Sick

I enjoyed the conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre, seeing old friends, remembering nostalgically those not there, decades of such conferences until Covid.  This was my first and it really was good.  

Sunday morning I was at St. Barnabus.  My throat was sore .  It was hard to swallow.  I enjoyed the walk on the Quayside New Westminster.  Oysters and Clam Chowder.  The next day I felt like something was torn inside when I swallowed.  Tuesday I only made it through the morning asking staff to cancel. I had laryngitis for sure.  I simply can’t work with laryngitis.  The fever and chills came in the afternoon. I don’t like chills. For two days I didn’t think I’d ever get warm.

The nights were worse.  Up on the hour I couldn’t sleep, such fatigue, coughing and miserable.  My mind wasn’t working. I could hardly pray,  I tried watching tv.  I couldn’t focus. Reading a book was out.

I was still walking Madigan 3-4 times a day. He’d poop each day and I’d get back to bed. I relished the electric blanket.  I made a trip out for propane, keeping my place jungle hot while feeling chilled.

In the wee hours I was talking to Jesus. I hurt all over. I have chronic pain but this was such that I couldn’t find any position of relief and I’d taken a handful mix of acetaminophen, ibuprofen and ASA.  I was drinking all the fluid I could.  Feed a cold water a flu. I didn’t know what I had .  Food had no appeal but I shared roast chicken with Madigan and ordered in Chinese and PHO.  I couldn’t finish anything. I’d have no appetite.  No taste. I just did what I knew I must.  There was even a point there when I was dry heaving over the toilet.

In the wee hours of the night I talked to Jesus.  I thought of him on the cross and was humbled .  I’d have given up the names of family to torturers in very little time at all.  No judgement of tv and such but I really know I don’t have what it takes. Maybe when I was young. I’m old.  Pneumonia is the old man’s friend. I asked my god my god why hasn’t thou forsaken me.  I was weeping and it was just the fatigue and sadness and maybe some guilt and shame. I’ve had a good life , an adventure, I’ve served, but I’ve fallen fall short of what I could have been or could have done. I imagined I could have been a better man, especially to the wives, even my mother, or my father, or my mentors. I feel in the end I’ve let everyone down, not in great ways , nothing sinister, but like my report cards always said, “Billy could be so good if he put his mind to it.”  I didn’t feel my mind was helping then. I was in pain and feverish and chills and maybe a bit delirious.  I thought I was dying. I thought this is it. I was talking to Jesus.  Then Madigan would cuddle up beside me.  And somehow I’d wake in the morning and enjoy the s

I had some Zithromax and began that on Thursday.  I think it was all viral but the psychology of antibiotics gave me a break.  The razor sharp pain of swallowing stopped.  Green phlegm began and the cough now wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t sleep. No desire to sleep but no relief.  Fatigue. Utter fatigue.

I was up on Friday. Weak. I’d not slept much but 4x a day for a half hour I’d walked Madigan. I’d driven the car to get us food a couple of times. It seemed like weeks had passed in what was really only a couple of day.  Wednesday and Thursday were really bad but Friday I listened to an on line meeting. I drank more soup and believed  I was out of it though the cough persisted, a dry could, annoying.  I was past infectious.  You’re most infectious early not late.  

I was thankful that I slept that morning and showering made it to the chiropractor.  The pain in my pain which is a curse was relieved.  I met Laura because I felt guilty providing so little to madigan.  I’d taken him to the off leashe dog park but the minimum. He was a trooper. A good little nurse.  Observant. Caring. I liked watching Laura walking him. He loves her and she is fun for him. He smiles, I smiled.  I knew I was going to live that morning. Friday it was fairly certain. There was only a 12 hour stretch it was uncertain. I couldn’t get air in for a bit, like a scuba dive accident.  I hate not being able to breath.  The old TB. All the colds and respiratory infections.  Friends dying of Covid.  Letting the old die of flu and pneumonia.  I worked a country gp and did my share of hospice.  Breath is important.  Looking back I can’t believe I smoked that decade.  But then I drank back then too never knowing I’d live this long. People shooting at me.  Planes crashing,  Cars and motorcycles doing pirouette’s in the air.  I’m lucky to be alive. People always called me lucky,

I feel blessed.  I only saw one set of foot steps in the sand that night.  It’s often that way.  God was with me.  I am blessed.  God is good all of the time.  Today I’m thankful.  

My neighbour has just brought me hot soup. So I’ll stop and feel the grace.

Thank you.  I’m glad to be alive. 

Thursday Alive and Stylin

I woke feeling better.  Last weekend it was touch and go. I remembered that weekend years back I was just as sick or worse. I bought the Buell Blast needing something to live for.  This last weekend I bought a little inflatable fishing platform.  Very inexpensive by comparison but same idea. An anchor thown into the future to kedge with. I was so sick I slept 16 hours.  2 days ago I began to revive and yesterday got a half day of work in before the fatigue took over.

This fall I got sick on the plane from India.  Then I was flying to Ottawa and back.  Plane flights seem a common theme this year. Also the nocebo of the coronavirus pandemic.  I’m in that age range where a flu can take me out. Malthus was right about poverty and disease.  

Nothing keeps me going forward more than the prospect of camping. I live to camp.   Talking with Laura this week about planning the first trip with the Adventurer Camper out to Harrison Lake. Must call to make reservations 3 or 4 days weekend. If I don’t take the rest and time off well planned I’ll only collapse and cause chaos with sickness.  I just don’t have the stamina or the foolhardiness.  

I’ve been fiscally responsible and worked hard all my life only to watch this government just waste money relationships and resources.  These blockades are causing billions of dollars loss. There’s milllions of dollars of foreign money coming into Canada to disrupt the country.  Everyone is breaking laws including the PM and the Police are sitting eating donuts.  Meanwhile I believe if I jaywalk a thousand police and the who judicial system will fall on me or any other law abiding Canadian citizen.  

The oldest law is the Chinese law of the fish. There are big fish and little fish. The little fish must be fast and numerous.  I’m tired at work of seeing everyone trying to get paid not to work and get me to validate their ‘choice’.All the doctors I know are sicker than so many of their patients but come to work only to be abused by patients angry demanding and entitled threatening and frankly increasingly frightening. There’s an incident weekly if not daily. Unrealistic demands and covert threat of retaliation.  I can’t can’t shake the image of people threatening to kill me and my dog and the lack of concern and in fact the implication that I must have attracted it.  Yes, I do. I’m working. I’m in the public view.  Laura tells me she fears attack on the buses downtown every week and street people grab at her beccause she ‘s small.  Fewer and fewer doctors want to be on the front lines.  Now there’s these criminals blockades and tent cities and tax paying citizens are called the problem. We lack compassion and won’t give up our homes. Meanwhile the activitists are making more money than I am and the natives are even being paid.
It’s tax season so I’m depressed to see my incomes halved and given to Victoria and Ottawa for KY Jelly and Lip gloss, dope, and booze.  Party city for Policians and I feel deeply betrayed.  My taxes going to pay for terrorists and worse.
Weinstein in jail.
Meanwhile there are babies being born and infants thriving. It’s wonderful to see the children.

Gilbert is well and a source of constant entertainment.  

The women in the workplace are positive and humorous.

I like my work. I’m kind of in limbo.  I’m at that retirement age but enjoy making money and fear if I stop I’ll not return. I’d seriously like to pay off my truck.  Never have I known as much as I do today and the challenges at work are always old news. I remember the first scarey time I saw something but now that was 10 or 20 cases ago. Seems a waste to step down and yet I get sick and feel I need a breaks. I need to go camping. Lying on the lawn chair in the sun.  I need the sun. The winter’s are always too long here.  The rain wears.  The days are sunnier though. I’ve no reason to complain. Just bad attitude.  Give your head a shake.  Give thanks. Stop with the self pity.  

I like walking the dog and sitting in the hot tub.

I really want to go camping. I really am looking forward to the wood fire and the barbecue.  I love sleeping in the peace of the deep outdoors   I like walking Gilbert in the woods. This year I’ve this crazy idea to fish more seriously.  Yet I’m looking forward to riding about on the motorcycle with the rifle target practicing.  

I pray. I meditate. I exercise. I’ve really enjoyed sleeping and dreaming. My dreams are so rich in old friends and family and dogs.  I’m often sailing.  There’s always water.  Sometimes there ‘s meetings too.  Even better I’ve met my grandmothers in my dreams.  Lovely ladies.

I really am blessed. Thank you Jesus.  Thank you for all the gifts.  Thanks for the care and love. Thanks for restoring me to life.  Thanks for getting me through the fever and delirium.  Thanks for the faith and hope.  

Can’t wait to be camping.  

Man Cold Progression

I am still alive. For this I am thankful even though my head feels on the verge of exploding like a Sigourney Weaver Belly.  Some new alien species is wanting to Zeus children out of my head.  But I ‘m cool with that.  My level of acceptance is marginally better. If I die today  it’s okay. My body will need to be cremated naturally.  We wouldn’t want whatever I have to spread.
My sinuses are definitely hooped.  No good.  Is my nose permanently inadequate as a result of my picking it.  Did my mother nocebo me a lifelong inadequate sinuses because they wanted me as a child to stop picking my nose as the dining room table.  Boogers show on the white table cloths.  You’re learning from adults you’re not supposed to flick these at your brother.  Next thing your undeveloped mind has demonized snot.  So everyone once in a while as an adult tthere’s a great revolution in the sinuses and snot escapes en mass to the outer world, like babies stripping off their clothes and running naked under garden hoses.
My cough is deeper descending. The invasion of alien microbes, the First Wave in this fight to the death between my humanoid self and these Lilliputian small man syndromed creatures.  I cough.  Laryngitis is the point of quitting. If I get laryngitis I throw in the towel and don’t go to work but wait in my bed for imminent death.  We’ve been at this rodeo before. I’ve come through these personal world war fights with sickness and disease minimized by the state and generalized as ‘common cold’.  It’s a lacklustre disease.  It’s ‘just the flu’.  It’s grossly under rated.  The Man Cold is the disease most discriminated against.
I’ve terrible gas. I fart something fierce. Bloating.  I feel on the verge of relief but on the toilet just make rude noises.
Outside the world is a reflection of my inner travail.  Snow and ice have coated the landscape, freezing and killing anything that was sentient without a warm place to hide from the incipient weather.  In the north we prepared for this.  In Winnipeg it comes and we know we’re in for the duration. In Churchill it’s expected.  It lasts for most of the year.  NASA sends their astronauts to Canada to train in our environment for life on the moon. If you can survive Winnipeg or Churchill or worse Sudbury you just might be able to live on Mars.
 We live with thanksgiving for summer and what facsimiles of spring and fall we are granted. But here on the West Coast in this unaffordable city of Vancouver, where criminal money from overseas and the billions of dollars of revenue from pot grpwing have jacked up all the prices so only the rich can afford housing,  this isn’t supposed to happen.  The Homeless are shocked. They escaped Newfoundland and Ontario and even Alberta to move to the Lower Mainland of BC believing they could survive on the streets, no longer having jobs to afford heating in Eastern Canada. The government has made each Canadian choose ‘food or heat’ .  So the fat are now lying outside on the streets of Vancouver hoping they made the right choice and their fat will protect them.
My car was frozen shut yesterday. I was tugging at the doors of the Miata after finding it first with snow brushes and ice scrapers. Then it refused me entrance.  I heard my little sporscar say to me, “I’m not working today. It’s too awful.”  It was a major therapy session with  me  the ice pick and the Miata not responding to anything short of a lobotomy.
Vancouver drivers and Vancouver cars are not prepared for snow and cold. Politicians have been building bicycle lands and trying to convince everyone that cycling in freezing rain and parkas and icey streets is a favourable thing to do.  These limousine liberals haven’t ever seen a bicycle themselves and expect underpaid Canadians to drive them from one pig fest to the next.
The all weather car tires aren’t meant for cold.  They’re all weather Ohio or Southern China.  I miss studs and chains.  There are accidents along the free way. I’m driving in a 120 km zone at 10 km.  It’s miserable.  And cold.
And I’m chilled.  I feel like I might have malaria because every so often my whole body shakes and I feel on the verge of seizuring.
I stopped thinking of suicide.  It takes too much effort. I feel this Man Cold will kill me soon enough.
Women are now talking to me in that voice they use for little children. I see them showing facial features of concern.
I want the world to feel guilty for what they have done to me.  Left me alone in this body to fight off the Borg of a Man Cold. “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!"
I must be doing better than I think. I’m not in a fetal position. The fetal position is my fall back ploy. In a fetal position most of the vital organs are protected.  The head is out there available to be stomped but the rest of me is tucked in pretty good.
My head doesn’t seem of use to me. It aches and drips and whines.  I hate the whining. I can’t focus on anything but self pity and misery.
The water pipes are frozen in my home. I have a functional toilet at work. The blessing of running water gets me to head to work.
At work I pay attention to others suffering. It’s a useful distraction. Everyone seems to be sharing this collective meeting with Satan.  All week men have come in red nosed, coughing up green, throbbing headaches and telling me they’re dying. I’ve done the ‘this is just a virus and all you need is rest  and chicken soup tirade a few times’ but I’ve been broken by the sight of them suffering. I’ve written several prescriptions for antibiotics as they pleaded. “Dr. I’m dying. Aren’t you going to help me. I need medicine.”
I don’t have a lot of faith in medicine and a Man Cold.  I hold off on the Amoxil and zithromycis, the doxycycline and erythromycin.  The only fallback after we start on that route is the Vancomycin. And all the antibiotics make the diarrhea worse.  I ‘m still going for the antihistamines. I had a clam chowder soup yesterday.  White Spot.  Medicinal clam chowder soup. Followed by fish and chips.  It got me an hour more along the life cycle.
People want permanent cures. Life is a marathon. I can at best get from day to day. I hear people retrospectively complaining about a lifetime of misery and explain to them that I haven’t a clue as to whether or not yesterday even existed. All we have is today.  Really the misery of yesterdays doesn’t need to be remembered and stuck on the wall like a collection of dead insects, lost days , in a life time of struggle. I just have to get through today. If thinking about something positive will help me I’ll do it. It’s just too easy to focus on the negative. I see people revelling in their suffering.  Not me. I’m a stoic.  Ask everyone around. I’m just a regular Man Cold, complaining, whimpering, narcissistic dying person.
They don’t know that I am the sufferer. I have a Man Cold.  This is something even women can’t appreciate.  I am now fantasizing on running away to the tropics.  I have had enough of Canadian winter.
I am utterly tired of hearing about Climate Change from those along the tropics where the vast majority live in relative comfort and joy. They think ‘climate change’ is some terrible thing with the water rising a tiny bit each year. and the prospect of having to move from the coast to the interior a thousand years hence. They really just bitching about the declining real estate value on their multimillion dollar coastal view homes.
They are so very un Canadian. They hardly have seasons but demand billions now from the world to pay for their air conditioning units. They’re so very un Canadian. Here it’s either freezing our balls or burning our feet. We have annual climate change. It’s a real bitch. They should stop their weather girl bitching and get a real life.  All their Al Gore talk about the polar caps melting. 90% of the little Climate Change wankers haven’t even seen snow.
DiCaprio wet his pants when he encountered a Calgary chinook. These are sometimes weekly events. The Climate Change Twinkies are effete boys and girls who live in womb like worlds and are projecting catastrophe on the whole world because they had to buy a new air conditioner because their last one wore out a year earlier.  Make them  live in a real place like Canada and see how then maybe we’ll listen to what they have to say about weather.  But only if when the weather is freezing outside they get a Man Cold on top of that and still go to work, rather than having a government job where they stay home with just a sniffle.
It’s terrible out there.  My friend had my truck. He’d borrowed it. I begged him to bring it back. I can’t face another day going to work without my F350 Ford with snow tires, and a couple of winches. I’ve got a back up ATV in the box so if I can’t get out of a tough snow situation I can unload the quad and go overland.  I’m terrified of going to work in my little Miata. With the roads so icy I could slide out and hit one of those tragic little  Millenials wearing a Bernie ball cap  pushing their bicycle through snow drifts. .  So many Car2Gos  in the ditch.  Thera radio announcer keeps reporting another accident  closeing intersection. I’d get out and walk but if I slip I’d break a hip and the ambulances might not get to me for days.
Climate Change. The pompous little potato wants more money for this red herring when we all know the money is to put more gold in his multi million dollar Ssusex Drive Palace. He probably has heat floors.  Taxing the air and giving our countries hard earned money to wife beating pedophiles even more corrupt than him with his dictator friends and grandiose fantasies.  .
Meanwhile I’m full of self loathing.  I should have a real job where I didn’t have to work for a living.  It’s the Man Cold. I should have taken up a life of crime so that I could go out and kill an enemy when I’m feeling this way.  If I had another religion I could behead someone for not dressing the way I approve. I could have virgins thrown at me.  There are definitely  perks I’m missing out on.
Right now I have to get up and get a kleenex. The box of kleenex is just out side of my reach.  Snot is dripping onto my upper lip.  No body knows the troubles I’ve seen.

Journal Jan. 11, 2016

Jan. 9, 2016
I am sitting in Blenz.  I love Blenz.  Great coffeeshop with good wifi.  I’ve just been to another meeting.  Cakes. It’s the time of year of New Year Resolutions.  The winners are celebrating.  It’s not all dregs and remorse.  Losers never pick them up. They stop trying.  Some even deny the journey. TheY lay in wait like trolls to discourage travellers.  Yesterday and today I celebrated with the celebrants.
Jan. 11, 2016
I’m sick with this infernal flu.  Yesterday and most of Saturday in bed. The nose is a faucet. My sinuses are swamps.  I’m exhausted simply going to the washroom. I’ve had antihistamines and fluids and Laura made me chicken noodle soup.  She’s walked Gilbert.  He’s licked my face. I’ve slept and watched tv and moaned. My body aches.  I took tylenol for the headache.  I figure the trigger was the complaint, a man who relapsed on drugs and alcohol and blames the drastic turn for the worse his life took on everyone but his dealer and himself. He’d been doing so well for several years, a true success until he relapsed. Now he bites the hand that feeds.  Blames all the doctors.  Threatening and abusive.  Wants to hurt everyone.  Wants money.  It’s sad but I’’ve been through this before.  I’ve seen how well people can be when they stop drugs and know the temptation when all is going well to just dabble a bit.  But one drink leads to 10 and the shit storm starts.  But it’s so much work to deal with the anger and destruction.  I had enough work. Frankly I was overworked. I’ve no reserve.  Age and family concerns seem to leave me unable to give another quart of blood at the office.  I’ve given 200% for years and now old and weary I don’t see any reward in this obsessiveness.  I lose faith in my self and the system.  The criminals are the politicians are rewarded more than the workers.  It’s hard to separate them given that they’re getting paid from the general revenue of ‘vice tax’.  Corruption we thought was in Africa is now full blown here.  I’m feeling like the last boy scout but more like a  cub scout.
David Bowie died today.
Cologne gang rapes by Migrant North African and Middle Eastern are blamed on all men and German men especially. I can’t wait till Feminists are required to pay for their decades of ‘slander’.  Everyone is using terms like racist and sexist but Mr. Drosang the former NDP Premier of BC asked quite astutely why multiculturalism ‘excludes white culture’.  Dr. Flamengo put out a video “I’m an anti feminist’ saying that the women’s liberation I fought for was ‘egalitarian’ but today feminism is just sexist anti male privilege with campus girls becoming bullies.
North Korean tested an hydrogen augmented nuclear bomb.  Saudi Arabia killed an Iranian Shiite Iman.  The Saudi embassy in Tehran was attacked.  Syria continues to have Assad and Russia.  Isis keeps chopping off heads of Christians.

Persecution of Christians by Muslims is documented for 1400 years. They especially like our women as sex slaves.  With the feminists attacked Canadian men and blaming them for everything there’s a sense that this matriarchal Canada would be better off if we let the Middle East take the shrews and harpies. Instead young men are gravitating to radical Islam where women are still ‘chattel’ and one can actually own a ‘sex slave’.  With all the condemnation men got for buying a Playboy, now women are celebrating opening the 50 Shades of pornography, and adulating the rich men alone, the attraction of overseas war and ideology and women is no different from what the young sought in Spain.  All’s fair in sex and war.  Amazing that women are attracted.  For Whom the Bell Tolls all over again.  If I was a woman I’d be more attracted to the Amish.  They certainly are the polar opposite of the decadent shallow opportunistic Kardashians.  Double standards and privilege.
It’s all above my pay grade.
Meanwhile the Chinese economy has tanked. Oil commodities are down.  Canada is hurting financially and irresponsibly Justin Trudeau and the Liberals are about to bankrupt the country with their wild and crazy spending sprees and the corruption so evidence from Quebec’s Charbonaux Enquiry.
I’m supposed to be hopeful.  I’m sick. That’s a negative state. I couldn’t punch my way out of paper bag.

So I’ll pray and get back to bed.  Thankfully Angel has cancelled the day and emergencies are addressed.

Saturday Morning Journal

Rain on the roof of the RV all night.  Gilbert let me sleep in till 10 am then lay on my chest as his way of telling me he wanted to go out to pee.  I dressed dog walking fashion. It’s a style that’s in with dog owners but for some unknown reason never shows on the Milan Cat walks.  Flipflops, sweats, t shirt, overcoat , half asleep face, dog pulling on leash, watering trees. Gilbert dumped half his body weight almost immediately.  I had doggie bags but should have brought large green garbage bags.  It was a momentous occasion.  They relieved of onerous weight he danced about sniffing nature with alacrity.  I followed. I’d long since let him on the leash in defiance of the leash law watching for strangers so I could leash him up again.  No one came. We walked a long ways and circled back.
Morning coffee. I ground the beans.  The noise was loud.  I’m rested. The month long flu which went and came and went is clearing with rest.  My ear ache and cough have all but gone this morning. The lethargy remains. I’m uninspired. I go through the day doing rituals but the brain isn’t sparking.  I am on automatic pilot.  I sometimes see myself saying and doing the right thing and am amazed. I think of government jobs and union jobs and sick leave and remember that every winter as long as I can remember I get the west coast sinus infection with or without the flu shot. I think the flu shot helps.  It’s a placebo thing in my mind.  I think I was sicker before I got it. I took a week or two off work a few years back but now I only lose a day or two.  But every weekend and evening I’m ‘recuperating’ . There are no holidays, just work and recovery, over and over again for weeks. And I try to maintain the schedule and meet the commitments and half to pay the rent and overhead and fear homelessness.  We’re all only months away from it except those in the elite with the security once promised but now no longer.
I could be depressed.  All day long people are angry with me because I’ve no magic wand.  More and more they want me to help them get money from some agency that withholds and like a circus masters makes the once great free beasts of the forest jump through beaurocratic hoops and take the whips.  I learned to jump years ago.  I’m an indoor nigger.  I try to help people stop running into glass walls, show them doors, encourage them to stop howling at the moon, save your breath.
Mostly I’ve been told there is no life after medicine.  16 years we must hold our files and wait daily for someone to complain and a lawyer to get rich when we’re demented and can’t remember what the cultural mores were of the day.  Over the years I’ve said whatever needed to be said to stop people from suiciding and know that now suicide is no longer a ‘bad” thing but the “in thing’ so for sure somebody is going to complain I convinced them to live another day. All those folk I convinced to not smoke marijuana are going to be forever angry now that smoking marijuana is all the rage.  I’m a very bad man and hated and despised for thinking ‘morbidity and mortality’ were what I was supposed to addressing rather than political correctness. The doublespeak of 1984 is commonspeak today. I’m a dinosaur and dying breed.  I hoped for some place I could go to lick my wounds and die quietly but know they always want to put people like me in carts and drag us through the streets of the New Rome.  I had thought 10 years I could wait for peace but if I retired at 65 and now it’s 16 years it’s not going to be till I’m 81 that I can be free of medicine.  I can’t recommend anyone be a doctor anymore and wish I’d never gone into this field where today we’re being told that killing people is the goal.  I took the hippocratic oath, do no harm and understood why that was the ideal but that was then and now ‘cure’ isn’t in the ‘lexicon’ of ‘health care spending’. Only the rich can afford old age and I made the mistake of focussing on keeping people alive and measured health as function and worked with the most angry and sick and defeated and psychotic who no one wanted to work with. I gave up the lucrative cushy jobs to work with the dangerous and insane and the addicts and try to help them to be free but now I’m told I’m wrong. Even calling a patient is wrong ‘nomenclature’.  They’re ‘customers’ .
Yet if the climataloogist fear mongers are right we’re be dead next week or the week after. They say we’re going to be extinct.  And the Rich want us to kill ourselves off so the rich can inherit the earth.  But I’m not rich and I’m just sick and tired at the end of the week. By friday I’ve run out of steam. I used to be able to work in the evening. I did university courses and studied till midnight but now I’m feeling age or fatalism and I’m exhausted by 6 pm and my brain seems not to work on friday.  Saturday like today I’m just trying to rest, walk the dog, do anything but think.  I can vomit my brain but I can’t analyze or understand. I feel like my poor head injured patients. There’s just been such a bombarding of desperation on one side and then insensitivity and uncaring on the other side. I’m in this middle place and feel like a soldier on a battlefield with his position over run and the administration saying we have to sign and counter sign for bullets and really we shouldn’t need bullets but should commune with them and besides they’re no longer the enemy.  People are trying to get HIV to ‘show solidarity”.  I’m told drug addiction isn’t a ‘disease’ but a ‘culture’.

(The Cognitive Behavioural Distortions of the above thinking include - Emotional Reasoning - based on my feeling physically sick and run down, i.e. depressed, I project that depressed thinking on the future and Selective Reasoning - chose to Awfulize and Catastrophise - a particular loop then occurs in my thinking to 'confirm' the obvious irrational thinking.  Any number of possibilities can occur tomorrow or the future - projections (especially all those 'media accounts' are notoriously erroneous.  Politically who would have 'guessed' ISIS.  Syria was never 'predicted'.  The climatologists can't even get the weather right weeks ahead and generally speaking the FUTURE IS BRIGHT but the fact is WERE ALL GOING TO DIE so it's right to be concerned if you are in DENIAL about DEATH.  So I don't know the future.  I'm just tired and exhausted.  It's always been a tough time of the year. End of winter, Spring slowly coming along, work overwhelming because life is even more difficult for those with less of anything. )


Sometime today my head will clear. I can only hope.  A nap. Distraction and then I’ll be in the hot seat again with no hope of reprieve.  Even if I left today I’d face being called to accountability for ancient history in a rapidly changing world. I’m in a society of historians ignoring the reality of the present and playing mind games with their selective versions of history for personal profit.  It’s group insanity.  The world is bizarre.  Meritocracy has died in Canada and it’s just who you know. I’m called a hater because I don’t agree with public corruption and waste of resources. I don’t like money for the poor spent on limousines.  It’s all name calling now and logic doesn’t count because the main stream is ‘ends against the middle reasoning’ and obfuscation.  Bullying is everywhere in suits and pseudo kindness.  I’m killing you for your sake.  You’re right to want to die. Let me help you. And can i have your organs too.  No of course I won’t give you anything that would make life more palatable.  I’ll just take the money to write a report.  We’re all paid to record and no one anymore is paid to sit and hold the hand of a person alone.  But this is just the negativity of tiredness and silliness. I must rally. I’ve only hours and a day at most before I must drag myself back to work thankful the coughing has stopped and the pain in ear and throat is less. But the weakness and tiredness how much longer. At least I can sleep now. My nose isn’t stopping me from breathing.
But thank you lord for the sleep I had last night. Thank you for the restfulness. The companionship of my friend and dog. Thank you for the work since lots of it isn’t as I colour it. Lots of what I do makes some sense. I’m pleased to see the smiles return to the faces and the light return to eyes. I’m thankful to be there. I’m glad to have an answer. I ‘m glad for the science I know. I’m thankful for the opportunity to reduce some suffering. I’m too sensitive. My heart is too wounded but please Lord don’t let me ever be closed hearted or hard. Thank you for empathy. Thank you for the colours. Thank you for the scent. Thank you for the wonderful times I had with friends this week. Thank you for the incredible joy I had watching Gilbert and Matty his little girl dog friend down the office. Thank you for the god children and the delight I see in their wonder at life. Thank you for the good parents I know who care so much for their children and are raising them to know science and music and to be good and kind and moral. Thank you for all those who are walking towards the light. Thank you for the politicians and beaurocratts and courts and judges and the police and military and the space cadets and space station. Thank you Lord for hospitals and nurses and doctors and technicians and all those incredible breakthroughs in medications and solutions and genius. Thank you for the wonder. Thank you for the stories. Thank you for the books and entertainment, the music and movies and tv. Thank you for bed. I love my bed and my couch and the comfort my back feels in lying. I love the showers and the heat and the walking. Thank you for mobility and feet and knees and the ability to use my hands . Thank you for my health  Lord. Thank you for my eyes and clothing and indoor plumbing. Thank you for refrigeration and the space heater. Thank you for taps and pressure and running water and reservoirs. Thank you for home delivery Canadian Meat Lover Pizza and internet and telephones and communication. Thank you for skin. Thank you for guitars and song. Thank you for breath. Thank you for the galaxy Thank you for all human endeavour. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you for the sunshine we’ve had and that will return and remind me always that blue moods are so much just a product of the rain and that I simply like the sunshine and dry and every day we’re getting closer to more and more and more of that.  The last weeks were glorious so I could drive with the hood down. Thank you for convertibles.  Soon I’ll be sailing and the boat will be out and the motorcycling will begin but thank you for the day and the knowledge that I have to live in the present to truly be with god.  Help me more and more be thankful for everything now and to have less regret and less worry but focus always on what I have right now. Thank you for this computer, these fingers, the friends and all the blessings and those I see and don’t see. Thank you God. Thank you Jesus.

Sick

I've got a "cold".  It began with post nasal drip and a sore throat. It's progressed to full sinuses, difficulty sleeping, fever, much more post nasal drip, plugged ears and fatigue.
I know biologically this is a product of a virus, most likely, possibly some streptococcus or staph bacteria allied with the virus which starts it. I expect the viral culprit is a Respiratory Synctial virus but it could be influenza.
My normal protective immunological system has been down a few counts because of the extra stress at work.  Work is always stressful.  It's the most stressful work I can imagine doing.  Right up there with bomb disposal.  People are like that.  I'm always on egg shells but no one is perfect enough. It's a complaint society too and the people doing the most complaining aren't doing much else.
I've always figured sickness physically means I've not warded off the disease psychologically.  Last week I felt like a guy surrounded by zombies in a vampire movie with cannibal extras. The beaurocracies were in a shark feeding frenzy.  Point fingers and demanding perfection.  I'm going to die not good enough for everyone all the time.  My job is the complaints department of life and the people making most of the shit expect everyone else to keep the niggers down. Nigger in this case is no longer a racial slur but a metaphor for anyone marginalized.  John Lennon once said Women are the Niggers of the World.  Today it's beyond gender. It's the addicts, the mentally ill, the sick and those who treat them.  The 'winners' would just as soon line them up against the wall and shoot them.  They're holding back progress.
So I think my negativity and fear these last two weeks weren't sufficiently addressed. I spent a whole lot of time meditating and praying and being with other loving physicians cared for and caring but it wasn't enough.
Environmentalists would say it was just that I flew to Edmonton and back and took on the bad air in planes and the jet lag and all the other physical stresses of change of location without the slow aclimatisation that would occur if I'd driven my car up to Edmonton and back making the journey in days rather than hours.  I thought of that but there was just too much pressure at work. Everyone complains I don't see them enough or they complain I don't see their family enough, or they complain I don't see their patients enough. I've read two letters from beaurocratic psychiatrists who stopped actually doing clinical work years ago say "it would be good if Dr. Hay would see these people a couple of times a week'.  I'm seeing them every few months.  I'm stretched to the breaking and all the resources are going to guys like these two high paid 'critics' who long ago pulled their thumbs out of the leaking dam and put them somewhere else.  I'd like to have the family physician spend a half hour with the patient like I did but he's only got 3 minutes a patient today.  Then the counsellors aren't paid to see anyone but the suicidal and my patients fall in between.
But now I'm sick. I know it's because of stress and self pity.  I'm also sure I'm dying.  I 've already gone through a check list of all the other physical ailments, aches and pain, really bad pain in joints and stuff you just say is aging and rheumatism but I'm a doctor so I can link all this together into rare tropical diseases, slow virus, brain tumours, sexually transmitted diseases acquired in the 60's, the late effects of smoking marijuana then too, lack of an essential vitamin, lack of sun, lack of rest, lack of sleep - my brain has thousands of rare diseases I've seen and touched stored there and I'm holding it back like I hold back a huge dog near a bitch in heat.
So I keep it simple. I've got a cold.
Now what to do.
If I had a salaried job and worked in an office and had the ability like all bureaucrats to push aside the work for a day or a week because it's really just paper - I'd not go into work , stay in bed, get better. But most of my patients are sicker than me, even psychologically which takes a lot of work and physically I'm really interested in the guy I did an ultrasound on his abdomen last week because it felt like the Alien.  He wouldn't go to hospital so I'm the point man on his possible deadly disease. I just want to know what it is and when I do I can fix it. I love medicine. I love curing people. I really liked cutting but they don't let me have a knife any more.  Prefer my mind.  And that's only good because it saves lives but saving lives is increasingly politically incorrect.  All the money in the system is moving into addicting addicts more, enabling, euthanasia and the really lucrative endeavour of abortion.
So I become depressed and fearful and it's a vicious cycle. All the sadness floods in when I'm sick. I want to curl up in a fetal position but there's work to do. I'm not infectious really.  It's not like I'm doing surgery or dentistry.  I'm at a distance. Thank God for Advil for sinuses and Reactine.  I can put the symptoms at bay. Drink a lot of fluids.
And probably I'll just do the work I need to do and not do the other responsibilities.  Now I've got to get in the shower and get all this sick sweat off me and fake it till I make it.
I've just got a 'cold' and we make too much of these things. But them I'm older and we always said 'pneumonia was at the old man's friend' because it kills sweetly.  I'm morbid and my job is to be positive and reassuring and intelligent and caring and supportive and I miss the nurse who drove me home that night in the ER telling me I was sicker than all the children and she needed me the next day.
Fact is, I heard of a death yesterday and I'm devastated.  It was so wrong.  But at least that person so tormented will have peace. They'll be in heaven.  But it's a tragedy and so sad and it's old news.  Maybe because I'm getting older I'm more affected when I hear of the young dying.  My friend's funeral was last week but I was working and didn't make it.  We're to take care of the living.  I would have liked to have been at the funeral though.  He was a good man too.
Now I've got to rush. Always rushing.  Never enough time for all the demands.  The authorities are always upping the ante and putting deadlines on things that don't need deadlines then the man with cancer has a recurrence and there's no choice and the pregnant woman needs an answer she doesn't have any control over her time. I'm always prioritiizng but more and more bullies are telling me they need to go first. I'm tired of being threatened. One person threatens my life, another threatens my job, another threatens my security. Everyone demanding and pushing and I'm dreaming of being alone at sea again with a thousand miles and weeks between me and another human being.  God that was good to get away from the beepers and cell phones.  We talked about that on the weekend, the sense of relief we each feel when we can find a way off the grid.
It's an excuse to be imperfect. I may as well wear a bandage around my head, a black arm band as I let my nose drip and flaunt kleenex.
But I'm late. I must go.  I'm not that sick.  My guts aren't spilling out on the floor and CSF isn't leaking out of my head.  Most of my colleagues are maimed and sick and injured and they're in the play, They celebrate the hockey players when they do that for a day but all the doctors I know are struggling with illness and yet caring for others too so they're my inspiration.
Sick is a metaphor.  It's all in my mind anyway.  Please Jesus be with me today and help me to do your bidding. Help me help others in your name. And please let this foggy headedness not interfere in my decisions or memory.  Thank you that it's really nothing and not something like real morbidity and mortality, like the deaths I learned of this week.  Be with them and their families in this time of grief.

Flu Shot

I got my flu shot today. I'm disappointed that I haven't had any of the popular psychosomatic hysterical reactions that I was supposed to get. I have developed an extra purple head that is speaking to me in an alien tongue but I've also noted that my feet have become mellons.  I actually feel pretty good. I don't know if I'll wake from sleep.  The doctor was really professional and didn't look like he was getting kickbacks from large pharmaceutical companies. I didn't get a handshake from Dick Chaney.
Last year I had the flu bad and I didn't get a flu shot.  This year I made a point not to miss it. I'm really glad my parents got me measles and mumps shots as a kid.  I didn't get any of the tropical disease when I went overseas and took all the preventions recommended.  This flu shot is the latest in science.  Even if it is Halloween around the corner, offered the choice between the space shuttle and a broom for a trip to outer space I'd still take the space shuttle.  Thanks for the Flu Shot. I'm feeling really good about having had it this year.  Maybe it was the doctors technique but my arm hasn't swollen and doesn't hurt either.
My goodness it's all rather mundane with the potential benefits being awesome.