55 yo Mom’s death,psychiatry, Chinatown, Gilbert

55 years old.  I think it was a particularly terrible year though of course that’s only because the negatives stand out in my mind rather than the positives.  There’s a rare and beautiful person who will remember the flowers blooming in the springtime of the war.  I”m working on this.

When I think of 55 yo I think of my Mom dying.  I’ve returned to Vancouver and opened up a practice on Broadway.  Opening a practice is the most difficult time with countless new patients and so many borderlines sent to you by doctors fed up and overwhelmed and hoping the ‘new kid’ will have a solution when all else have failed.  It’s the greatest strain on the nervous system too. Each of these new patients vying for attention and obviously desperate. I open myself to people when I see them. I drop the barriers and defences and let them in. I ‘lend them my ego’ as we say in the trade and I ‘walk a mile in their moccasins.”  I join their insaniety. I ‘feel their pain’.  There’s always some psychopaths and sociopaths early days.  It’s a matter of seeing and sorting out those people who one can work with, who needs simply medication, or a letter, or only a consult and those who are right for in depth psychotherapy and in the ‘action’ phase of change.  

People come to see the new psychiatrists for the following reasons 

1. To get relief from emotional pain

2. To prove to him and themselves and their families that they are untreatable

3. To get a new diagnosis because they don’t like the diagnosis their previous psychiatrists gave them, some people I’ve know have disagreed with 30 plus psychiatrists. 

4.  To spar. 

5. To have an ‘episode’ of television in their boring narcissistic self loathing lives.  Entertainment.

6.  To complain to, to have yet another person hear how horribly wrong they’ve been done by and that it’s not their fault.

7. To have someone more to blame 

8. To stop the thoughts of suicide and homicide.

9 To stop having sex with their sister, cow, dog or mother in law

10.  To ‘show’ their spouse that they’re doing something about their problem when they aren’t doing something about their problem

11. To lie

12. To threaten an educated upper class person when they want to kill another educated upper class person, like Justin Trudeau but he has body guards and psychiatrists are soft targets

13. To get drugs.

14. To get off work.

15. To get disability forms completed. They don’t want to get well, they want money. Money is the solution to their problems and the insurance or government have coopted the psychiatrist to ‘rubberstamp’ the bullshit

16. To be able to get a complaint for human rights or the college to show everyone how they are offended

17. To stop the voices telling them to kill

18. To get a pill that will make their horribly unimaginative lives seem less desperate and bleak

19. To avoid getting a partner or a life or a job.

20. To talk about why they are an aetheist, vegan, and communist and (fill in the blanks) and how everyone should be like them but they’re clearly miserable and none of the antidepressants are working

21. They don’t want to change or do any work at all but they want the psychiatrist to work and change and even take the pills for them or read the literature they bring for him.

22.  They want to steal from him and are there to case the place and access his building or his other patients

23. They want to have sex with him because they’ve always wanted a doctor and they stalk doctors and if they had Sex with a psychiatrist that would prove they weren’t batshit crazy

24. To have sex with a psychiatrist because they’ve already had sex with a lawyer, a priest, a teacher, a football player, a psychologists and their mother in law and they’ve never had sex with a psychiatrist but it would up their score.

25. They want to change.

26. Others say they should change and have said this for 20 years and they don’t want to change but maybe they should consider it.

27.  God told them to go to the psychiatrist and tell him he is an abomination

28. They were sent to the psychiatrist as part of a government ‘sting’  or are being paid by someone else to evaluate the psychiatrist for some nefarious scheme..

29.  Their husband wife or father or mother or boss or the police sent them and they don’t want to be there.

30. Other people complain about their having sex with children and they like having sex with children

31. The police don’t like them

32. They can’t afford the heroin anymore so they want the cheap government drugs

33. They need housing

34. They want a million dollars

35.  They want the psychiatrist to kill their ex husband

36. They want to be on television.

37. They want drugs they can sell for the drugs they want but are tired of doing blow jobs for them

38. They hate everyone

39. They can’t feel

40. They have tried to kill themselves a dozen times in different ways and can’t seem to do it right

41. Women don’t love them.

42. They can’t find a millionaire husband, Men just use them.

43........

I have opened a half dozen psychiatric practices over the years. I have some colleagues who have opened one practice (business) and the trauma of that experience has kept them there terrified of opening another.

It takes months to sort through the patients. Mostly this is a time of rejection and hate.

“You won’t give me opiates or speed or benzodiazepines! You’re no good as a doctor. I’m going to complain to the College of Physicians and Surgeons and say you sexually harrassed me.!”

“You wont say I can never work again. I’m going to complain to the College of Physicians and Surgeons and say you sexually harrassed me.”

“You won’t have sex with me. I’m going to complain to the College of Physicians and Surgeons and say you sexually harrassed me.”

“I”m going to tell my husband you say he should hit me. He’s the best friend of the Mayor and he’s going to ruin you. I just wanted pain killers not some sermon on my marriage and life. We like S&M. It’s what we do. I just need opiates and you’re supposed to give them to me.”

I have had hundred of threats that people will complain to the College when I have made the following diagnosis

1. Alcoholism

2. Substance Use Disorder

3 Malingering

4. Anger issues

That year I was 55 I hired a minister who was a lazy cow and didn’t do an ounce of work in the office, talked on the phone to friends, family, sponsees and never did any ‘billing’, or ‘correspondence’ or ‘book keeping’ or filing. She’d told me she’d worked for her ex husband who’d been a counsellor and that she knew all about billing, book keeping and filing. She answered phone calls and booked appointments.  She double and triple booked me and I saw hundreds of patients which I never got paid for. The government has a convenient system which is that they only pay for a half of their bills with a variety of ways of delaying paying doctors. We get paid in one to 3 months ,however if we bill after 3 months they will deny the bill and after 6 months they totally deny the bill but if your secretary isn’t putting in bills you don’t know that she’s not doing this till months later.

I’d opened the practice on Broadway investing all my income into the new business paying all the staff and overhead costs. If I’m a labourer I can get paid at the end of the day. If I’m blue collar I can get paid every two weeks. If I’m a professional I have to pay tens of thousands of dollars upfront in education and licensing costs and commitment to the system and when I open a practice I will start getting paid in 1. - 3 months. I will likely get all my billing paid in 6 months if I constantly write and demand and beg to be paid,   because of all the ‘dickering’ the government does to ‘steal’ money from doctors for ‘short term’ investment.

I then had the accountant who we assume was a drunk and went into treatment but his throwing his records in the dumpster and on the street cost me tens of thousands of dollars and being garnisheed by the government because of him and my secretary not doing billing cost me tens of thousands of dollars in fines and losses.. 

There is some thought that the woman the minister brought in to help her, who she insisted she vetted and said was clean and sober over 5 years  and had worked in offices before and was good at billing and filing and typing was actually ‘targeting my practice.’ Her biker boyfriend and her were said by those who knew them that they did ‘shakedowns’.  They both within months would steal from me and threaten me.  My new accountants book keeper would ‘teach’ her how she could make ‘false claims’.  She put hundreds of hours of ‘overtime’ in the books which she’d never done and the office had been closed. 

My mother was dying. My patients were sick. My staff were stabbing me in the back and stealing from me. I was working night and day and weekends and I didn’t know that my staff was stealing and stabbing me in the back or that my accountant was lying , psychotic and not doing my books.  

I paid a lawyer tens of thousands of dollars and got a new staff to go over all the government claims this skank brought against me. I only learned after this that the new staff I had, this horrid hateful person who’d been so two faced, had actually ‘shook down’ all her previous employers.  She’d gone to human rights and all the mass of agencies that exist to ‘serve the public’ but all this meant was that I was paying these two people who hated doctors and felt doctors were rich people and entitled.  I made ‘zero’ money that year, faced with theft and shake downs and all along the government agencies were publicly paid institutions that served to destroy entrepreneurs and private enterprises and hated doctors. They loved ‘salaried people’.  It’s been shown since that they prefer communism. 

I was grieving my mother’s death and all I was doing was fighting these agencies who were the worst bullies. Government employees today are dominated by these communist minded entitled people who see their job as destroying others.  There’s also this ‘first come first served’ industry. The skank had complained so they were all on her ‘side’.  I was male and she was female so they were all on her side.  I was older and she was younger so they were all on her side. I was educated and she was not so they were all on her side. I was conservative and traditional in appearance whereas she was tattooed and edgy (the crystal meth addiction certainly helped) and I was staid and pedantic.  It’s all about the victim card and old white guys who are professions don’t get one. 

I spent a year of meeting the lowest humans I have ever encountered in my life. So many highly paid government workers who would ally themselves with a lying active drug addict theif who’d apparently worked as a prostitute and her references were previous Johns. Meanwhile her biker boyfriend was barging into my offic and threatening me but was a terrible coward who I’d simply throw out of my office.  I was building and maintaining my practice despite these evil sick people and their evil sick government allies. She actually went to the college and made a false allegation that I ‘sexually harrassed’ her. The CMPA made it clear that the College was right out of bounds. “It’s a disgruntled employee complaint. It’s none of their business. She was never your patient. They have no boundaries. Their behaviour is so unprofessional.”  But he college is above the law and even their own lawyer  would leave saying they were appalling. 

It was during this time the CMPA told me I was the ‘most persecuted doctor in Canada.”  I’d already learned that there was this person in the college who absolutely personally hated me and abused their position of grotesque powers to act out their evil.   

My mother had died. I felt it was a year before I was out of the war zone and could cry. I still cry. 

It’s a measure of the civilization of people and society how they deal with their poor and old and sick. I was not allowed to grieve. There is an epidemic of doctor suicides in Canada and burn out running 60 to 70%. I have never met more cruel people than those who worked in government with their pettiness and pomposity and their lack of care for other human beings. My mother had worked in offices and my aunt had been the assistant to the Ambassador.  I had worked in a dozen offices in England. I was never cruel and uncaring like these absolutely heartless bureaucrats. Barbarians.  There are no words to describe their insensitivity and the horror they do to good people. I’d be vindicated time and again but though proven innoscent I’d go through this gauntlet of party boys and girls with no dog in the game getting rich and slick on tax payer money serving their own self centred needs and destroying the health care system and country with their arrogant stupidity. 

 I am still working on forgiving them.  My mother’s death was defiled by these subhuman sociopaths and psychopaths.  I would have killed myself a dozen times over if I wasn’t a Christian and knew that my mother and father raised me better than these callous Cretans. I am appalled today at the number of people killed by these bureaurcrats and how they deny accountability no better than the government who maintained the murdering nurse I’d reported years before.  The negligence and sins of omission and corruption are the problem in the system. After that year of being exposed to the hallow men and hollow women in the burearocracy I concluded that only God made sense. There was only hope in Jesus. My Christian faith grew and my appreciation of sobriety was immensely rewarded by seeing the ego addicted narcissism of the truly satanic. I loved reading C.S. Lewis’ Screw tape letters again. I loved when the grief lifted I could have at least black humor.  I loved carrying on. My father needed me.

During my mother’s sickness and dying a woman neighbour had thrown herself at Dad. My mom hated her. She was always asking him about his money and pension and when mom died she was there telling us that he could move in with her and she’d take care of him and could we help her to transfer his pension to her to help her with the costs and what was his bank so she could do all this. Dad was crying at mom’s loss and this lady was flaunting about half naked and just a pig. I was so thankful for my sister in law at this time.  She and my brother and I knew that Dad couldn’t remain here. He was blind and old and weeping with sorrow and this predator was circling.  Her daughter was a nurse drug addict and we actually figured that the mother was just trying to get money for her daughter but she would have killed Dad for his pension.  It was an ugly thing to see. My sister in law Adell was the strong one and a saint and she saw through all these machinations and insisted on taking Dad home with her. My brother and she would arrange for him to be in assisted living nearby them and Ron with his incredible capacity for business and finance would take over all the family affairs. I’d go back to work glad to be part of the rescue of my father and now able to focus on defending myself from the female psychopaths.

Women don’t fight one on one but work their wars and evils through proxies, institutions and men.  They also gang up and tag team.   The fact that I’m alive and things worked out eventually though they’ve cost me thousands,  is that there’s a whole group of good people mostly behind the scenes supporting good.  They don’t like the skanks and psychopaths and they limit their violence.  I was also supported by the Canadian Medical Protective Association and the good men and women who worked there and saw that the system was flawed and these pseudo legal institutions were increasingly out of control. 

Dr. John White the Christian Psychiatrist I’d trained with had written metaphorically about the spiritual war and seeing the evil in the institutions I fully appreciated the spiritual war fare on a larger basis. I actually met Vorgons in government and saw all the characters that are the bad in Lord of the Rings. At the same time my sister in law was a fairy queen during this time and there were others like Laura and Aim and Joanne and Elizabeth. All these beautiful people that counteracted the darkness that seemed to be growing.  My brother was a regular Gandalf while my nephews were definitely Hobbits. It was the metaphors I had to deal with. Sometimes it’s was Luke Skywalker and Obi wan but I just kept telling myself that God prevails and in time these bottom feeders would let go.  

It was so easy to see the darkness but there was always light. Coming back in the sailboat with the broken mast and the lousy battery bank I’d listen over and over again to that great Christian Rock BandThird Day’s song “ There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”

I’d become ill one week, I’d had acquired tubuculosis working in the northern Indian reserves , been treated, but my lungs were never the same.  I thought as I was going to die from this horrible pneumonia so I’d might as well buy a motorcycle so I had something to live for. I’d taken all my lessons and loved my Ruckus but now I almost bought a Honda Shadow but a Buell Blast went on sale at Trev Deely. Laura loved motorcycles and had had a dirt bike she adored as a teen ager so was 100% behind my return to motorcyling. After I’d crashed a Norton on the back roads drunk and stoned getting rocks in my finger joints I had to pick out I’d decided against motorcycling for fear of losing my fingers. Now sober and having all the fun we’d had with the Aprillia and Ruckus motor scooters I graduated to the Buell Blast 600 cc. Laura had her motorcycle license and I’d do my training with her driving my car and me riding behind her on the country roads. Eventually I’d have my full motorcycle license, after only one crash in the exam where the fleet footed examiner escape alive.  I’d  drive that Buell all over the province before I graduated to the Harley 1200 cc Roaster which Laura and I would take motorcycle camping all over the province. I wanted to go to as many round up camp outs as I could and did.  We’d fall in love with Salt Spring. I’d loved it as a sailor and now loved it all over motorcycle camping. 

Every weekend and every evening of that year I was ‘defending’ myself and my practice and my patients from disgusting low life in low and high places.

I’d eventually have this lovely young lady who was pure and honest and Christian join as staff. In addition I had this very savy young man who’d worked in accounting and banking sort out the mess for me 

He was also ‘mr BC’ in this hilarious society in which the men dressed as women and women dressed as men. Each year there’d be a ‘drag queen’ ball and that’s when I spent the evening with the mayor in a magnificent gown with my hair done up , my make up perfect and even my friend Barbara didn’t recognize me. Laura laughed at all the shenanigans.  95% of cross dressers were heterosexual so our group was husbands and wives and rather hilarious. We’d have these dinners with challenges as to who could dress best from Value Village  with only $20 .  I was living on Beach in this fabulous apartment with balcony and loving going to the great pool every other day and eating out on Davis. I rarely drove and lived downtown. I even got roller blades and almost killed my self because my friend Dr. Anna said it was fun. I had more padding than the Michelin man but still couldn’t stop. Stanley park was a marvellous extension of my experience with great walks and cycling tours at this time.  I’d take a little ferry to Granville Island to shop and really loved the city. The problem was camping and hunting. I had everything in storage and would bring everything back only to find the elevator broken and me faced with climbing 20 plus stories.  It was a truly ‘city’ time though and I loved going out to clubs and dances and having a whole network of eccentric and wild friends from my elite club and downtown church.  

As it was with me the office buildings where I worked had cataclysmic events.  They got sold and the new owners took over the floor I was located on. The whole floors got evicted twice in my experience.  I was a very little guy and watched a Dentist and Opthalmologist get the same shaft as I experienced. The next time the lawyers on the floor couldn’t resist so I just went with the flow. Everyone just doing ‘business’.  I couldn’t complain.  I had a year to year lease and had to vacate.  It was the best thing that happened to me

I moved to China Town. The secretary that I’d had who was this horrible angry person who abused my patients who all complained about her, lasted with me less than 6 months because ‘I don’t like seeing people that aren’t from West Vancouver. I don’t want to work with people with drug and alcohol problems.”  I suspected she had a major alcohol problem after a while but who knows.  She was perfect in the ‘honeymoon’ and then her ‘true colours’ showed. I was glad when she said ‘I don’t want to work with people with drug and alcohol problems or crazy people. I thought you saw people who were a little depressed. Half your patients are lovely people but some of your patients are just disgusting. They don’t respect and appreciate me or treat me as they should. I certainly am not going to work in China Town.  That’s so beneath me.  You can’t move there.”

Well I could and I did. I was tired mostly of the parking gouging on Broadway. I ‘d had a horrible experience at this location with the evil minister and her evil friend and the evil government agencies.  I wanted to go to China town and have different places to go to lunch at noon. I worked from 8 am to 8 pm and would only get out if I had a cancellation or a lunch. I loved Chinatown and wanted to be able to explore at these times. I’d been on the Broadway corridor for years and eaten in all the restaurants. There was nothing wrong with it but I wanted a change. 

Because I moved I’d hire new staff. I’d keep more than half my patients. Some from the university area didn’t want to make the trip down to the city but I really didn’t have to ‘start over’ with the practice but had had more and more ‘medical legal’ requests.  I’d taken an interest in neurology and head injury just bccause I’d been seeing so much of this in my alcohol and drug addicted patietns. The best part of all was having Aim,  Joanne and Hannah come to work with me. After a year of theft and attitude and downright evil I had these extraordinary women come into my practice as a gift of God. They did the work and they did it well and they always ‘cared’ for the patients. I’d had the skank and her boyfriend and this horrible old lady who simply lacked empathy and didn’t seem to ‘care’ for the patients.  

Now I had these amazing ladies who really were mature and emotionally so highly developed and cared for the patients.

In the summer before I’d move and meet Aim and Joanne and enter 5 golden years of practice reminiscent of the days of Lil, and Laura and Suzanne, I’d decide to sail my boat back with my friend Tom. I”d pay for Tom to fly over to Kona and spend a couple of weeks checking out the systems and replacing what was needed. This was all good but he refused to replace the batteries which I’d paid for him to do. He insisted they were fine when indeed they weren’t. He did however ensure all the other systems were working and when I arrived we were able with only another week or so and massive outfitting with my credit card get on our way.  

We were a hundred miles off Kona when the rudder connection broke. I contacted the Hawai Coast Guard and sailed back. Homeland Security had become involved since 9/11 and ‘permits’ to sail the islands were highly restricted. We were a boat in distress and I only motor sailed daily from island to island during the day rather enjoying this  ‘sailing’ of these tropical islands. I’d enjoy it more but I was paying for a secretary and an office and had a whole lot of patients waiting for my return. I’d planned 4-6 weeks off and it would actually take another 4 weeks.  I’d sailed solo to Hawaii in the worse conditions in 24 days but now sailing back in the best conditions with crew took 34 days.  30 days was a reasonable plan except for the equipment breakdowns.  

We arrived in Hawaii main island harbour. That’s where we saved the pacific fleet by finding they had a ‘hole’ in their defence at low tide.  This impressed the Navy and the Coast Guard but nothing impressed Homeland Security who treated me like a “terrorist to be”, the whole time I was there. She did not like ‘yachties’ and thought everyone should be in uniform.  I was thankful that the Navy and Coast Guard countermanded her order to leave insisting I couldn’t because my boat’s rudder needed repair. We had to order the part. I rented a lovely white convertible and Tom and I had an idyllic week going for coffee, lying on the beach and reading.   When the part got in, thanks to Tom’s engineering skill, we replaced the rudder coupling and restored the autopilot function to the rudder.  

We were off again.

It was perfect sailing conditions. Wonderful tradewinds. Great sunny days. We’d met a couple of other boats going back and kept in touch with my Hamm radio. Then my crew got his crazy impulse to race at night. A gale had come up and he’d put up all the sails. Sleeping below I’d felt the boat lean too far and woken in fear, ran up on deck to start screaming and pulling down sails. That’s when the mast cracked. I’d had to repeatedly tell him that the maximum ‘cruising’ boat ‘angle’ had been x when he wanted to have the ‘gunwale’ in the water. “We’re not in a fucking race. I’ve told you time and again  I reduce sail at night. If anything goes wrong we’re alone at sea at night.”  I was really quite furious and my crew would joke about his having only 40 feet to stay away from me that night.  I just was angry that he’d take risks with my equipment and pull that whole anti authoritarian , adolescent ‘acting out’ with the full sails at night routine and now I was paying big time for his inability to simply follow orders and respect my equipment and my desires on my boat. The old mutiny and why I understand the ‘lashes’ that lasted so long in the British navy and weren’t such an issue on land.  I certainly wasn’t Captain Bligh who really got a bad name because his crew mutinied. 

Spanish Turnbuckle.  We were going again.  70 miles a day rather than the 100 to  150 miles a day and more weeks at sea but really a good time was had by all though my costs and losses for this all would be $150,000 but I’d have my boat back and we would be alive. My crew would oversee the repair of the mast having created weeks of work for himself and I’d eventually have the boat back as a home and a true joy.  My tugboat captain friend arranged space for me on the commercial dock and I had a shower in the China Town office. It was a rough existence in some ways but I truly loved the SV Giri. 

But on the boat coming home we’d had this wind generator problem. I had the wind generator from hell. It was huge. Tom in a fate of redemption stood on the precarious strut and lifted this beast off. He tried to fix it and for days we had this killer monster taking up our cabin and then in another feat of despair it was lifted back onto the pole when I was arguing we just chuck it overboard.  He deserved a Victoria Cross for his bravery and contribution to the boat even if it didn’t work any better after that.  My solar panels had all the input they could get but the problem remained the batteries. I had a water maker and for the water maker to work we needed batteries. The batteries ran the autopilot as well though we were able to get the wind pilot working a lot.  2 guys at sea.  Lots of challenges. 

 I have a friend who brings yachts home and now appreciate his amazing skills. I’d sailed solo starting with a fully tested ready to go ship but now this boat had been on land for three years and things corrode and gum up and such. The rudder had broke and the mast had broke  and the batteries wouldn’t hold a charge. But I had a Honda 1000 generator though it was problematic with intermittent air flow issues.  Nonetheless we made it. The tuna we caught was delicious. Tom baked fabulous bread.  

Coming into the Strait of Juan de Fuca my cell phone rang and I realized that now we had cell phone coverage in the coastal passage where I planned to be sailing now that I was home. I immediately thought this means I can do a methadone clinic. To be a methadone doctor you have to be on 24 hour call but VHS radio is not private so until this moment I couldn’t be because I didn’t want to give up sailing. Now I could.

I’d phone Gary and begin working a day a week at his methadone clinic a few blocks from the new China Town office I’d arranged after the Broadway building was sold.  All my money was going into the boat or the practice.  I was functionally ‘poor’ but rich in so many ways.

Now in my China Town practice I’d become so rich in heart.  I’d decided I could have another dog. I was over the murder of Stuart as much as one gets over the murder of a friend.

I made the decision to meet Gilbert. It all happens first in a spiritual realm. My prayers were answered. 

My cousin Wayne, logger and rancher, who bred Appalachian horses,  hunted and fished, and lived in a beautiful log cabin he’d made himself in the north had a Cockapoo. I decided that a cockapoo was what I wanted and found a retired  American Navy Commander who bred them on Whitby Island.  I contacted her.  Laura was keen on helping. 

I’d go off to meet Gilbert in my truck and  return with wonderful bundle of love that Laura and I continue to be blessed to know.    

Company Doctors: Professionalism and Political Correctness

Historically, physicians among professionals have had the highest rating for trustworthiness and truthfulness.By contrast lawyers have been at the bottom of the heap.  Some actually say it’s sad that 90% of lawyers give the other 10% a bad name.  My old lawyer friend had insisted that this was  a product of the rise in social legislation that followed Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s reign.  My friend, an  old man, had  practiced law in Scotland before coming to Canada.

“I was proud to be a lawyer. It was a very honoured profession in my youth. Today I sometimes feel it’s just because of the money lawyers are perceived so negatively. I did well enough but if money was the sole criteria I’d not be thought as good a lawyer as some of my colleagues who sought celebrity and seemed only interested in the fame and fortune.  When I became a professional I saw it as a duty and service and frankly most of my colleagues saw it as that too.  We were there to serve people. Our independence and autonomy as professionals allowed us to protect our clients from governments and corporations alike.”

It wasn’t long after I heard him say that, that  a lawyer at my church told me “I think you can still can be a lawyer and a Christian in Canada but I no longer think you can be a Christian and a Corporate lawyer in Montreal.”

I can say the same is increasingly  true for doctors.  The lowest slur a doctor could make against another was to call him a “company doctor”. 

The ‘company doctor’ reached it’s a nadir during the years of the asbestos mining.  Miners were coughing up blood and dying all the while the doctors hired by the company and were paid exorbitantly essentially to lie and insist the problem wasn’t the  asbestos at all.  The miner instead, in classic ‘blame the victim’ was told he had ‘weak lungs’. It became the  great scandal of the era exposing corrupt courts, government, corporations and the doctors involved..  Science eventually prevailed as today we know and diagnose “asbestos lungs’. 

It should be understood that a doctor may give his opinion in court ,which remains a 19th century rationalist construct and sees the world in black and white as opposed to the multi factorial quantum universe considerations of 21st century rainbow science.  The ridiculousnesss of such ‘opinions’ was highlighted best by the farce of the OJ Trial with all its dream team and ignorance of DNA. 75% of the fruitfly DNA is the same as Human DNA. 

In British Columbia “Moynihan’s Law’  was enacted essentially to reign in the competing claims of ‘expert witnesses”.  Moynihans’s Law insisted that expert opinions be predominantly objective and serve the judge not the solely the lawyers paying them.  Some of the insurance company expert witnesses were paid so exorbitantly as to make the ‘company doctors’ of the asbestos mine era look like altar boys.   Tragically I was obliged to teach a judge the history of this in recent years, as he appeared to have missed out on the insanity of the courts that required a specific new “Moynihans’s law” to reign in the ‘expert testimony ‘ of competing factions.  Perjury laws have always existed but do appear to be rarely used as increasingly the courts move away from the ‘truth’ standard of old.  “The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” is no longer associated with the modern court but rather remembered as a line from the Perry Mason era. 

The judge appeared unaware of Dr. Jay Lifton’s seminal book, the “Nazi Doctors” which addressed the whole issue of the ‘company’ or ‘government doctor’ in exquisite horrifying detail.  

It should not reflect badly on this judge because we’re collectively seeing this phenomena today  in the ‘fake news’ . The media was once constrained by the idea of ‘fact’ but today has  lost all track of the very notion of  ‘objective’ and now sells ‘facts’ as ‘opinions’ to the highest bidder.  Judges, themselves, have historically been considered’ corrupt’ as their opinions have been on occasion bought as readily as world soccer players.  The remaining issue today ,as Canadian culture devolves into multiculturalism,  increasingly,  is not whether someone will sell out their integrity but at how low a price.

Around  the world in other jurisdictions and cultures the issue is not whether to bribe the official ther how little one can give without insulting   government representative. The whole idea of the ‘tip’ which once was only an issue in hotels and restaurants is the very basis of business and law in`many countries.  

The next worst ‘slur’a doctor could have against him was that he was a ‘pharmaceutical company doctor’. Some pharmaceutical companies hired doctors to promote their medications and rewarded those who ‘sold’ medications by down playing or denying risks while celebrating success.  I was hired only a couple of times by one drug company to give talks to family physicians about new produce.  I was subsequently   told by  that company that  I was ‘too objective’ and hadn’t ‘sold’ enough of  the product. . I took that a compliment but it caused me to look askance at some of my colleagues who took pride in being consider ‘trendsetters’ by some in the pharmaceutical industry. They considered it a compliment to be called ‘drug pushers for the multinationals’ and paraded their academic and financials rewards with gusto.   “Unhinged: the Trouble with Psychiatry” by Dr. Daniel Carlat discusses this problem in depth. 

It became so egregious an issue in medicine  that physicians in academic settings and journals are collectively now required to give notice of their ‘conflicts of intererst’.   At the beginning of a lecture a doctor is required to put up a slide indicating which drug companies or businesses had paid him for this lecture or his research in this area.  

Unfortunately the licensing bodies for professions, in general, like the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, have not as yet had such a renaissance. The conflicts of interest that influence hiring, appointments,committe membership of non professionals,  their  political and fashionable decisions remain darkly opaque.

  

This practice has been in place for decades and naturally doctors wish that politicians and bureaurats would be required to do the same housekeeping regarding ‘conflicts of interest” and ‘lobby groups.” The partisanship of bureaucrats is a huge problem since they are required to be 'objective' but increasingly in Canada it has been exposed that government bureaucrats are Liberal biased.  To avoid this in many countries and eras the whole government apparatus was overturned and replaced by the followers of the winning party.

Given the scandals  over the foreign influence on Hillary Clinton and Justin Trudeau by Islamic countries and the alleged influence on Trump by Russia , politics seems mired like the media and courts outside the promises of the 21st century.  Escobar, the great drug lord used to brag that he had bought both the Republicans and the Democrats, hedging his bets, not that that did him much good in the long run. 

Doctors addressed this issue of autonomy first in the Hippocratic Oath of Ancient Greece.  I’ve taken the revitalized Hippocratic Oath of today since the ethical and moral foundations of professionalism have been increasingly eroded by government intrusion. The ‘do no harm’ clause is all but obsolete now  the ‘abortion industry” and recently  ‘euthanasia industry’ have completely won over the prevailing  government and their bureaucrats so reminiscent of the 'banal' of Arendt's writings.   Further, the various ‘codes’ of doctors in the western world were influenced by the “sanctity of life’ premise  inherent in Christian religion which inherited and refined the Judeo Graeco Roman traditions from which Western Civilization arose.  Other cultures have not had this notion of ‘sanctity of life’.

Further the ideas of where on the continuum the doctor sits regarding the collective and the individual are wholly different than what most Canadians assume.  Also the 'accountability' of the doctor in different countries is wholly different from the local ever changing responsibility of the doctor and indeed the health care system. This was never better reviewed than the greatest scandal of hospital administration of our time, the finding of the man dead for 36 hours in the Canadian teaching hospital and the abdication of accountability of administration.

There is also distinctly different ideas of cause and effect and accountability in eastern and western 'culture' which affect the very practice of medicine by doctors depending on training and background.

It was no surprise that Dr. Kellie Leitch, a brilliant physician and accomplished paediatric surgeon, should spearhead the importance of 'Canadian values' in this time when the dope smoking pretty haired selfie snapping Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was insisting there was no 'Canadian culture' and hence no 'Canadian values'.  Ironically he also said that Quebec French  speaking Prime Ministers were superior to English speaking Prime Ministers when his basic premise was that there was no such thing as a Canadian ‘culture’. While denying Canada 'culture' and denying Canadian 'values'  he insisted on the superiority of the French speaking. 

The word ‘culture’ derived from the Latin word ‘cultus’, ‘to care’ and from the French word to ‘cultivate’ or to ‘fill the ground’.  Well no one in their right mind would doubt that Dr. Leitch cares or is a highly cultivated individual who has done a lion’s share of work, there continues to be complaints about PM Justin Trudeau, simply not caring about Canada, and not by his personal history having much to do with cultivation and work.  Unfortunately Dr. Leitch’s insightfulness flew over the stoned heads of easily offended young followers of the Prime Minister. 

The ‘private’ physician retained their autonomy and worked for the patient just as the lawyer and accountant and engineer primarily served their client.  Historically the true ‘statesman’ served the country as a whole not the entrenched interests of corporations like Bombadier or the  urbans tastes of Montreal female voters.  

The ‘business’ of profession however always was tied to the idea of ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’.  As the “private” physician was working directly for the patient even though an insurance company might well be paying the bill, the doctor’s greatest concern was the ‘patient’s health’.  This was before the Hydra of  Cultural Marxism's weaponized political correctness redefined 'health' like the 'renaming' of 'gender" as something other than the ‘morbidity and mortality’ of science.   

Today the ‘insurance doctor’ is the next greatest ‘slur’ that can be made against a doctor.  It’s a bit wrong as there clearly are good and bad insurance companies. But clearly if the patient becomes sick and unable to work and provide insurance payments it’s in the interest of the insurance company to ‘de list’ that member as they are no longer a viable ‘client’.  Further, the worst insurance companies use and abuse the courts to offer the least inclusive definition of health and spend fortunes on lawyers fighting claims. 

Canada is a single party insurance scheme so that the ‘government doctor’ and the ‘insurance doctor’ ‘slurs’ can overlap.  Historically in public and private endeavours there was this area where the public need for finance existed because of the size and ‘risk’ of the project and in areas where there was no likelihood of profit but that as a society we collectively saw a need to care for others in a way private sources could not afford to.  

Our present government appears to be giving billions to foreign countries while not caring for it’s own sick and old.  The sick and old and those who suffer catastrophic  injuries were the principle reason for development of the Canadian Health Care system.  Tommy Douglas and those who were  principally Christian doctors of the  Saskatchewan model would obviously roll over in their graves  if they were to see the actions of the ‘company doctors’ and ‘government doctors’ of today.  Government spending today,  is to those early men and women of Canada,  a total corruption of the ideals of Canadian traditions.  Not surprisingly, Liberals get around this by indeed,   denying Canadian culture or tradition.

The highest paid doctors today are government doctors  and cosmetic surgeons while the front line workers in all fields are policed to no end and treated as the enemy by their superiors because they have been given the unenviable task of ‘rationing health care’ while the government doctors and political doctors make endless promises that are simply impossible to meet.

Professionals say that there is no ‘autonomy’ or ‘profession’ any more because the structure of our present centralized communist leaning government which is totalitarian authoritarian and diametrically opposed to the freedom of the individual and wholly supportive of the ‘collective’.   Indeed many professionals have considered that the ‘unions’ which developed in a much more hostile relationship to government may be the answer to the failing health care system.  Some doctors have approached the Teamsters feeling the whole idea of ‘profession’ is defunct in face of government corruption and the cancerous growth of the government burocracy to the detriment of professions and their clients.  

Canada has a history of having had a purely ‘government socialist based’ health care system which was associated with the worst morbidity and mortality statistics in the Canada. This was the Indian Affairs government health care system which is now being used as a "model" for all of Canada despite is at times horrendous failures.  

Given that immigrant doctors increasingly come from countries which do not share  Canadian ‘values’ of ‘sanctity of life’ , the importance of the individual, freedom, and libertarianism and other such ‘pesky’ ideas it is increasingly no surprise that the government calls’ physicians’ not by their ‘professional designation’ but increasingly as ‘health care workers’ as a collective job title. Ethically there fore in the government eyes they have no difference from the cleaning staff in the hospitals.  

It concerns me as the corruption of government and media and the refusal of the courts to move forward that doctors medical professionalism is now defined solely by ‘company doctors’ and dominated by ‘conflicts of interest’ that soon it will be said of doctors that 90% give the 10% a bad name.  It is no surprise that 75 % of Canadian doctors would not recommend medicine at present in Canada. 

As a dinosaur doctor I am increasingly concerned about health care not as much as a provider but because I might well need services and can see from the desperate experiences of my patients that they are utterly frustrated, dissatisfied, and wholly crippled by the government callousness, Naturally their opinions never appear in the government propaganda media or are always attributed to the doctors and nurses rather than the top heavy administration.  They express repeatedly concerns about  inefficiency and corruption the feeling that their basic needs and values are not being met.

A company doctor explained to me that I ‘cared too much’ and must ‘lower my standards’ as well as ‘learn to lie’ as he did for he enjoyed greatly his well rewarded government company doctor lifestyle.  I personally have to consider every day whether I want to continue as a ‘company doctor’ or if I should, like the other dinosaurs of my era retire early and accept that Christians, godly people in general,  moral people and all the doctors of old, especially my most esteemed mentors, and Tommy Douglas, a politically incorrect Baptist minister, are all  no longer welcome in Canada.  Insurance company models also routinely reward the physicians who do the least for the patient and save the government the most money.

This was a 'joke' of my surgical training where heart surgeons and lung surgeons would compete among themselves as to who could use the least 'thread' as the administration had a fashion of the month campaign to get the surgeons to save money in the operations.  At the time I thought it was something out of MASH where no show better defined the oxymoron on 'military intelligence". Yet the surgeons explained that the administrators were more concerned with their budgets than the lives of the patients. Indeed I caused myself no end of difficulty complaining that a small town administrator had robbed the hospital budget for a baby incubator so that he could have a new desk and chair with better wood panelling.  

I do envy the migrants who routinely return to their ‘homes’ whereas I personally feel my own home and profession have been destroyed.  This feeling has grown strongest since  I was told that  Dr. William Osler is no longer considered a ‘professional’. Clearly Dr. Osler is no longer welcome in Canada and  should never  apply to work here.

Jesus, the greatest healer of all time, would not be welcomed  either.  Jesus  was vulgar, kept the wrong company,  swore and behaved badly, the epitome of a politically incorrect individual.  Politically correctness and professionalism were once diametrically opposed.  Today a doctor kills or heals as the prevailing mood dictates. It’s just fashion.  Medicine is theatre.  The Kardashian’s are the new models of medicine.    

Nightmares, fear, truth and lies.

I awoke at 4 am, sick with fear. I am again facing threats.  Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness.   I am falsely accused.  The lies are heinous. I’ve been here before. But the dreams are of those who held me hostage and brought guns to point in my face, knifes to thrust under my chin, to make their point.  The bold faced long necked lies are more insidious. The greed that drives deceit is more deeply disdainful.  Last year was particularly trying, the death threats and the threats to kill my dog when a former dog had already been sacrificed.   I still refused to comply with extortion.The extortion is the same. The punishment follows the refusal to reward deceit.
I am here at a conference of doctors. Others are speaking of their fears.  It’s becoming universal.  Except for the elite or perhaps the mediocre. So many shudder, the ripples felt as uneasy laughter, voices kept low in hope that no one hears whispered conversations.    Stand up and you make yourself a target.  I am disheartened to hear of doctors who have left their community because they are not allowed a conscience.  They are purposely being subjected to means to break them. There is no compromise.  Christians are persecuted all over. More so, these days of aetheist communist control and sharia language restraints. To speak is to blaspheme except for the chosen.  And who are the chosen. That debate sizzles.
I am by contrast criticized for transparency.  There are no secrets in our society today. I once “hacked" into the places where all the personal records recorded by governments  were left open to all because then anyone could, legally, look.  Security cost and though I was offered pay I didn’t want to address the mess.  They had not seen the need to protect the privacy except their own because they wanted easy access instead.  Repeatedly I fought repeatedly for confidentiality till the matter became irrelevant.  The illusion of privacy is just that, our government and countless agencies for business and even nefarious designs spy on us continuously. Wikileaks has told us what we all know, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Sexuality and private communication were once sacrosanct but no more.  The RCMP, FBI, NSA and all manner of public agencies spy on citizens routinely. They pay lip service to maintain appearances.  In hospitals the privacy at all levels except the top is like the gown afforded the patient.   There is pressure on the courts for transparency now.  We need the  full context of body language and secondary communications that slant all information to understand any verdict.  The back rooms prevail but only with bugs and cameras strewn around them. .
Transparency is the only protection, really.  We live in a glass house.  We are only protected by the truth. Relative truth is the illusion.   We know the media skews truth for profit.  Memories are false in hours or days and yet individuals insist their memory is true.  Then memories are fought back and forth before referees little different from those who wear black and white stripped shirts in soccer matches, convene. It’s always political.  Outcomes are bought or won.  The rich prevail.  The winner writes history.  All strength remains with the State, the King, the Big Man, the Big Woman.  Families and tribes compete.  Nation states are struck down. The rule of law is little respected when truth is no more.  Alibies are maintained by tribes and gangs.  Groups and primitive structures that predate nation states prevail.  Individuals are sacrificed or crucified.  Virgins, the young and so often Christians and especially Jews have always been the favoured entertainment in the games.  Animals and gladiators play to a different sort.
I am always anxious.  I am more anxious older.  I have served a society that once wanted law and order but the very structures of that old group are now torn asunder. The pedophiles I saw locked up will have their revenge on me.  The liars are more powerful each day as the power  shifts to celebrate the mob.  Marches upon marches define the present. A media chosen spokesperson with camera angles and lighting lies.  I’m not a marcher. I’m afraid in large crowds.  The young and physical prevail in war.  I was promised protection.  I was bred a hot house plant.  Old, academic, scholarly, a doctor, I have no more place in this physical fray.  
The campaigns to smear celebrate the actors and actresses. I wasted my time in libraries and labs.  The gossip mills were training new men and women when I was in the morgue. I have consulted the dead while reality tv was teaching debates. I am a minority view. I am a marginalized citizen.  There are favoured groups but my own group held onto truth like Shrodinger’s cat, lucid dreaming and fractals..  The world is any way you slice the pie.  Perceptions are self serving and compete by force.
I cling to the remnants integrity.  I have been violated sexually.  I have been violated physically.  My morality has been questioned. I have studied ethics ad infinitum if only to be aware in the increasingly unethical and uncultured world I live in. My RCMP friend said she joined the force to be a crime fighter but left when all she was allowed to do was be a crime recorder.  I feel a kindred spirit as we increasingly are called upon to promote disease by any other name.
I am tired in the morning.  The nightmares return and disrupt my sleep.  I struggle to remain.  Suit up and show up. Do the next right thing.  I resist the allure of self pity by exercises of constant gratitude. I thought block constantly. Prayer and thanksgiving. I seek to forgive but it’s always hard to be forgiving as one  is ducking arrows.  The nature of the work is in the midst of competing factions, more confused and confusing as the day goes on.  The armchair Monday Morning quarterbacks and the space station dwellers debate your worth.  Any moment you can be collateral damage or cannon fodder.  There is no concern above. Middle management is a casino, the players vying to skim the genius from the games to give back to the House.  The higher one climbs,the more bodies one leaves behind.  The greater the right to privilege and the more one is willing to do to keep the status.
I’ve come and gone. I’ve given up millions and turned down millions. I’ve walked away and wondered  if I’m meant to be a monk or if honourable death is better to the constant grind of facing people who want you dead so they can steal and take what they feel entitled to.  They would have your experience without the time in chains. They would have your reputation without the life of  shame.  EE Cummings called them ‘those people’.  Leonard Cohen spoke of the game, that ‘everyone knows”.
We are rats in a maize. Advance cockroaches in a dream.  Monkeys with minds and nice hair dos.  The question is truth and the judge claims to know this.  Bsseut increasingly all he holds is the gun and jailor’s keys. There are no Solomon’s in the drug addicted hoards.  Consensus is a commodity.  The guillotine is Occam’s razor. The one who fears most is left standing in the end.  The paranoids are proved right as Freud said.
And I am only afraid as long as I forget.  Anxiety is a measure of one's distance from God.  So again I turn and trudge towards Bethlehem.