogant idiot but then I am the one who is suicidal. I’m the one who wants to go back to working in a hospital with all the dozens of people for every patient and the resources and the gang approach to medicine and the immense waste of resources. I miss the intensive care where no one was expected to live and they didn’t so no one could complain. I miss the years I did psychotherapy like the psychologists and wonder what is it that wants me to work where there is the greatest difficulty.
Why couldn’t I just sail a little boat in English Bay but instead sailed solo across the pacific at Christmas facing the greatest fears. What made me face 40 foot seas.  Why do I push myself to the limits. Why not get on a committee and work well within the ‘wire’.  If only I avoid the ‘other’ stay safe, play it safe, don’t rock the boat.
I really want to .  I wonder at a life with complaining hurting dying diseased people. I wonder at a life of despair.  The money isn’t good enough for the abuse I get. Accountants make a whole lot more and don’t have people pulling guns and knives on them.  I am threatened routinely. If you don’t write what I say to write I’m going to lose my job and you’re going to be sorry. I refuse to collude.  I am increasingly being the fall guy for insurance companies that didn’t want to pay in the first place but now blame the doctor and the patients complain that the doctor won’t say they’re in a wheel chair when they’re not. Increasingly there’s this lie that is being perpetrated. We’re been consumed by the bureaucracy which takes the fat and leaves nothing for anyone else.

They’re fighting for crumbs under the table.
And I’m grateful.  I can breath. My chest is only a little sore. I bought a lot less. I’m here in the sun. I”ve walked. I’m not dying myself. But I have no miracles. I pray and I can’t seem to convince God that my patient and my friends and family need to win the lottery.  I am insignificant.  A speck of irrelevance.
My God, My God.

I am thankful for the view. My little dog is looking out on the street. A young woman just walked by with perky breasts, tight summer clothes and barefoot.  I’ve been enjoying taking pictures of flowers. There is so much joy and pleasure to be had right here. I am thankful for this day. This is a Saturdayl Most days I’m just recouping for the onslaught of sickness and disease.  The horrors of addictions.  Livers coming out of the bodies like Sigourney Weaver’s aliens.  Rashes and unknown diseases. And contagion.
I know a famous specialist who told me she avoids people with disease as she is afraid of their germs.  She was glad to get through medical school and residency so she could avoid seeing patients. She writes books and others do her touching for her.  The trick in medicine is to spend the least amount of time in direct contact with illness.  And yet contagion hides for days before it declares itself.
My brother is told to avoid crowds.  The Chinese were wearing masks on planes .  The new handshake is touching knuckles. In church when they say the peace they no longer touch.
Insanity is infectious.  Like addiction.
I love the sun. I am so thankful for this reprieve.  I am so very thankful that I am able to sit here and have this table, this chair, this bible this light and this place to journal.
Journalling is like squishing the puss out of my brain. I bleed out of my ears. And then with it gone from my thoughts inside I can carry one. I can rally.
I cleaned my home.  I made my bed .  I shook out the rugs. I washed down the bathroom. I changed the sheets.  I cleaned the toilet.  I have oils burning and fans running the scents through the home.  The windows are open. I am thinking now of lying in the sun and hoping to rejuvenate some.
Let the self pity go. Let the resentment and fear go.  Pray for enemies.  Find peace of mind.  Welcome the coming of death.  It’s only years or days or hours that I have .  I liked that we walked today for hours and I remembered that last year I had such injuries and pain I couldn’t have done that. There are always blessings. It’s always perception.
Thank you God. Thank you Jesus.  Forgive me for my lack of faith. Forgive me for my whining and complaining. Forgive me for my inadequacy. Teach me yours ways. Help guide me in what it is I am to do. Show me the way.  Help me to be more helpful.  Help me be less afraid.  Let me sing praises and pray and and celebrate the wonders of the sacred. Let me see the dance of love in all creation.  Thank you God.

North Vancouver Journal

Rifle hunting season opened on Sept. 10.
I'd been invited to barbecue with Prime Minister Harper in years past when he 's come to British Columbia.  I didn't think anything of turning down the invitation because it was during the hunting season.  Last week though I'd had the rare privilege of dinner with a Supreme Court Judge.  I saw the work she went to and remembered all the dinner parties I'd held for others.  I was going to avoid this dinner and didn't, thanks to David's encouragement.
Knowing someone I know is going to be somewhere makes going a whole lot easier.  As it turned out it was a stirling affair with fascinating conversation and truly accomplished illustrious people with a breadth of knowledge and information. I was truly honoured that Shaila was there.  She's one of my true greats in the field of medicine and research.
So I told Hannah after that I really ought to accept the invitation to the barbecue.  I'd not registered it was in Kelowna this time but figured that was better as it would get me out where more game was.  I could still hunt Saturday and Sunday.
Just like the dinner, meeting Prime Minister Harper, really was a special moment in my life. I liken it to meeting the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu.  He had all the greatness about him that I couldn't help but appreciate when I met Prime Minister Trudeau. I was a youth parliamentarian in Ottawa so met some big hitters long before my time teaching at university and doctoring or solo sailing across oceans.
He was great like that, like Prime Minister Chretien was too. I spent an afternoon with Mr. Chretien when he came to campaign with Dr. Hedy Fry whose campaign I supported in early years.
Later when I had my picture taken with Mr. Harper he was personable like Prime Minister Turner was.  I was fortunate to spend time with Mr. Turner in the Yukon, waiting for a delayed plane after hearing him speaking to an audience about what the south had for the north. I really like Mr. Turner, a real Canadian . We talked of canoeing trips.  I'd been into white water canoeing before sailing.  His wife was especially impressive. The two of them were clearly a couple.
It was clear that Mr. Harper had that hometown quality, care for family and children, and a concern for community.

I left the liberal party.  I never met PM Martin who was a truly extraordinary leader far under rated for his major contributions to Canada.  But frankly, I didn't really want to meet Ignatieff. He was too late for me.  He was too shielded in Ivory Tower to be relevant to the world I'd come to know as a Canadian.
The pork barrelling corruption in the Liberal party, especially in their Quebec base, had also become too nauseous for me to stomach in the west. Even today I hate what Quebec and Ontario sometimes do to the rest of Canada in their overwhelming self interest.   The Liberal's lies and multi billion dollar economic rape of the gun laws, political patronage, give a high paying job to a liberal crony to record which citizens hunt in the country, was just all too offensive.
The NDP weren't what they were under the late Jack Layton then. They were a disparate mob of complainers with a heavy communist and union perks sentiments riding on the white coat tails of Tommy Douglas before Jack Layton. Then Thomas Mulcair came along. His greatest achievement to date is to rid the party to some extent of the heavy communist diehards. Unfortunately like the Liberals he's still clinging to the pot heads. At times it still sounds like the NDP want to turn the country into a  hippie winnebego dream. Individual NDP are sometimes amazing but when you get them together as a group it's like a gaggle of geese.
I became what is called a Red Tory.  When the Liberals collapsed as a party, the right wing liberals went to the conservatives and the left wing liberals went to the NDP.  My accountant friend, Lorne, and engineering friend, Tom were the principal influences. I still miss the Liberals at time and wish the NDP could get out of the idea that working people should pay for their experiments.
What people around the world never understand about Canada is that compared to Europe with their Fascists and Commies or US or United States with their Democrats and Republicans, Canada is just too polite to have anything but Centrist Parties.  The conservatives are a little right of centre and the NDP are a little more left of centre with the liberals recently just left of centre.  Compared to Europe or the US we have left wing parties but nothing truly right wing.
My blue tory friend, a minority in the main stream Conservative party laments the loss of the true right Wing Reform Party. He thought they could with sufficient tanks and God's help conquer Quebec and possibly California as well.  Meanwhile I've always admired the Rhinocerous Party given the tendency for politics to take it self so seriously.
As a Conservative I've really admired Stephen Harper.  Everything I know about him is that he's a good man. He's a kind of Ralf Nader of the North.  Ralf Nader I admire because after millions of dollars spent on private investigators his enemies couldn't find any dirt on him personally. He was a bit boring but the "cleanest" man in America.  By American standards he's a saint.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is that kind of good man but very very smart. He reminds me of the president of my high school when I was on the student counsel executive.  I was there to get the Guess Who to play at our high school dance for $500 whereas the President was interested in student education, leadership, finance and all manner of 'important' considerations which really didn't interest me back then.
Mr. Steven Harper's concern for economy and jobs has really impressed me.  Visitting Europe these last few years I've been appalled at the poverty and the lack of jobs for the youth.  I'd been in Europe when it was doing well and the contrast and general depression and sadness was so apparent.  In my work it's been so hard to sit with people who want to work and can't find work. Meanwhile there are those who have jobs and don't want to work and they're painful.  I don't like shirkers and malingerers, thieves or bullies.
Everything Stephen Harper said was down home and reasonable.  I liked especially his making fun of grow ops and the illicit drug industry.  Given that some 10% of people have trouble with any mood altering substance I can't see how our already over burdened health care system with 6 month wait lists to see psychiatrists can afford legalization of marijuana and the big tobacco companies pushing marijuana cigarettes to our teen agers.  After decades of getting these killers with their cigarettes out of the schools they're all for legalization of marijuania so they can push a new product just so long as Canadian health care picks up the tab, just as tax payers paid billions for the profits of the tobacco executives and their sick progeny.
I know how important creating a million jobs in Canada during this economic crisis is from a health care perspective. Meanwhile a whole lot of my friends have spent the last years criticizing the conservatives and especially Mr. Harper but when I ask them what is the alternative they haven't any 'solutions', just criticisms.  And any time they have a 'solution' it involves more and more government, more and more taxes and more committees.  Some of my friends think they should be paid to bitch in the bar or complain over coffee.  We don't usually talk about politics because they're angry most of the times about most things political and I've not seen them much different when the liberals were in charge so have concluded nothing is enough for them.
I had tears in my eyes listening to Prime Minister Harper because I'm a true Canadian, third and fourth generation, and I love Canada.  I've been everywhere in Canada except Newfoundland and I often think of working there one day. The day I was on my way the ferry was cancelled due to weather. I've worked all through the north but not specifically in Nunavut and think of working there too. Maybe I'll visit.  I have a sailboat and love the BC out doors in the interior too. Vancouver is a nutty city with an even nuttier Mayor whereas Victoria is a great city.  I've mixed feelings about Vancouver but none about BC and none about Canada.  I love Canada and singing the national anthem was very moving.  Hundreds of Canadians who cared about Canada had gathered outdoors to support Canada.
I loved that Mr. Steven Harper quoted Leacock and MacDonald. I loved that his family loved summers in the Okanagan. The Okanagan is one of British Columbias bits of heaven even though we only seem to hear about Whistler which is a great ski resort but simply doesn't have all that the Okanagan has to offer year round.
My ex wife wanted us to move and work in Kelowna.  I regret I didn't listen to her. She was brilliant at times. But a blizzard closed the road and  I thought I didn't want to leave the coast to be stranded in the interior.  I'd dug my house out of the snow in Winnipeg one too many times.  Now I think we would have had a great life in Kelowna.  The people there are so friendly and supportive. Vancouver wasn't a good city for us in those days when family was so demanding in the city and the deceit and betrayal was port city normal.  I miss the prairies and the honesty of Manitoba at times but I'm surviving in the downtown east side doing my bit.  The pays not great considering the risk. I don't like the bed bugs and lice but everything else is okay. The scabies got me working with kids in the north. I still itch sometimes psychologically.
Prime Minister Harper has kept this country solvent and economically afloat and together in the worst of times.  I like that.
I liked shaking his hand. I liked when I had my picture taken with him he put his arm around me.
I don't feel safe alot and felt safe in his company.  Indeed I felt like I was in a group of sane people liked I feel sometimes at a meeting or in the church or at the RV park.  It's neighbourly and old fashioned but I liked being around people who don't drug or get drunk or are on the look out to be offended.
That may not seem important to anyone else but I'm like Leonard Cohen. I always want a new face.
Lover, lover, lover lyrics - "I asked my father, I said, "Father, change my name"
                                              The one I'm using now is covered up with fear and filth and cowardice and shame……let me start again , I cried, Oh please let me start again, I want a face that fair this time and a spirit that is calm"

Lover , lover lover come back to me"

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has a fair face and a calm spirit.

In his presence, I thought of my divorces ,failures as husband, the still born baby, the patient who killed himself, the back rooms of the asylum and those people I couldn't help, the friend who sat beside me in AA only to show up in the next days paper found in a dumpster.

Just thinking of Colonel Hatfield has me wishing I'd done more.  Meeting Mr. Harper had me thinking of Colonel Hatfield. There's a feeling of excellence that one gets among the truly great, those achievers who care for others so much.

I think always of my failures and how much more I could do. I struggle every day with prayer and imperfection, and fear. I'm so often afraid and I push on and know courage but wonder when will I not make it.
I spoke to one of Prime Minister's Harpers guards saying how glad I was to see her protecting him and she thanked me and smiled and looked at the Prime Minister with respect.
I am always trying to do my best, always struggling with the hardest of challenges, working ever in the area of greatest need. My friend is a cancer doctor and she understands. My friend has stopped taking holidays because there's too much work when he returns. We have so little support and so much is expect and there's endless resources, it seems, for the critics.
I think that it's accepted now, 16 years later, that I've 'recovered' from my alcoholism and marijuana addiction.  Indeed I was never seen as an alcoholic but rather a 'wine connoisseur and compared with the doctors in my cohort I drank the least.  What I did though was smoke cigarettes and marijuana and even though in those days I had doctors selling my marijuana and recommending I smoke marijuana I was seen by the authorities as 'shit'.  Thankfully when they were through with their punishment and humiliation and disgusting abuse, I was given 'treatment' and today consider the12 step program and my return to church the greatest benefits of my third divorce.

My shame is still about my divorce, the first one, and the ones that followed my being blamed by the courts for not 'controlling my wife' who was sleeping around and a drunk.  I never could address their drug addiction because I rather liked them drunk or stoned than when they were bitter and critical.
The memory is selective. I was gifted with marriage to the greatest women in the world, regular Song of Songs goddesses.  But unlikes Prime Minister Harper I didn't have children or maintain my marriages.  I lacked the back bone that Prime Ministers have.  I never respected Trudeau for his marriage.  I respected him for his personality at the time and his intellectualism . His wife 's pot addiction was a red flag like Betty Ford's alcoholism.  I liked that both women addressed their addictions.  Stalin's wife killed herself.  Of all the women on the great stages I've admired most Mrs. Bush and Hillary Clinton.  Now I admire Mrs. Harper.  Mrs. Mulroney was a great lady too like Mrs. Turner. Our first ladies don't get the same respect they do in the US though I think they should.
I think of the Prime Minister as superior.  I'm a conservative, I guess,  because I appreciate hierarchy. I look up to my older brother and  I always respected my father though I certainly didn't always agree with him. Even though Bishop Michael Ingham's marriage failed I admired the man as a leader and godly.  Gilbert loved Bishop Michael Ingham and I think of Gilbert as a kind of 'litmus test' of character.
I gave up leadership years ago.  I think it was around when I left teaching at the university.  I think because the women and the courts always blamed men for anything that went wrong and I felt such onerous responsibility trying to keep novices from killing themselves or others, I just became more of a loner. So many people too want to be part of the rewards but don't want to be part of the building work.  I just got to a point where it was easier to do things alone more often than not and then you didn't let people down or have wives complaining you weren't doing enough for them or making them happy after a day at the office. It killed me to go to work year after year and come home to depression and addiction.  I was glad to leave since things didn't get better when I was there.  I don't think we have the supports today for marriage and we expect too much from each other.  I didn't fulfill their expectations and they didn't fullfill mine. What was the problem wasn't them as much as the expectations and the antimarriage, anti family anti life pro abortion society, pro death society.  We were really going off the rails there and now I feel that as a society we're on track.
I admire my brother for teaching my nephews. It's a heart rending experience.  I felt overwhelming anxiety taking friends out camping and canoeing for their first time, life guarding, taking my wife sailing and taking juniors mountain climbing. I t was stressful teaching medical students surgery.
It was all in the attitude. I climbed mountains with another doctor and she was that rare breed of person who wouldn't blame me if she slipped up.  All the women I know blame men always so being in her company was a joy, like a young female lawyer or my male friends.  They have arrived at where they see themselves as caring for themselves.  I'm still taking people along into wilderness and into therapy sessions.  I'm just not feeling so responsible as I did.

I was thinking that I should get everyone to sign a waver to be around me.  That was when people were shooting at me and smashing windows and things.  Now it's complaining and 'guilt by association'.  I was riding my motorcycle in Ride for Dad and hoping my presence wasn't a bad thing. I think it's better if one participates but there's whole lot of people now who just live to criticize, not that they do anything, or have done anything, but they know and they know everything.

I admired Dr. Phillip Ney for taking young people sailing. Whenever I'm leading I'm worrying about every little thing. Life guarding I'd count everyone in the ocean constantly.  I felt for my scuba instructor when my equipment failed and I failed to correctly respond to it and shot to the surface easily at risk for an embolism or stroke. Dr. Ney inspired me.  He's really 'pro life' in all it's aspects. A true living experience of 'L'Chaim!"  Yet he's attacked viciously.
I liked watching the protectors of the president.  They look like I feel when I'm with patients. I struggle to make it look easy, I babble about nothing and everything all the while I'm watching 'reaction'.  Everyone has their 'persona' but it's only in watching the 'reaction' that you see the shadows .
I feel marginal.  I came from a Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transexual meeting and discussed with an aboriginal man his adolescent experiences.  He'd been arrested at 17 for sex with another man.  It changed his life dramatically.  I always want to tick the 'other' box.
I could write a poem 'the other'.  I was cross dressed getting on an international flight and the ticketer said she didn't know whether to tick male or female.  I asked her for 'other' and there was no box.  I used to have to say 'divorced' and though 'widowed' would be better.  Now I'm thankful I've become a 'virgin again' and can be just 'single'.
I told a man today I'd just been hunting and he parroted 'group think'. Group think is vegetarian and yoga.  I spent 10 years doing yoga and being a vegetarian in the 70's and 80's and was ridiculed and lonely and it was very alone.  Now I've moved on and I'm a pariah again.  One step ahead of the crowd and you're a leader, two steps ahead of the crowd and you're a martyr.  I don't want to be a martyr and crowds frighten me.
 I hear 'group think' every where. Global warming is a religion. Pro Abortion is a religion.  Aetheism is the new religion.  I loved reading Mario De Beuregard's Spiritual Brain in which he separated 'Pseudoscience' from "Science". Genetics is a kind of group think too. I tried to discuss 'halo effect', 'selection bias' , 'funding' and placebo and nocebo with another scientist and they shut right up because they were  just a technician and thinking about things like this frightened them. So many people will forsake everything including their minds to 'feel right'. It doesn't matter if they're right. It's that 'secure feeling'.  Dr. Jay Lifton talked about this a lot. I've been reading about Nuremberg and the ideas of the beurocrats back then.  Somedays I feel like I'm in 1984 or a Franz Kafka novel.  I was shot at having long hair in the 70's and three men chased me with base ball bats screaming 'let's kill the hippy'.  I was chased across an Indian village with guys shouting "kill the whitey'.  After that experience I'm a little tired of the idea that 'white people are the only racists'.  I can't wait till other languages are subjected to the same kind of fine teeth criticism of 'sexual political correctness' as English has been.  In some languages there's no such thing as 'consensual sex' in 'marriage' since the term 'marriage' means that everything thereafter is 'consensual' sex. The issue isn't renegotiated on a daily basis.  It's like not being able to 'quit' the army 'honorably' when the bullets start coming your way. Yet we're a society that demands its cake and eat it.
I was mugged in Greece by moslems, my gold cross stolen.  8 guys.   It had nothing to do with class.
It was good to be in church today.
Gilbert and I camped in the wilderness back of Sunday Summit. We'd driven all evening from Kelowna meeting with the Prime Minister. I was wearing a utility kilt, cross dressed a gain, remembering the Chinese lady who asked me why other men were dressing like women, Robbie Burns day.  I had my 30:06, 223 and 20 gauge with me.
It was past midnight when I set up the tent in the dark at the dead end of a logging road.  I prefer my RV or my motorcycle tent to this bigger one which takes that much longer to erect.
Gilbert figured I should be throwing ball in the dark.  Otherwise he was helpful.
It was cold when I got into my sleeping bag. I was concerned for Gilbert and slipped him in with me. He was shivering but later he'd climb out and cuddle beside me.  I checked him through the night and he wasn't shivering.
I'd been drinking coffee on the road to stay alert and couldn't sleep. Dawn came way too soon.
it was cold and I dressed quickly , making sure I had compass, knife, rifle, shells, drink, plastic bags, tissue. I forgot my satellite phone but had some cell coverage high up.  I'd taken to carrying a satellite phone since flipping my ATV and being trapped under it for a bit.  Felt a little anxiety 40 miles from the truck with a broken gun and hurt back and cougars about.
It was a glorious morning though. Great green evergreen forest.  I found a clearing and sat for a bit. Gilbert didn't like that. He prefers walking and sniffing so I figured I needed the exercise and began the hike up the side logging road to the the top of the hill. It was a couple of hours of stalking walking.  No game. Lots of sign but nothing moved. I saw elk track at the top of the hill and checked the regs on the cell phone.  Oops, the mule deer was "only 4 pt" where I was and elk was 6 point.  I hadn't known elk was open here about but I'd thought all bucks were game.  So I was glad I hadn't seen anything. A grouse scared up back in the woods. I heard it but didn't see it.  Gilbert checked it out but it was gone.

Back at the camp around noon I used my new Mountain Coop "bio lite stove" ($130) to make a cup of expresso.  The bio lite was everything it said.  Had a usb port and I plugged in my phone while I was burning up twigs and enjoying the high heat this efficient little machine creates. Expresso in no time.
I lay reading in the sun.  I'd taken my reclining beach chair but spilt diesel fuel on it.  Stinky shirt.
I didn't want to hunt for '4 point' only.

So I collected my stuff , took the tent down, loaded up and hit the road again.
I'd been listening to the audio book, Fifth Assasin by Meltzer.  I'd started it on the way up the Coquahalla and now was getting close to the end.  Great thriller,  Well read audio book. I'd actually finish it when I was over driving the back logging roads of the 'bucks' area of the lower mainland near the coquahalla, having come full circle through Princeton.
No bucks but I did shoot a really big ruffed grouse. This was the first time with 20 gauge.  The bird was winged as it lit off from the ground.  Gilbert was on it like a shot. It flew up with a broken wing and Gilbert leaped into the air catching it by the bum.  I arrived while he was holding it down with both paws trying to get his teeth on it. I took it by the neck and wrung it like the chickens on the farm.
What a good dog, Gilbert.  I cleaned the bird right there, gutting it and bagging it for home.  Gilbert thinks we should just tear it apart and eat it fresh and has little appreciation for the 'saving' it for later idea.
I think all city people, especially young women, should be required to do a 4H course like farm kids.  I'm tired of getting abused for 'killing' fish and 'killing animals' and being called a 'murderer' by women wearing leather fashions and using parking lots that ruin soil and hinterland.  Get a life and stop with the group think.  Wake up, the food industry doesn't want you hunting or fishing or growing your own garden.  Group think serves some industry, in this case, restaurants and supermarkets.  Leave me alone. Gilbert and I like home cooked wild game prepared by my hand like my mother and father did as children. I miss raising chickens and I miss having a garden.  I love restaurants and supermarkets and don't raise my eyebrows at your ignorance, incompetence and "dependence' on the city.  I don't judge you for your lack of training your children in 'self sufficiency' like my dad and mom did. I don't say anything when you tell me you don't know how to cook.  But you think it's okay to 'comment' on my life or throw off some innuendo like "i hope you don't trophy hunt' or I' hope you eat it or some such judgemental ignorant group think that CBC seems to enjoy 'creating' in happy cabbages.

It was dark when I got off the logging trail and headed back to town. I'm thinking of a curry sauce for the grouse.

I could have stayed over night but wanted to get to church and a meeting.  I was feeling sort of lonely and appreciating people after seeing and being with all the good people at the Conservative dinner.
I'm too much with unpredictable people, too much being threatened and shouted at and having guns and knives thrust at me.  I've got to get out more. Being with the Conservatives I was happy. Two sikh guys were great jokesters and an Indo Canadian woman was including me in her conversation with a farmer from up north.  Great big man, all power, no fat.
Just when I had cleared my name again thanks to the hard work of friends who protect me from the violent and aggressive with major vested interests I found out I have a new attacker.  I'm afraid to leave the house. I 'm taking a 'stand against legalization of marijuana' and it brings back the pot smokers who killed my dog because  I refused to lie for them. They had dirty urines and to get a government job you had to pee clean so they didn't want to but instead threatened us doctors and the lab folk and eventually killed my dog and the other guys dog.  It was a warning. I left that job.  It was years of abuse I took when I reported the pedophile ring.  The one that got away was the worst. The ones who went to jail couldn't hurt me.  I feel so vulnerable.  Doctors have no protection day to day but in the long run it's okay.  I feel for our staff. They get threatened on the phone.  These days people 'threaten me' to see me because of the waitlists.
I had a chance to say hello to MP John Weston again.  He's so into health and exercise and just a great younger man.  I admire him his vision and concerns. Maybe I was like that before my second divorce.  I pray that people have their visions and that they follow them. 50% divorce rate in Canada and no one is addressing the 'epidemic'.  Marriage as usual.  Everyone into the money.  Saw a lovely wedding dress and thought maybe it's like the university. Used to be you got a degree but now they're only good for 3 or 5 years. Cost a lot more but it's 'planned obsolescence' in education and maybe that's the idea of wedding failure.  I've just got the wrong attitude.  The more weddings the more money, like the 'fixed'  GDP today where the poverty in countries didn't show because divorces meant 2 toasters were bought rather than one used by a family of 6.
I'm my own path.  Mostly we talk of acceptance now.
I was upset with a psychologist who said my patient who'd been diagnosed with 'borderline traits' or 'cluster b' traits was unchangeable.   Most alcoholics and addicts get a diagnosis of bipolar II or personality disorder or 'borderline' or 'cluster b traits' but this psychologist didn't believe stopping cocaine could change a person. He didn't accept her views, her family views or the views of the community or the 5 psychiatrist who saw her after she'd stopped cocaine. Instead he went to a repot written 5 years before she quit cocaine and started AA and NA and insisted she wasn't a person with an addiction but that she was 'bad' and 'unfit' and 'lifelong' personality disordered .  And I kept insisting that all the scientific data and all us psychiatrists, my closest female colleague, had died so couldn't support me, all disagreed with this egotistical and ignorant little self righteous psychologist who wrote the worst most damaging report I've ever seen in 40 years and has got away with it.
I've been blamed for criticizing it and him but in the end the courts and college said I was an advocate for my patient.  I have been an advocate for hundreds if not thousands of patients.  But like a speeding ticket.  I figure it's not for that one case but the general attiude.  I've skated on a lot of thin ice, even did that as a kid.
I was closest to the iciest water as an advocate when I used to go to the homes where parents beat their kids and broke their bones and left cigarette burns. I'd wake them after the police claimed they could do nothing and the courts did nothing and I arrived at 3 in the morning and woke the parents up and told them that if I heard or saw any more scars on their children I'd be back and they would have to try and do whatever they'd done to their children to me an adult. It stopped abuse.  I've stood toe to toe nose to nose with some big mothers, bikers, loggers, and heard them say 'are you threatening me' and I've said nope, no more than you're hurting your children, and they've said 'are you going to fight me,' and I've said 'if you hurt your children again we'll see won't we.' Alot of people in the 'system' just want to 'be seen' to do right. They live for 'deniability' and other terms.  I worked with a guy who didn't arrived at the hospital for  an emergency when there was truly a cluster fuck. He was horrible as a clinician but went on in business and got rich in medicine not seeing patients.  I'm trained in 'outcome assessment." 2 years of Community Medicine and research training made me aware of the 'bunk'.  I'm turned on by the good stuff and the good people but there's a lot of dross in the system.  Alot of mediocrity too.

I could call the cops," they've said, "and I'd just be back ' I've said. When I was a whole lot younger I believed in Clint Eastwood and vigillantism and such but today I'm more likely to appreciate the mainstream approach. I don't think I care less, but I 'm a lot more cautious. Mostly I trust in God.

I also remember reporting the nurse for 'murder' and dealing with the horrendous backlash and being told that the correct term was 'unnecessary death'.  She caused 6 more unnecessary deaths and the enquiry into her conduct occurred after the last three babies died and she left the province to work elsewhere.  I was thankful for the senior doctor on the enquiry who took the time to find me and let me know that her dozen or so deaths in total could have been stopped if someone had acknowledged my concerns five years before.  I 've been told that I would do better with using more commas and better punctuation and more respect for 'technicalities'.  I still have no respect for six health care professionals who stood by and let a patient die and helped in the 'cover up'. I'm paying close attention today to the administrative 'cover up' of the man who was dead in the hospital emergency waiting room for 34 hours.  I don't believe in conspiracies but I'm a great student of the 'cover up' because the bigger the cover up the greater and likelier the conspiracy especially when there are sacrificial lambs and killing of messengers. It's usually a certainty that the mess was far worse that anyone figured. That's going on with the Japanese nuclear plant today.

I'm not allowed to advocate for children any more.  It's good.  I told people I didn't want that any more.  I think the courts will be doing a 'reconciliation' time and paying back fortunes for the damages they' be done in their child custody and divorce hearings.  Just the cost to parents is obscene and despite what is 'politically correct' I watched the abomination where the rich parent or the connected parent got custody from the loving caring parent who simply didn't lacked blood lust.  I don't have any children and I don't want to work with children in this society. I'm amazed they survive 'political correctness' .  They're amazingly resilient..  I don't know anything about kids anymore.  The judges do.  I know Prime Minister Harper does and the Supreme Court Judge I saw, she cares for children a whole lot.  My brother cares for children.
I think God didn't give me any because I become homicidal if some one threatens my dog so I'd probably have spent my life in jail if I'd had kids and folk did bad things to them. I'm working on being spiritual .  I'm surprised by myself. A guy with a pit bull came up to me with Gilbert,my cockapoo on a leash, and the pit bull went after Gilbert.  I surprised myself by grabbing the pitbull by the throat and holding it up in the air and handing it back to the guy whose dogs madly clawing feet have scratched up their owners face a little before they've taken hold of their dog. I've done that twice come to think of it.  I don't like pit bulls and I don't like their owners as a result.  This is 'stereotyping" and 'generalization' and I know I should 'understand' that it would be just a bad 'mistake' if the guys pitbull killed my dog. That's clearly what was going to happen and the idiot was kind of enjoying his dog's 'dominance'.  I don't like growing old though because I can't pick up pitbulls with one hand like I used to and a times coming when I won't be able to.
I get angry enough when people hurt my patients. I don't like bullies either. Not since I was in grade school and time and time again I was fighting off guys picking on little kids.
In therapy the insight was I was the baby in my family and identified with little ones elsewhere. I guess so.  Today I don't care hot like I did younger. Now I care cold.
On a bad day I'm luke warm.
Getting older is good.
Everyone tells me I'm not supposed to talk to people or share my thoughts and feelings.  I think it would be a whole lot better if people in power shared their thoughts and feelings. I've had enough as patients to know they're no different than anyone else.  They care for their children, they have problems in their marriages, they even break the law like Justin Troudeau or sometimes smoke crack like the Mayor of Toronto is supposed to have done.  On a bad day, a really bad day, when everything else doesn't work, they gas their people or they build a nuclear bomb site and shut their borders.
The Greeks used to see that the Gods were no different from them. The world today sees that the leaders are no different from the.
I think Prime Minister Harper knows a lot of Canadians are afraid of the lawless, the psychopaths, repeat offenders, and as so many of us are aging, we look to the authorities to protect us.  I love all the laws that now make people pay back to the injured for their crimes.  I keep hoping that the thieves will one day pay me back for all they've stolen. Mostly I long for a day when I don't have to lock everything all the time knowing in the down town east side my cars been broken into several times.  I pray for protection.
I think Mr. Steven Harper and the Supreme Court Judge I had dinner with were better humans than me. I don't have any problems with that. I used to think I was an okay hockey player as a kid but then I went to an NHL game and it was like think I'm an okay driver and meeting Colonel Hatfield.  There's a whole lot of difference with a whole lot more that can go wrong driving a space shuttle or running a country.
I'm doing okay. Gilbert and I had a great time grouse hunting.  It was good to see North and Gerard today.
I don't feel alone today.
I was going to go fishing but it was raining and though the fish are biting when it 's raining it's not as comfortable.
I look back and I've done hundreds of thousands of dollars of pro bono work. It's not respected.  It was like when I bought all the rounds. People just thought of me as a 'mark'.  Those that care care.  it's appreciated but not really.  We really appreciate things that cost money that we've earned. I appreciate my 'stuff' because it's cost so much, this sailboat especially.  Just learning everything about it took years and it's been hundreds of thousands of dollars maintenance and that's never done.
Greg was telling me he liked to eat out and go on cruises.  I told him I'm getting that way.  I remember my mom and dad loved their cruise ship vacations the best.  I can't afford it, yet because I pay so much to keep my sailboat afloat. So I wonder about having the sailboat because without the maintenance costs  I could take cruises every year.  Not a really serious complaint, as complaints go.  What I call a 'cadillac problem'.  Cadillac problems are problems a whole lot above the 'how am I going to pay this weeks month' or 'how am I going to pay for chemotherapy for my child's cancer treatment' or 'what should I do about this guy pointing a gun in my face'. None of those are 'cadillac problems.'  A cadillac problem is whether to own a sailboat or go on a cruise?  Alot of people don't know the difference.
I'm pretty happy and very grateful for all the blessings I have.  I'm learning acceptance.  The more  I trust God the less I have to fear.
Thank you God for Gilbert. Thank you for my life, my family, my work, my learning, my teachers, for Canada, for the people who work and make sure that the electricity is there, that there's food in the market, that there are roads, that there's medicine, the television crews and the writers and book stores, and the heater, and the fresh clean water, the trucks and cars and motorcycles and boats. Thanks for the diversity and the church and religion and spirituality and science. Thanks for my friends, and sobriety and not smoking dope and being stupid, and thanks for not having any horrible things like bed bugs or lice right now, thanks for being relatively healthy, thanks for friends, thanks for the food in the cupboards and the work ethic and learning to help others, and caring, thanks for heart and soul and mind. Thank you God for all your blessings.  Thanks for meditation and prayer and congregation and praise worship and hymns and the bible and holy books and saints and leaders of church, society, government, police, military, schools.  Thanks for all the diplomats. Help me to be more diplomatic and discrete and say things in such a way as to make my point without offending others. Thank you for bravery lord and help me to be less of a coward. Thank you for my family and friends and for bankers and lawyers and money and accountants and all the modes of exchanges and all the dreams and stories and trade and building and communication. Thank you for one day at a time for helping me remember that you are in the now and that's if I'm in the now then I've won just like live spelt backwards is evil and when I'm living I'm going in the right directions and that's forward so stop resentments and self pity and get on with living and building and being and thank you lord for doctors and nurses and administrators and orderlies and cleaning staff and the auxiliaries and autoclaves and X-ray and mdi and laboratory and assistants. Thank you for my assistants and thank you for buildings and toilets and clothing and plumbing.
Thank you Lord Thank you