Friday, April 27, 2018

Hostiles , the movie

Scott Cooper has written and directed an extraordinary movie.  Christian Bale and Rosemund Pike were incredible. I loved Adam Beach. The Apache and Comanche and the ‘blue coats’.  Realism with outlaw fur hunters and isolationist ranchers.  Lots of gun fights and character. .  Realism and more realism.  The tough and hard days of old.  Monanta the finest set.  This is far more than a western.  Shakespearean.  Thank you!

It is a great day to ride a Harley!

It’s a great day to ride a Harley!  I just drove out to Langley on my glorious Electraglide.  Trev Deeley kept it all winter in the warm with a special blanket and oil toddies. Once a week the staff gathered around the bikes and sang Biker Lollabies.  Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild. Then in the spring they checked it out and tuned it up so I didn’t find myself splashed across the road because of poor maintenance.
I had to pick up some wheels for my folding Porta Bote from Maple Marine.  Any excuse to ride on a spring day like this is Godly.
Now I’m sitting at Barnes Harley where I once traded my 600 Buell Blast for a HD 1200 Roadster.  I loved that Roadster.  It took me all over BC often with Laura on the back. I even road it on logging roads and commuted to and fro work in the city.  I’ve loved the maintenance at Barnes and Trev.  I wanted to go to Sturges and Gilbert had joined me.  He liked a bigger bike so we took a deal at Trev one day and I graduated to the Electroglide. I’d sat at one in the Abbotsford Bike show. That always seems to be the way to stoke the imagination.
Riding to Sturges from Vancouver was an unforgettable experience. ZZ Top.  Doobie Brothers.  Buffalo Chip.  I dream of going back. I’ve a Toy Hauler now so might haul the bike, getting out at the festival and acting like I’d ridden all the way from Vancouver Canada.  At least I’ve done it once. Nothing like seeing the antelope in the fields of Montana.  I loved the wildlife. Cowboy country and the modern Harley Davidson iron steed.  There is simply no motorcycle made for the American freeway like the Harley Electroglide.
I’ve jut  been over at Holeshot Motorsports.  I’ve got a Honda Pioneer 500  side by side quad for hunting. It takes up a lot of room in storage.  Gilbert had become old and blind. I got it for him but he prefers the warmth and comfort of the truck.  I really enjoyed the year I had a Honda 250 CRF Enduro and road all over the back roads. I was supposed to be hunting mule deer but really all I shot was cans. What a great time. I also road the enduro year round whereas I'd treat my Electroglide like the Cadillac it is and don't trust the slippery Vancouver streets with the stoned Vancouver drivers.
Now I’ve come to love the Honda 1000 African Twin CRF. So I sat on one again.
If only Harley would take their 883 and give it some off road capacity. The Harley 1200 was the motorcycle used throughout WWII.  Harley are built to take a beating.  I’d rather they move in that direction than electric motorcycles which they’ve got coming out. They once had a 500 and I’d think that would be a sweet machine to make into an enduro or adventure bike.  As it is Honda is the go to place for off road and durability.
I’m back at Barnes having a coffee. It' s hard to believe I felt at death door with an abscessed tooth last week and letting the mismanagement and corruption in government get to me.  It's all above my pay grade. All I've got is this "sunny afternoon in the summertime."
Being a member of the H.O.G., Harley Owner’s Group,  I’ve just been upstairs in the Harley lounge.  When I’ve ridden in Canada and  especially in the US,  I’ve loved stopping at Harley. They’re watering holes and club houses and just destinations. Like today.  It’s hot and sunny.  A beautiful day to sit outside on the Barnes patio. Lots of bike roars. Leather people coming and going.  Pink Cherry blossoms on the trees. The good feel of people with purpose.
 It’s a great day to ride a Harley!





Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Dentistry, St. George and Salvation

Dr. Doug Lovely extracted my molar on an emergency basis. He’s a kind and caring man, a gifted dentist and my personal Mensch.  He commented about the suddenness of the white van jihadi attack in Toronto this week, “Life is fragile. I doubt any of those people who got up that morning thought they’d be mowed down and killed on the street.”
As he was extracting my tooth he commented on the copious pus escaping.  “It must be 200 cc. No wonder your jaw and cheek were all swollen. Most people respond to antibiotics but you didn’t."
He went on to say, "Before antibiotics people died all the time from these abscesses.  When I read history I'm always  amazed at how many people died of infections, consumption, TB, pneumonia.  Then there were the flu epidemics. We take it for granted but antibiotics changed the course of history.” 
I listened as the suction took the pus. Then there was intense tugging and a cracking sound.  “It’s a boy!” Doug laughingly exclaimed.  His bright and beautiful assistant laughed too. There was obvious relief.  Anyone who lives in the real world, especially that of surgery, knows things can take very scary turns.  That moment though it was as if the war had paused.  The  words ‘cease fire’ were being shouted down the battlefield.
I laughed too, a little, as best one can, in a dental chair, another's fists in your mouth. My eyes teared with the relief.  God , the relief.  In the night I'd felt I couldn't go on.    I am so ashamed at how weak I am alone. I so don't like to be dependent, to ask for help, to need help.
The evil was now gone.  The thought of the pus though left me feeling dirty. The sickly smell of anaerobes in the room. The scent of contagion.  The shame. I'd been defiled and not even known it. I felt apologetic for kissing her days before.  I felt betrayed by my body. Smaller. Human.
The nightmare was all but over now.  I felt I was no longer on the down elevator, not moving up yet, but no longer descending.
There followed  a tense moment as Doug moved along to get out the back root. He heaved and pulled, a muscular activity, with steady gentle persuasion.  
 “You don’t want to break the root off in the socket.” He said.
I thought of thousands of years and millions of toothaches.  The sheer misery in the world untold, before the advent of modern dentistry, precision tools, anitibiotics,  anesthesia, guild and professional training.   A toothache can be so humbling.   We are an ungrateful species. I'm the worst, so utterly self absorbed till life literally slaps me in the face. 
When that second root came out it was a bit of an aftermath.  A last tug and more relief.  Both Doug and his assistant relaxed. The tension left the room. Almost immediately it was like the Post Modern Jukebox began playing a coccabana song.   Tropical breezes wafted through the room.  Water lapping on beach in the distance.  Sunrise over sand.  Sweet relief.
The offending tooth and all it’s parts were gone. The whole body strained.  Doug had been asking me how I was doing through out the procedure.  I'd only grunted.  Now I felt good. It's  been a long time since  I felt good.  
I’d not been breathing there for a bit. My chest  felt heavy. Bacteremia. Septicemia.  The whole process was a work out, a physical ordeal.  I’m not as young and athletic as I once was. I felt tired,  worn, battered.  The Travelling Willbury Song, “Handle me with care.”comes to mind too often these days.
The briefest exquisite pain occurred then, like an electric shock.   Doug pulled out the last of the abscess sack.   A tiny price to pay.  “I added more freezing but it leaks out so quickly at the end when everything is so inflamed.” he said.   It gave me a glimpse of what dental and surgical care had been like before the advent of anaesthesia.   What else do we take for granted, I thought. 
 Every second that passed from the removal of that offending tooth,  gospel band Third Day's song, "There's a Light at the End the Tunnel" now  played in my mind. Hillsong, Mercy,  Grace and Salvation all came to mind. Timeless themes.
I’d been crying in the night in pain and despair, waiting till 6 am to email Doug that morning. Sleeplessness makes everything worse. I remember  being alone at sea, at night, at the end of a hurricane , waiting for either my boat to break up, pitchpole in the high seas, or dawn to come. Dawn had come with all it's glory that day.  Dawn came this day.  Again.  "Ye of little faith."
I'd just read that Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, gave birth to her royal baby boy, serendipitously, on St. George's Day.   A great time of celebration.
I had a fleeting thought of  Dr. Doug Lovely as St. George, white shining dental armour, great dental lance,  the evil dragon tooth putrid tooth stabbed dead through the middle.  
I don’t know how long the pustulence had been there.  Abscesses are sneaky that way.  Like liars and false allegations. I’ve not felt well for some time.  Low grade fever. Lethargy. Disappointment with putrid politics.  Negativity.  I just couldn’t shake the foreboding. Too many family and friends dying. Patients dying.  Another great one died last week. He'd turned his life around and was a veritable success story in so many ways before his cirrhotic liver dragged him home.  Maybe only the good die young. I'm around for a long time.
My own mortality has been ever present. It’s been a  bad winter of sad blues tinged with poor rockabilly. The tooth flaring last week moved the whole universe symphonically.  It became a regular Tchaikovsky then crescendoed seriously Richard Straus at the end.  Now there’s hope again. I'd loved a little Bach, maybe some Handel's, Water Music.  I’d give anything for Strauss but that’s reaching in these shallow godless bureaucratic times.
I slept last night. I’m still on antibiotics. My mind is clearer. I woke to  sunshine and spring. I feel like Steven Segal punched me in the jaw in my sleep.  Otherwise the swelling is down.  I actually feel hope.  I’d lost it there. I'm pretty much a wimp.
Hope's like peace of mind.  And faith. They’re so utterly precious.  They colour the universe. Without them life would be just black and white and grey. I didn't  quite see them slip away.  Somewhere in the night. That 19th version of Dark Night of the Soul,the comic strip despair.
We'd  watched Monty Python last week,  the  Crucifixion Scene,  the men hanging from nails,  whistling and singing, "Always look on the bright side of life."  It's hard not to be cynical.
All those people who survived the jihadi van attack.  A new born baby boy..  A Royal couple pleased as any commoner.  The cycles of life. The blessing of spring.
There's a certain absurdity to a molar abscess. The dentist as St. George. I take life too much for granted these days.  I need to be more thankful for small mercies. The cracks that Leonard Cohen  described are the places where the Light shone in.  The gentle touch of the sacred can still be felt beneath the burden of the mundane.  
I heard the  bird songs today.  The scent of cherry blossoms was in the breeze.   Salvation  and Modern Dentistry.  Hooray for St. George.




Sunday, April 22, 2018

Molar Root Abscess and the Toxic Workplace

It’s not easy to admit to being a whimp.  I had an appointment to have a crown put on by Dr. Douglas Lovely, my amazing dentist New Westminster.  I admit I’ve loved going to him for 20 years because he’s literally painless. As a child our dentist didn’t believe children felt pain. It left as lasting aversion to dentists.  Doug’s work is the best.  It helps he’s a sailor and that all my doctor friends see him too.

The day before the crown my face flared up. A horrible night of sleeplessness and pain.  I was so glad to have the appointment.  My face was slowed and Doug did the xray showing the tooth was cracked and a “pea size“ abscess at the base of the second root.  The crown wasn’t anything but it was on a cracked tooth as well.  My gnashing my teeth in my sleep at night was catching up on me.  Doug gave me antibiotics and recommended high dose ibuprofen.  He had to bring the swelling down to extract the tooth.  Extraction was set for a week later.  

Tha night was awful. I don‘t do sleepless nights well anymore. Too many years of call.  First surgery and deliveries and later suicidal calls and drunken calls.  It’s been years though that I’ve had to go to a hospital. Still it’s hard to get back to sleep.  And a tooth ache didn’t help.  Doug warned me it might get worse before it would get better.  But I’m a whimp.  My face swelled out like a chipmunk with nuts.

I had to take the afternoon off work because I was just simply too fatigue. Fortunately the last morning of work was slow.  Doug had contacted me when I sent a picture of my lopsided face and expressed my abject misery. ‘It’s almost as bad as a man flu’ summed it out.  A lot of cowering and shaking by men all round.  Drum roll in the back ground. Images of the grim reaper. Women thoroughly insensitive.  ‘Tooth ache. ‘. ‘Man flu’.  Really? 

No one God has them deliver babies. I’d never do it.  I also concluded yet again I’d never make a spy. The first mention of torture and I’d give up anything to stop the pain. I was beyond Motrin and Alleve and ASA. I was on a cocktail of all three at three times the recommended dose.  I was a toxic waste dump of NSAD’s.  I understand and always have why people who aren’t treated sufficintly for pain by doctors turn to the street vigilantes services for pain defence.  Pain is thoroughly underestimated by bureaucrats and anyone who has not known it’s bite.  

I couldn’t bite either. Soft foods and soups and embarrassing drool out the side of my face.

Bleak.  Suicidal. Rethinking euthanasia.  Paranoid moments. Wondering who might have caused the toothache. Was it the Russians. Was it radioactive.Did Trudeau do this. All else evil in Canada today can be placed at his stupid feet. Why not my tooth ache.  3 and 4 am arre ripe times for vivid imagination.  Was the chip some government lab had placed in my tooth finally needing a battery change. I’ve heard all the best ideas from schizophrenic patients. Even Freud concluded they might be right.  Doug would tell me if I had a chip in my tooth and the battery needed replacement. He said he’d take it out and then do an implant.   I don’t have dental care.  Only illegal immigrants get that in Canada.  Who cares what the cost is when your eyes are bulging out. I even thought of going to the hospital emergency for morphine but remembered this was Canada and I’d wait for 10 or 20 hours in the waitroom for a shot of morphine exposed to all the latest virus bacteria and the hell of Canadian ER’s.   Light would come soon.

Doug was in Whistler but called my pharmacist who gave me Dexamethasone and Flagyl to add to the Clindamycin.  Dougs voice is reassuring.  He calls after all his work.  He still cares. Doctors are punished today for caring.  The administration is swaggering and arrogant, the worst in the civilized world, 20 times what is needed, doctors hated by government here, the fewest in the civilized world, longest wait lists.  







 I watch a video of the Ontario doctors speaking out against the Liberal government there. I think of all the patients who are so desperate and angry and how little we have to give them anymore now that all our health care resources are devoted to government administration and doctors are condemned for unprofessionalism because they won’t kill themselves fast enough. The paper work and the endless rules and committee ivory tower bullshit destroying us as the patients cry and come in angrier and more and more in despair. Everyone has gone without to pay the outrageous taxes and all the money goes to debt and administration. It’s so depressing on the frontlines.

I’m thankful that dentists are still free of the scourge of Space Station administration arrogant in their ignorance of the death they cause from distance and negligence.  

I’m unhappy.  A Christian biker died.  He was a friend as much as anything.  He loved his gal. He loved Jesus.  I’ve not adjusted to the dying these last couple of years.  Family, friends and the epidemic of fentanyl. It was bad enough working front lines through the AIDS epidemic. This is worse.

The government blamed the doctors for the opiate crisis.  I read last week they were totally off. Their calculations all wrong. Their false accusations like all the other fake news right out there.  It turns out that the fentanyl is just another Chinese attack and part of the drug wars. ‘Whatever minor factor ‘overprescribing’ is ,is the least concern. But there goes our government demonizing doctors and our dying patients .  They’re in the business of marijuana and euthanasia now.  

My pain had dropped with the sleep and hope the added anti biotic brought.  I had homework to do.  I just lay in bed.  I had all this stuff that was to be done but another weekend devoted to getting ready to go back to the wars.  Any female patient can lie and falsely accuse a male doctor if he doesn’t agree with breaking the law and lying for her and a committee will destroy the doctor because that’s their agenda.  It’s not paranoia. They do the same to female doctors.  All the doctors realize now that any patient , especially the psychopaths,  have the power of complaints, any of which cause the doctor to lose $10,000 with no cost to the patient.  There’s a totally skewed power dynamic and it’s all a lie.  There’s no cost in Canada for perjury.   
Indeed multiculturalism denies the value of truth or knowledge.  It’s no longer about anything but feelings and power and men are all wrong and white men are all racists.  Every doctor I know, male and female, in the front lines tries to do the least now. No one wants to take on an unknown patient.  We’re working like our administration which is collectively destroying the practice of medicine. I’m entering an age when I may need medical care. I’m afraid of hospitals because the workplace is utterly toxic because of the administration and the anti doctor government. The nurses are being reduced too so we can have more politically correct administration.





I don’t have the reserve for a tooth ache.  I don’t have the reserve for sleepless nights.  My friends are all struggling with normal life and the workplace is killing them. The demands on doctors have skyrocketted while the fat cat administration is swaggering with self praise, making the rules for their dream jobs and constant vacations and giving themselves raises upon raises but never visiting the front lines. It’s WWI all over again and we’re the machine gun fodder.

The patients get less. We’re all condemned by a cruel and perfect government judgmental to the core Everyone is ‘offended’ all the time and the standards of perfections and political correctness are beyond the pale. You can kill with negligence but don’t dare swear or raise your voice or object to lacks of beds or deadly wait lists.  And then you hear they’re going to give more ‘free health care’ to immigrant families as more doctors suicide under the strain and in response to the cruelty and insensitivity of the administration.

Another night of sleep. More ibuprofen, more antibiotics.  The swelling’sdown. I can eat. I think of my colleagues working after having babies and having surgery.  I know so many stoics. I admire so many I know facing the deluge of demands one on one face to face in the front lines and those far from the front are shooting them in the back and fearing that they might ever have to go back out there .  They ‘ve played it smart, got the cushion jobs, moved to the back, played politics, not kept up with medicine, medicine just a stepping stone to power and control.  They never really cared for patients. They’ve seen so few and risen so fast. 

I’m feeling better. I get to church.  I’m humbled by Jesus.  Laura and I watched Monty Python reruns. Laughter therapy.  Communion was good.  The god kids were like herding cats.No one can afford to live in Vancouver.  The criminals and government have turned the city into an unliveable place except for jet setters.  I’m just the ‘Help’’.  Laura laughed to read the book about the ‘help’ and what the help said about the masters.  The destruction of the middle class is taking place. Only the elite are well here. The Mayor actually said something like it being reasonable to pay $3500 rent a month while a miserable shack costs a million anywhere.  The television constantly shows pictures of the rest of the world and the refugees are so happy as scab labour but given the benefits don’t seem to want to work.    

Those of us native Canadians who worked all our lives are leaving major gaps in services as we retire and no one is foolish enough to work in Canada. The whole work ethic is a farce when you see the leadership off on vacation and never working seriously before getting the best leadership job on who his name is.  Work doesn’t pay is the Canadian idea. Entitlement and social justic warriors and activists are all the rage. No one wants to do physics and chemistry or cut lumber or take risky jobs with axes and such.  It’s a talk world.

I type more today than I did as a secretary.  But I get paid for all that I know of biochemistry and psychopharmacology and diagnostics though naming things is quickly going out of fashion. Everything is fashion

I am comforted by the words of the priest. I’m thankful for the sweet sounds of Barry’s music.  I am thankful for all the friendliness of the people we meet here. Downstairs having coffee in the church I remember my mother and father. Dad helped put a new roof on the old church.  Mom always helped make meals and coffee.  We all did the dishes.  The coffee is fine. I’m thankful I don’t drool out of the side of my mouth.  I’m looking forward to camping.  

After everyone is gone. I walk Gilbert along the river and watch a green headed mallard land on the stream.  The  trees are all budding. There a bunting today.  A robin is in a bush with fresh green buds.  Lots of tulips and daffodils. I must focus on the good things. I’ve been depressed with sleepleness and death and a toothache.  I’m a whimp.  I think I once was more.  I sailed solo across an ocean. Faced charging bear.  White water canoed. Walked frozen across tundra after our skidoo went through the ice.  I saved a few children. A woman thanked me for saving her eye.  A few people told me that I convinced them not to kill themselves.  Thousands are sober. Thousands didn’t kill themselves on my watch.  I’ve done a bit of good in my time but it’s all unfashionable today.

I talked to my female colleague and she’s being punished like me for working with the people Jesus used to hang with.  We’re silly not to have been the doctors for the wealthiest. I turned down the job and so did she. We’re working with the really sick, the end of the road, and the feral.  It’s a single party insurance scheme and we’re not supposed to keep these people alive. More and more we’re co opted by insurance companies to write reports to courts and to keep people out of their toxic workplaces and to give them a chance at the legal lottery.  ICBC , our auto insurance plan thanks to government mismanagement is on the brink of bankruptcy. Wherever government gets involved there is horrendous waste and mismanagement in Canada. Rapidly a third world country. Not the meritocracy it once was.  But you know you’re getting old when you talk about the good old days.

I’m insignificantly significant and significantly insignificant.  75% of my colleagues wouldn’t recommend medicine in Canada.  It’s still a beautiful spring.  Today’s sunshine was miraculous.  My face no longer hurts.  I laughed to watch Monty Python’s absurdity, « Always look on the Bright Side of life.’  

It really is funny.  You must stop taking yourself seriously.  It was just a tooth ache. Not nearly as bad as a man flu.

Saturday, April 14, 2018

Authenticity, Psychiatry and Brunette River Walk

I’ve just had a lovely walk along the Brunette River with Gilbert, my blind Cockapoo.  I took my iPhone X and my Apple Air Pods to listen to the Podcast on Authenticity, July 4, 2016, from the University of Oxford, 8th Unconscious Memory seminar, “Trust in Experts.”
Authenticity is a critical factor in clinical medicine, especially psychiatry and even more important in Addiction Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine.  A number of the leading specialists in this field feel most strongly that if a practitioner is unwilling to self disclose their own struggle with addiction then they really don’t belong in the field.
It’s noted that in general medicine non compliance can range to 30% In psychiatry it’s not uncommonly 80% and it well can be argued that in Addiction Psychiatry it’s not uncommonly 100%. This gave rise to the development of motivational psychotherapy and a scale assessing willingness to change.
In contrast in general medicine where the patient is seeking help and has a particular complaint, this is increasingly less the case as clinicians are increasingly coopted by third parties to do their bidding rather than 'heal' which is what the doctor's original role was before the corruption. The 'voluntariness' of the patient, seeking help for a bio psycho social or physical or mental problems still exists.   In Forensic Psychiatry by contrast, the psychiatrist is backed by jail and guns, the patient not being 'free' and care potentially 'coerced'.   In addiction psychiatry there’s a peculiar dance in which the ‘therapeutic alliance’ is foundational and critical.
St. Paul,  was the first Addiction Psychiatrist and said , Romans 7.20  "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do  I do not do, but what I hate I do."
Repeatedly studies of psychotherapeutic outcomes in psychotherapy and especially psychiatric psychotherapy and even more so Addiction Psychiatry/Medicine, has declared the critical importance of ‘authenticity’.  Note that, in contrast to studies which historically declared doctors the most trusted of experts and lawyers the least trusted and politicians.  Administrative medicine given it’s ’scripted’ association with the whims of politics and lack of scientific veracity, has yet no need for ‘authenticity’. Indeed 'in authentic doctors would likely be attracted to such an aloof in human field of scripts and obedience to the degree that Arendt described as 'banal'.   The closer to the ‘police’ the administrative function is the less it requires “authenticity’. It doesn't directly serve the patient but serves the institution. Relying as Forensic Psychiatry does on ‘position authority’ and ‘weapons’ versus ’tools’, it really doesn't know the importance of 'authenticity' or 'spontaneity' . It doesn't even grasp the concept of 'therapeutic alliance' because it's focus is 'walls' and 'boundaries' rather than the kind of 'cooperative' process which occurs in frontline clinical work where individuals are not hierarchically established despite the 'talking points' presentation of this relationship based on 'cultural communism.'
The significance of ‘authenticity’ is further important given the rise in ‘fake news’.  Ironically, a Harvard study found that some percentage akin to 75% of pro Hillary reporting and 75% of pro Republican reporting was ‘fake news’.  More significantly the ‘fake news’ was remembered and more ‘effective’ than the truth in deciding election outcome.
Churchill said, ‘a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."  The great Nazi Marketting Guru, Goebels, said, "A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth."  and "the bigger the lie the more it will be believed."
Prof. Andrew Parker, Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at Oxford discussed his fascinating study of brain activity using modern brain scanning techniques.  They took Rembrant Paintings ones known to be authentic and ones known to be ‘fake’ and showed them to their subjects equally.   He said it was unfortunate but that their subjects brains didn’t differentiate authentic and fake.  What was most important was that when they were told that a copy was a fake the brain behaved differently.  Indeed the ‘fake’ was made more memorable because the subjects seemed to be more interested what made it ‘fake’  rather than the ‘original’.
In clinical work, a patient faced with an ‘inauthentic’ or outright ‘lying’ clinician tends to focus most on that and not hear or pay much attention to the message after. This is especially true in the addiction field where patients have experienced significant trauma and know intuitively all the subtleties of in authenticity, like ‘damning with faint praise’, “trust me I’m here to help you”, "I'm not concerned for myself or seeking revenge I'm just concerned for others that they won't have to experience the terrible things I have."
An interesting study of administrative medicine showed that administrators were incapable of recognizing sociopaths which were readily identified by a judge.  As a family physician I had difficulty understanding certain psychiatric patients referring several a year to psychiatrists. Now I have seen tens of thousands and spent 4 decades working with psychopaths, sociopaths, psychotics and addicted I'm very experienced in this process. I actually find alot of people rather 'loud' because they're literally shouting their psychopathology and neediness and showing all manner of verbal, non verbal behaviours usually without any insight whatsoever.  Bullies are especially transparent.  Lawyers and administration are often a bit amusing to a psychiatrist because they historically rely on the 19th century masculine idea of 'playing their cards close to their chest” when in fact they radiate 'tells' time and time again mostly because they are so often 'above the law' and lack the skills and fitnesse of those below them or the chameleon psychopaths who routinely use them. Sociopathic women, borderlines are very adept as playing to the sexual weaknesses of the older male authorities by suggestively implying that they find them sexually arousing and that if they're supportive they might well be rewarded. The whole 'victim' culture which has been described extensively as  'cultural marxism" and coopting feminism. (Fiamenco, Hoff Summers, Dana Davison etc).
The stigmatization of mentally ill and addicted  patients has long been associated with an equal stigmatization of those who directly care for such people.  Such care givers are used to the discrimination, the jokes, the demeaning and humiliation that their patients suffer.  There's an element of fear which those unfamiliar with insanity have while those who are insane and especially the dementing are as bad as the 'lady that protestest too much."
Dr. Hannah Drayson, “The Experience of Spontaneity” , Digital Art and Technology, Plymouth University, talked about hypnosis and gave special reference to psychotherapy.  Spontaneity is the antithesis of the Bureaucratic Administrative Process. Indeed the ‘spontaneity’ of President Trump has infuriated the entrenched methodical bureaucratic government awakening from the experience of 2 decades of Lawyer Presidents, Obama, the Clintons and the Bushs. The American populist reaction is simply a backlash against this  perceived elite back room dealing.
Spontaneity is threatening to those ’stuck’. Studies show that ‘learned helplessness’ and the return to the ‘fetal position’ is more common than the idea of renewed ‘escape’ and ‘progress’.  Apathy is the characterization of the Canadian population along with those in asylums and jails. It was the character of the ‘peasants’ both before and after the Revolution and Lenin’s symbolic and actual killing of the Czar , his wife and his children.  The godless state has been more cruel than any godly state before.  Yet Canada trends to this as did the European Union with it’s appalling layers upon layers of  Brussels Bureaurocy. Dr. Phillip Ney has recorded that the numbing of the killing of  abortion in a society has made the administration insensitive to the 'people'.
It’s sad really that Authenticity and Spontaneity, critical to psychiatric psychotherapy and especially Addiction Psychiatry have so little meaning to lawyers and administrators.

As I continued my walk along the Brunette River I was happy to see the green tinged Mallard male and his female mate. There’s a flock of these ducks that commonly make their home along this stretch.
I especially enjoyed seeing the Wood duck male, a very colourful fellow. It was my first sighting of him this spring. I’ve not seen the female. This is likely the couple that has nested the last two years in the little man made lagoon. I so enjoyed watching the couple with their ducklings. Tragically each year I’ve seen the ducklings go missing till none remained.  I suspect a very happy coyote made that lagoon it’s dinner stop.
The mallards don’t seem to have this problem so I was glad to see the Wood Duck further down the stream.  I do hope that the couple have learned that the lagoon is a bad neighbourhood.
I was  blessed to see the Kingfisher darting by above the fast rushing stream. A couple of Kingfishers have made this river home.  I’ve spent years trying to photograph them as the male seems always on the go.
The Great Blue Heron was there too.  He actually let me take his picture. Last year I found his nest high up in the near by woods.  I took a video of him lifting off and was so pleased with myself only to lose it when I didn’t back up my photos.

A number of us with dogs gathered and chatted about the day, dogs, plans, grand children, dogs, children, and dogs, WWIII unfolding, dogs, generally having a good chat. The dogs all licked genitals and sniffed asses. Rick was still wearing his pyjama bottoms.  I came home for my second cup of coffee.

It was a great walk made better by the podcast and delightful first sightings of returning birds. The flowers are all blossoming. The daffodils are truly a delight. We are making plans to visit the Tulips near Abbotsford.  Le Conner near Bellingham and now the Canadian Tulips are an annual wake up experience for the winter weary brain.

Spring is such a joy with all it’s authenticity and spontaneity.













Friday, April 13, 2018

Libet , Free Will, Masculine God and the Energy Matrix

Benjamin Libet’s  experiment went like this.  He had volunteers hooked up to electro encephalograms and make a spontaneous movement. There was a precise timer each volunteer read at the moment they became aware of the urge to act.  There was a 200 millisecond delay, on average, between subjective urge and objective movement.

A signal appeared in the brain even earlier, approximately 500 milliseconds and  this was called the ‘readiness potential’.  This was interpreted initially as a blow to ‘free will’ and evidence of ‘determinism’ or ‘fate’.  That is not thought the case today as further experiments unfold. Trevena and Miller in University of Otago showed that it was unclear what the ‘readiness potential’ was as it was present regardless of the decision to act. Scourged and his team recently hypothesized that neural noise must pass a threshold and that this appeared like an readiness potential.  

First this all adds to the notion of the human and free will as a ‘second response” or ‘after thought”.  In spiritual theological terms God is considered male and man collectively female. God acts and man reacts.  Hence the prayer Thy Will Be Done rather than My Will Be Done.

The determinist position would be that we are a comic strip but unfortunately the ego of aetheists and determinists is too large for that.  They hypocritically deny free will but demand credit and esteem for denying free will. They deny God yet want the praise we give God. We are an after thought. Our actions follow thoughts by milliseconds.  Neuroscience teaches that consciousness itself is an after thought.

The Now is perhaps a ‘field’.  This brings forward the idea of the brain itself as not being the centre of the universe but rather an organic computer , like a communication receptor which can receive messages from elsewhere.

In further studies of the Libet phenomena  an observer could predict the movement before the volunteer even had the ‘urge’ to act.  This could indeed be a model of God and creation. String theory allows for the emergency switch and spontaneous unplanned or predicted events. God could interrupt a particularly catastrophic action.  It’s not so much what God does as what God prevents.  The possibility is raised.

But how this observer can manipulate action is as yet unknown.  It is known that the observer looking at the EEG could be prescentient.  The image follows of the neuroscientist as ‘brain reader’ and ‘soothsayer’. Armed with a portable EEG he could be a fine mentalist addition to any carne fortune teller’s game.

I like this research as I’ve been following it since the 80’s interested in the fundamental question of psychiatry which is ‘change’.  Can interventions bring about change.

St. Paul’s state “I do what I don’t want to do and I don’t do what I want to do’. This has been my central issue of research and reflection since I was a family physician and a patient died because he didn’t take the medication that was recommended to him by three physicians and not only that lied about not taking it.

That one case  lead to my interest in non compliance and non adherence to medical regimen.this is common in 30% or more of general clinical medicine rising to 80% in psychiatric medicine. It’s the elephant in the living room government denies.  Eventually this interest lead to addiction and addiction addiction psychiatry where St Paul would flourish.

Administrative medicine is an extension of legal medicine and exists purely by war and diplomacy and leverage, a rationalists wet dream, a purely masculine Mars God activity with all the room possible for grandiosity. It’s based on a set of outdated unscientific ideas that don’t take into account Libet or the unconscious. 

By contrast a clinician struggles with this rather beguiling phenomena.  Can I change this disease.  Can I help this person get a life. Mental health is the ability to love, work and play. Can I with a variety of tools in the armementariam change this persons desire to kill themselves or others.

 But most importantly can I do it without force and without paying the person. The family physician predominantly works with the conscious processes but a psychiatry addresses the unconscious and communicates in specific ways to achieve a mutual aim of change. It’s the exact opposite of coercive administrative medicine.

We found that we could change all manner of behaviour the way lawyer, administrators and judges and politicians do by ‘buying’ or ‘threatening’ people or causing pain or removing things.  This is what I did to some extent  as a family physician and especially in surgery. I worked in the conscious realm.  

As a psychiatrist I worked in the realm of conflicting internal programs , the anima or female and the animus or male.  I noted long ago that I could stop people killing themselves. When I was a family physician and later as a resident my patients killed themselves.  I actually stopped suicide in a suicide ward and reduced attempts remarkably and the effects of these interventions persisted for years.

However the government and administrative doctors in Canada have moved into killing people. Euthanasia is all the rage and death is paid for more than life. We’ve seen this extensively in the Planned Parenthood Abortion Industry Scandal with it’s billions of dollars funding.

I see tombstones in peoples eyes. I looked at an administrative doctor and saw tombstones in his eyes. He couldn’t tell the difference between lie and truth and literally used the metaphor for ‘entertainment’ as his idea of what a doctor’s role. He really believed that medicine was just a Shakespearean Stage.  But he had obviously never studied the Fool and knew less about their wisdom .
I believe this as a Tibetan Buddhist and St. John mystic might. But his choice of this view was based on his dying and the failure of his life like those who ‘give up’  increasing numbers seek euthanasia. The mentally ill are demonized by those who deny their own pain. Such a shame.

Like lawyers and men of the 19th century they talk of ‘pain’ in a mechanical way.  They actually live
in their ‘actuarial’ materialistic constructs. They are money and numbers. A comic strip 2 dimensional
reward seeking animal soulless machine construct.

Yet the universe is fractals and time. These experiments challenges the creepy silliness of the political
 administrative processes  so utterly outdated and so banal.

They do not know what they do.

But then I’m but a  kazoo in the symphony of life. I actually am a psychiatrist who reads the research and questions the very existence of this world. Because that’s the essence of psychiatry, reality. Do we create it or does it create us.  Whose pulling the string. It’s what a professional psychiatrists do not what lawyers or administrative doctors do despite their grandiosity and arrogance coupled with banal committees.

The administrative doctor is a slave.  The professional was once ‘free’. But we’re all selling our soul  to the company store.  Yet someone may be watching.  And we may be on the verge of WWWIII.  If it is a comic strip and my thoughts are merely voice over then I really must think more about those ‘b’ observers and the ‘energy matrix’.

The Swami said, “I am the bubble , make me the sea”.  I do that which I don’t want to do and don’t do that which I want to do.  My patients are pre contemplation, contemplative, determined and action phased..  The guys with the guns always cut the Georgian knots. it’s an Alexander thing. .  Their administrations are thuggish, careless, wasteful, lacking finesse, good at killing. Suck at healing.
I’m uncertain.  Ambivalent.  There seems a higher path. Thy will be done. I.d like to talk to the observer.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Gratitude Wednesday April 11,2018

Thank you Lord for this day, thank you for Gilbert and George. Thank you for Laura. THANK YOU FOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS. THANK YOU FOR WORK. THANK YOU FOR WARMTH. Thank you for food and fluids. Thank you for my Mini Cooper S. Thank you fro the Chicken tenders.. Thank you for my home. Thank you for ginger ale. Thank you for You Tube. thank you for internet. Thank you for music. Thank you for this night. Thank you for men. Thank you for meetings. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for full screen tv. Thank you for fresh air. Thank you. Thy will be done.

Saturday, April 7, 2018

The Truth about Feminism, Cultural Marxism and Why I Love Women

The Suffragette movement was Christian women wanting the vote just as Christian women had been the moving force behind outlawing slavery.  I was part of the Women’s Liberation Movement which at the time was an extension of the Human Liberation Movement. The Liberation movements were Christian and non Christian but absolutely meritocracy and not anti men.  They simply said that a society should allow equal participation in the pursuit of work.  Tokenism was not a part of the Women’s Liberation Movement.  It was a movement of meritocracy.
In WWII it had been seen that women could do the jobs traditionally taken by men. In peace time women pilots wanted to remain as such having proven that they could fly among a lot of other activities.  There was no reason to ‘exclude’ people from the ‘competition’ for work. It was in the best interest of society as a whole if the ‘best’ person got the job. There was no such insanity as todays corrupted ‘equality’ and ‘social justice’ movemnts.
My brilliant colleague who had survived Auschwitz got into immense difficulties with low brow administrations for describing "modern feminism as one of the maggots crawling off the dead body of Marx, Freud and Darwin". Cultural Marxism was the bastard child of International Communism which attempted to lure people to it’s failed doctrines by wedding Freud with Marx in the infamous Frankfurt School.
Hoff Summers wrote the seminal book, “Who Stole Feminism, How Women Betray Women, in the 80’s.  She went on to write the even more poignant book “The War on Boys” years ago. I bought dozens of copies of her books and gave them to the College of Physicians and Surgeons after being told by the Assistant Registrar, “Women don’t lie about Sex”.
I have felt so alone and defeated and vulnerable facing these arrogant powerful women who claim that they are powerless victims all the while getting their boyfriends, to day the State, to beat you up if they don’t like you, your ideas or your girlfriend.  I was knifed in high school because I refused to sleep with a drunk bad girl who hated my girlfriend so sicced her dumb ass biker boyfriend on me.  My friend did a study of bar fights a few years later recording how most were initiated by a fight between women. Of course this indirect aggression is beyond the ken of people who still believe Hitler invaded Austria to protect German born living there.  Chamberlain’s and Eva Brawns rule today.
The bullies always try to say you’re alone but that’s not the case any more. Two Steps ahead of the crowd and you’re a martyr. One step ahead of the crowd you’re a leader.
Hoff—Summers remains a leader.  But she is not alone. When the likes of PM Justin Trudeau start calling them selves Feminist, you have to know that it’s well past it’s due date. Unfashionable big time among the intelligent.  But there are still the Tide Pod swallowers and condom sniffers so it will be a while yet before it stops its rampage of destruction.
Real Women persist and increasingly they don’t call themselves Feminist as they win Nobel Prizes not because of their genitalia but because of their achievements.  Meritocracy is the basis of civilization.  Just because a person is mentally retarded doesn’t mean they should have the job of prime minister or that a 600 lb  fat person should be picked to be an astronaut because we want to be ‘inclusive’.  Women’s Studies and Gender Studies are as dead as Eugenics and Phrenology.  Thank Goodness.
Now we can hope that Canada will catch up and move into the 21st century.

Christina Hoff Sommers
https://youtu.be/Gsxjaa1P9kI
https://youtu.be/wPgoyK_5KV0


Camile Paglia
https://youtu.be/wPgoyK_5KV0

Jordan Peterson
https://youtu.be/wPgoyK_5KV0

Young women agaisnt feminism
https://youtu.be/wPgoyK_5KV0

Diana Davison

https://youtu.be/o1qN19P2nkg

https://youtu.be/RDbvfW0opX4

Janice Fiamengo  - The Fiamengo File
https://youtu.be/JjUyWNFOT7A

Brendan O'Neil

https://youtu.be/KcLN2U_HJp8


Feminism is as outdated as bell bottoms.  Women are not. I love bright women and bright men.

Gratitude for Canadian Judges

I have been fortunate to work in the courts in Canada and the United States. In both countries I have been very impressed with the knowledge and character of the judges who I have observed. There have been rare exceptions to this. Overall my experience has been exceedingly positive.
I had a moment to reflect on this when a middle eastern man reminded me that we are truly  fortunate in Canada to have judges who are experienced, trained, honest and just.
“In the middle east my business covered several countries and the nature of my business meant I was involved with the courts, legitimately, not criminally.   The courts and the judges there are are generally corrupt.  I’ve had a chance to compare. It’s a bit like hockey and soccer.  Soccer, you know the game is fixed.  Maybe not as bad as wrestling but fixed nonetheless. Alll those players falling down is just too convenient.  If hockey is fixed it’s not so apparent. Not with the players anyway. Maybe occasionally the refs."
He went on to say,"In the middle east, if you want to murder someone and you don’t involve the judge in your plan he’s likely to  consider it a personal affront. You see you’re supposed to speak to him first.  He’ll tell you how much he will need to get you off.  He’ll then say it’s okay to murder.  The police will catch you.  You will appear in court. But then the judge, if he’s been paid off properly, will find some way to let you go free.  If you don’t include him at the outset and just murder someone and show up in court, well, that’s just inconsiderate. You can still go free, if you pay the judge.  But the cost will be double or triple what it would have been.  That’s for disrespecting the judge.  Disrespect is the most serious crime. That’s what I mean when I say the middle east is corrupt."
I personally don't know if this is 'true'. It's certainly reflects what so many have told me.
I remember an experience when I was sailing along the coastal towns in Mexico.   I had to pay for a local license and visited the judge in his office.  The license was only a matter of a few hundred dollars but I’d brought a wad of pesos.  When I pulled it out of my jean pocket, the judge literally jumped out of his chair and began closing the blinds so no one could see in.
“I’m sorry about this,” he said, taking the money.”  “My predecessor was totally corrupt and wouldn’t do anything without his palm being greased. I took this position on the basis of cleaning up the corruption.  You can’t imagine how bad it would look for me if someone looked in and saw a gringo giving me this great wad of cash.  I’m sure you understand."
I thought him a brave man knowing how many people of integrity are killed in government position by drug and arms traffickers.
I laughed though and said I did understand. But really I didn’t.  Canada just never was that corrupt in my experience. Perhaps my concern is that when I was growing up we could leave our houses unlocked.  I lock everything in Canada today.
I knew that if I wanted anything to be done in Asia when I was there I had to give a little ‘incentive’ to the person serving me. It was like the hotel staff in New York City and Paris.  Hong Kong, Tokyo, and LA, this 'tip' thing may well be just 'big city' .  Hotel staff  stand  and wait clearing their throats until I pay them, leaving me feeling somehow 'unsophisticated' because I don't know the latest 'palm greasing percentage' or situations where this is warranted.  
A supervisor in provincial government services told me how frustrating it was these days constantly watching the new immigrant employees. “They simply can’t believe that we don’t get money on the side for every government transaction that we do. I’ve had to stop them repeatedly and even get them to give back money. They’ve actually complained that they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of getting a government job if they’d known how little it was going to pay. “In our country,” they say, "the salary is just the base pay. All the real money is made in the  extras"  I have to tell them over and over again that’s called ‘extortion’ in this country. Of course Trudeau’s ‘pay for access’ makes them not believe me.  They tell me that Canada is multi cultural and wink. It’s  becoming a problem but only for me."
A professor of political science explained to me that we don’t have ‘baksheesh’ in the west like they do in the east but “institutional backsheesh’ is alive and well.  Our taxations schemes and various other formulas are used to reward or punish industries or companies. That’s what all the ‘lobbies’ are for, regulations that favour their clients. It's the foundation of the corruption in Ottawa and Washington and all government cities in Europe. Brussels is the absolute ground zero of this explosion in corruption.
In Communist Countries  judges routinely convicted prisoners of conscience and sent them to the Gulag or the Psychiatric wards.  As a member of the Psychiatrists against Political Abuse of Psychiatry and Human Rights Associations it's always amazing to see the endemic corruption in communist countries that seem to glossed over or completely ignored by the our mainstream media.   The 'missing persons of Argentinia' were a fraction of the numbers that still go missing in China.
You are considered a criminal or psychotic if you question government or say anything against Marx.  As a godless political system it takes as much offence to any questioning of Marx as the Muslims do when you question Mohammed or state the simple truths about Islam.  The judges in communist countries were all corrupt, individually and collectively.  Communism, a committee dictatorship, was like other dictatorships, corrupt to the very core.
I did pro bono work with Mr. Dugald Christie, the amazing lawyer who set up the pro bono services in the British Columbia. We attended church together and he really was a hard man to say no to considering his impeccable character. Indeed I never did say no to him.   But all the pro bono work I’ve done has sure got me in a lot of hot water with government.  There’s usually an unspoken and often political reason for a person being without support.  Dugald Christie argued that the cost of legal matters in Canada was such that the middle and lower classes simply couldn’t afford the process.  This was outside the domain of the judges and more a reflection of the political system.
The judges in Canada, as I’ve already said, have all individually with rare exception been stirling characters.  We are very fortunate and I do hope that we can remain so with all the pressures on them these days from the Dark Side.  I don’t think we appreciate the judges as much as we deserve because Canadians compare them in general against some ‘idealized’ standard.
I’d not exchange our Canadian or the American judges I've known for any judges in other parts of the world even the little I do know of them.  Certainly I'd not want to face judges in dictatorships like most of the UN member countries or  the communist countries, or South  Americas, and definitely not most of Africa and  increasingly in more countries in Europe where corruption stories are rife.   Definitely I don't want to face judges in the middle east.  This may be in part because I've seen first hand and heard first hand the stories of rank abuse physically and sexually from patients who've had that misfortune.
We simply are very fortunate in Canada to have the judges we have.  We really should acknowledge it .

Monday, April 2, 2018

Spring Images, Easter and Gratitude

Thank you Lord for all your blessings. Thank you for healing. Thank you for Easter. Thank you for the spring. Thank you for family and friends. Thank you for Kevin and Anna and Laura and the God Children. Thank you for work. Help me to let go of the resentments for false witness.  Help me to live in this ‘post truth’ society. Help me to forgive the atheists and heathens who attack Christians. Help me to forgive the ignornant who flash pseudoscience to the masses to take advantage. Help me overcome jealousy and envy. Help me to maintain integrity in face of the rewards for terrorists and liars and their unsavoury supporters. Help me Lord be more at peace.Thank you for the resurrection. Thank you for NSRU.  Thank you for the inspiration. Help me to know which way to turn. Guide me in the coming weeks   Thank you for the healing that has helped me physically and emotionally these last weeks. Thank you for mobility. Thank you for my motorcycle and the joy in the open highway. Thank you for Gilbert and George. Thank you for my home. Thank you for friendships and family. thank you for Laura and Lorne this week. Thank you for Brian, Barbara, Vivian, Michel, Antonnio, George, Gayle, Peter, and all the others I saw this weekend.  Thank you for Christ Church Cathedral. Thank you for the organ and the brass. Thank you for the Vancouver Convention Centre. Thank you for Harley Davidson.  Thank you for spring flowers.  Thank you for all the blessings. Thank you for the sunshine. Thank you for the hopes in good weather and the promises.  Thank you Lord.
Trev Deely Cared for My HD all winter.

Laura and I loved this movie on Shaw.

Palm Sunday at Good Shepherd Church with Kevin, Anna, Laura and the God Kids.







Laura and her fans.

Trev Deely Harley Davidson Museum

Picked up fleece on first ride of the season to Chilliwack

Starbucks

Lorne


Cherry Blossoms Strathcona



Coal Harbour from Vancouver Convention Centre

River Walk



Vancouver Convention Centre

Best Buds. Gilbert and George



NSRU




Christ Church Cathedral Easter Morning.