Pain is ever present and her brother despair is always lurking.

I was overtaken yesterday despite some buoyancy post Burning Man.  I feel the decompression and already miss my campmates enthusiasm and the joy of life that flows there from the vast vistas of nature and the captivating art and the human care and wild creativity and personal adornment.  The permission-- like oxygen.
It is all here I know I just have to go and get it.
I had left my diclofenac and loperamide creams up north.  I had used a lot of loperamide the last days for tear down and exodus and the inflammatory side effects have hit me through the week.  But is is more the loss of momentum...if the morning gets away from me I am easily overtaken and the day is lost.  Another day lost.

But not yet today...

I need hugs and movement to distract. 
This writing a bit is something.

Maybe to water the garden.

I realize I continue to do a lot of drug therapy consulting.
Each week at the Elks Lodge. 
And friends of friends aware of my alternate cancer treatment call to discuss my experience and options available. 
Chit chatting about pain when I open up about it-- I've used some clever innovation.

I have not been getting out much but when I do people still want to talk medication-- for clarification, options, advice regarding how to talk to their medical doctors.

At first I thought they were just being nice or making conversation.  But people want help. 
It is nice that ten years of school and twenty years of pharmacy work is valued.
But how does one receive renumeration without selling a product?

I physically can't move product and wield phones in the trenches anymore.  I'm encouraged...but I don't yet see a way.

So I am still pondering how to move forward and specifically regarding CBD.

Three years I have been in debilitating pain wandering in despair.  The only break was during cancer treatment.

I used cannabis successfully to treat a tumor and experienced pain relief for 3 months.  My plan was to get better and get back to pharmacy work part time.

But my physical pain rebounded as did the melancholy.  The dilemma is that cannabis is still schedule one-- federally designated as a narcotic with no medical benefit--and I would not be able to work as pharmacist as employers generally drug test at hiring, promotions and for cause. So I have fought to be pain free naturally using neuroplastic reprogramming techniques, anti inflammatory diet, a lot of heat, physical/massage therapy when I think can afford it, and occasional opiate use.

I don't want to be dopey but the pain I am in already prevents me from doing calculations or being social for any length of time.  I can put on a mask of composure for a conversation, maybe an hour or even an afternoon occasionally but I am not ready for prime time.

I have to try something else.

The question is... is it time to just let pharmacy go and live whatever life I can.
Can I be done with this arm, neck , back pain and malaise?

Can I throw off cultural conditioning to the dipoles of rabid ambition chasing achievement and intermittent debilitation to find some middle ground where I might enjoy the time I have left on Earth.  Will I lose mental capacity and short term memory to dopiness?...have I lost it already to years of pain, isolation and depression?

Is CBD worth throwing out the past livelihood in hopes of some new future?

Progress.

I am up.  I am out of bed.
Over the last three years I have had days at a time where I am locked in pain wallowing in darkness.
So by that measure today is good.

Three years ago I could not lift my laptop without shooting pain up my left arm deep to my neck.
Now, last night I slept prone with my head turned...the neck is freer.
But still with a heating pad on it, it still aches.  And arms and shoulders.

I looked over some doctor notes and none of them actually describe what is going on in my body...are they even listening?  I'll have to write it down myself.  Healing is likely always done by the self.
But I would like a doc who can listen and help me solve these puzzles of pain, malaise and despair.

But I am up.
And typing.
And I slept well.

Life is good.

I spent some time with an old friend and he relayed the story of coaching his girlfriend 's teenage son about reading "big" books.

The boy said he couldn't possibly read the large tomes assigned in school.

My friend explained how he could break it down, a little at a time and of coarse he could read a large book.

The best books are "big" and if you can read you can read a big book.

I was hearing this.. as I have not read a book in over three years.

I have been in pain for a decade but at a level these last years where I cannot concentrate more than a few minutes.

I had given up.  Reading only Twitter and short Face Book posts for news and inspiration.  No books. No more Harper's, Economist, medical texts, nothing save the occasional poem.
Thank goodness for the forwarded Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, Rumi and Garrison Keillor's anthology of good poems or my brain would have dried up completely.  Even an only weekly life support poem.

But I heard my friend.  I am going to read a book.  Even if I have to take a lot of drugs to do it.

While you were in the lab inhaling chemicals the culture of medicine changed and your work is not so relevant anymore.  I imagine that is the fear driving the banshee cries for credentials when solid queries from the layman arise about the nature of healing and the resources allocated for it.
Where the relationships happen, where decisions are made, where people get hurt or get healed, is in the prescribers office and the pharmacy counter and with family....not so much in the lab.
Knuckle dragging chest thumping scientists who refuse to use their minds instead to defend burning towers and crumbling institutions--so last century.

Following an intuition to go to my alma mater UCSF School of Pharmacy for career guidance I e-mailed four professors.
My body is broken to a degree preventing me from performing the tasks I have for 17 years as a pharmacist: repetitive lifting above the chest, opening bottles, cradling phones and writing, looking up and down all day.  I am looking for a new way to make a living.
I contacted professors with similar interests to mine: all keep a hand in academics and writing, diabetes, psychopharmacology and supplements and integrative medicine.
Two did not respond.
One very graciously explained that I am too old to do residency and academics and should consider government regulatory or sales jobs.
One is recently deceased in Las Vegas apparently having left the university attempting to open an internet pharmacy.
But there may be some volunteer mentoring opportunities.
And I would genuinely like to do that.

My housemate murdered another person this morning.

My housemate murdered another person this morning.
Brutally over the course of two hours.
I was powerless to stop it.
He apparently has a new victim nearly every morning.
And I am afraid to leave my room until the carnage is over.
It starts in his bathroom--which adjoins my bedroom wall-- with the opening and slamming of approximately 20 drawers and cabinets.  I can only imagine he is frantically selecting the perfect weapons.

Then I believe he transitions to waterboarding and various forms of electrical torture judging from the sounds of toilet flushings and vibrato buzzings and coughs and belches.

It really ramps up as the melee moves to the kitchen.
I can only imagine the terrible war crimes and atrocities committed involving knives, metal pots and pans thrown around like axes, and ... coffee grinding?  Vitamix blending?  I am sure it is much more sinister.

It comes to a close with several door slammings as I can only imagine the larger body parts that were not ground in the Vitamix and coffee grinder are dragged out for dispersion and disposal so as to be undiscoverable by satellite imaging or the latest K-9 search and rescue techniques.

I check that the coast is clear out my shower window and emerge with forensic intent to discover that the place doesn't look too bad.  An occasional dinner plate chip, sometimes an oven burner still on or microwave door open.   Nothing I can really call the cops or the FBI about.

I keep looking for clues.

Breath.

Something that has fueled me and put me at ease:
Still in bed I follow my breath: past my heart into my lungs
I really savor each breath.
Just a few breaths even.
Imagine watching the easy breath of a sleeping baby...then watch your own breath with that magic and wonder.  Follow it for a bit.

In a morning dream someone called it "Priming the pump" for the day.

If I can get to bed early and awaken before the alarm this is has a profound positive effect on my day. I can then set intentions for a good day.  Just like my gratitude practice at bedtime this helps me be more centered and rested and it can be done alone or with a partner-- it feels good to me.


Breath is amazing as it happens without intent.  I had a self defense instructor who emphasized that we were meant to survive and to prove his point he asked us to hold our breath until we died.  Even people with the will to refuse to breath to asphyxiation and pass out will awaken and breath. Breathing is integral but can be influenced by anxiety (unconscious) or by intent (conscious) and just its mere observation makes it more easeful.

Breath is bigger than the mind.  Breath fuels life from life (i.e. the  animal and plant respiration/photosynthesis cycle) so it connects us to the whole biome--to all of life.  Following the breath is a ticket and a key.

I just have to turn of all the screens and electronics long enough to do really enjoy it!

Musing: In the wild and free states like Montana and Alaska there is a common sense of both individuality and community and people feel the obligation to stop senseless violence.  There firearms are like cars or power tools: dangerous but part of making life work.  They are tools responsible people maintain and secure.
In the "TV states" like NY and CA people's association with firearms is that only criminals have them.  It is a dangerous assumption to perpetuate as criminals/predators need to know there may be consequences to criminal behavior.
I take inspiration from the Monarch Butterfly-- as do many species that mimic them.  Monarch's contain the toxins of the plants they ate as caterpillars and are unpalatable to many predators.  Google "Batesian mimicry."  Society benefits from the knowledge of the presence of ethical armed people.  Thats where the free states seemingly confounding statistic of crime decreasing with more guns/less gun laws originates.  Like the French Paradox in health where the French eat a high fat diet and drink alcohol and live longer than Americans who appear to do the same: the mechanisms are obscure on paper but more obvious in life.  The source of the food and moderation are likely key.
Maybe working in healthcare I've seen more of the equation of life-- e.g. for a time I gave shots (long acting antipsychotic IM injections)  to formerly psychotic pedophiles that allowed them to have normal lives in the community-- maybe near you.  I've helped the so called good and bad and seen them both behave completely out of character.  And felt the pater/maternal instinct to protect loved ones and employees with less than favorable odds.  I currently pay the rent by selling narcotics-- as a pharmacist-- in a higher crime area in a pharmacy with bullet holes in the windows.  Mostly in California we are blessed with abundance and live violence free lives.  I love it here.
But I know it has not always been the norm in human history and it didn't get this way without strong ethical people.  And it wasn't  John Wayne and the Lone Ranger and an amazing justice system.  It was a lot of good people.  And many of them were armed.

P.S. Cool link: https://kimsmithdesigns.wordpress.com/tag/monarch-butterfly-migration/

"Healthcare" or the War on Health.

I met a passive aggressive tech who put Rx labels on crooked but only on bottles containing Paxil for customers treated for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

I searched all the Paxil patients on the shelf, reapplied the labels and wondered....who has OCD?



 ...wasting.



The acquisition cost of medication is rising faster than the reimbursement schedules...for months independent pharmacies lose money to fill regular customers scripts.  This seems to happen cyclicly routinely.
Is it even a profession if a person/business cannot set their own rates and prices?


...our.


New computer generated prescriptions... I am happy they are legible.... but still without quantities or strength noted or with conflicting directions.   No one goes to the bank with a check that is not signed or dated or has no amount written.  How can these clarification phone calls be necessary?


...lives.


Certified Techs with AA degrees introduce themselves looking for jobs.

"Run away!" I want to say.

"Be healthy and be free."

Ahhh.  My eyes are hungry for beauty again.

Looking out the kitchen window
the morning sun streaming through trees
a quiet house. A quiet  house!

A pulse of creativity
a surge of gratitude.
Life. is. good.



The senses had been so congested
after a thousand phone calls and complaints
and some days of only shallow hurried breaths.

Ahhhh. To breath deep.
To feel the space around me.
I'll just type one observation, play a tune,
do a little art?

Then I'll get back to the phone calls.
And the complaints.

For now I'll take in this visual feast of beauty.
And enjoy some deep full breaths.

Gratitude.

There are only a few dedicated pain doctors in my community.  One in particular pushes the envelope of prescription guidelines.  But he does genetic testing and keeps pain contracts and faxes back when pharmacists ask questions.  Still the BNE and DEA have put him on watch and some pharmacies worried about their license have stopped filling for him.
Meanwhile it seems opium production in Afganistan is doubling every year since the Taliban was bumped out. And somehow there is a heroin and opiate problem burgeoning in my little seaside community.
I am disgusted that a patient of mine with 10 tumors in his spine has to run around and find a new pain doctor while illicit drugs flow in.  This patient will head to a medical marijuana dispensary hopefully with good results.

Adding it up...what a crazy picture.  Eight plus years of school and misguided regulations prevent licensed professionals from treating and managing pain.

I want the flow of foreign illicit drugs to stop and I want local laws and enforcement agencies to support treatment options in medical offices and pharmacies.

Is that unreasonable?


http://www.independent.ie/world-news/afghan-opium-production-hits-record-29750971.html

Two pixel currency.

Currency is valuable especially in our technological world.  Debt currency on a large scale is a dinosaur but what about a gift currency: work is performed and recorded.  That record is traded.  As each trade is made its history becomes a testament to community economy. (*Information regarding debt currency inefficiencies.)

This has been done on paper.  On a small scale it cannot be forged as each transaction is signed.
"Oh I see you cooked meals for old Mrs Smith when she was ill last week, and she had bought a painting from Ana... Yes I'll accept this for an afternoon of landscaping."  And it continues.

I am interested in a medium of exchange created from "tracking pixels" currently used in shipping and advertising.  Any work or trade can be entered into a database and encrypted becoming part of the record of that currency that cannot be forged any more than breaking into a Bank of America's system.  And why forge a history?  Takes too much time.  These can be on phone Passbooks or paper as they would be scanned every time they were used.  Some would have more value than others-- essentially e-denominations.

Such a system would be much easier to program and implement than setting up a bank and credit card system.  Even Nobel Prize and Congressional Medal of Honor winner Muhammed Yunus famous for microcredit could not muster starting a bank in America.  The only fix is innovation.


*Some background regarding how the current system inherently absconds from innovators and laborers.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/its-the-interest-stupid-why-bankers-rule-the-world/5311030
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZkQv25uEs

I do relief pharmacy work and I come into contact with a parade of tragedy called "health care."
Absurdities of health care include its cost, misallocations of labor and capital, dearth of technology widely available in other economic sectors, legislation that panders to BigPharma at the expense of safety, snail paced advancements from lab to journal to practice, sequestrations and sales of health information and acutely: public apathy and fantasy.

As I work in different venues I am driven to grab a prescription pad and scribble an angry little note regarding how some process or adverse effect might be improved or ameliorated.  Coworkers imagine I am writing all kinds of things in the "care culture" where we work under multiple surveillance cameras and a missing dollar or tablet will go down on a permanent employment record.  But my notes have ended up in a smallish shopping bag next to my hamper.  And now the bag is filling up and it is time to share my scribbles on prescriptions in hopes of raising awareness and making some desperately needed improvements.

Welcome to Prescription Rant--  ℞ant

Please contribute and share and let problems and solutions be put in the open.  Let it be known that we can do a whole lot better.

As my hair grows longer I am experiencing an increased ability to appreciate the beauty in the hearts of others...and myself.
Ironically I am taking on a leadership role in a conservative and philanthropic organization where my growing hair seems to be of concern.   Would my leadership ability in this group be compromised by my lengthening wild curls which seem to grow with an empathic ability and desires aligned with its core mission?
Perhaps it is just a coincidence, my empathy is growing regardless of my hair, and the buzz cut of my youth will allow me to me a more effective listener and giver.
But I think of Biblical Sampson.  And of circumcision...the message clear; "Man up at age zero, we own your most sensitive parts and you-- so stop your crying, do what we say and get used to it."
Much of my life I have shrunk myself to make others comfortable.  Obsequious professional requests to allow physicians to keep their licenses for example.  "Please can we change this drug" code for "not kill our patient?"
Personal strength and synergy.   Am I shelving my vitality with a dying organization when I should be building a new one where individuality and synergy are cultivated to positively affect our country rather than the "clone and control" hierarchical methodology of past generations which is obviously floundering.
I believe all ages, abilities and talents can and should be working together to continuously better our society.  I happen to appreciate the conservative and founding values of this great nation and of the philanthropic organization I admire and am proud to be a member.
But do I have to cut my hair?

500 to 1000
Thats what it takes for all the chocolate
of my Soul to be nibbled away

250 I start to feel it.
Like a healing herb
with much of its leaves
eaten by locusts

It takes days to regrow and
like a blade of grass coming up fresh I am very fragile
vulnerable

I need to breathe life in
one breath
At a time

anyone within 50 feet
stifles the growth...sets it back.

vigilance and fear

Is this mental illness?
It is situational...all I need is solitude
breathing it back
And I am creative
I am fun
I am capable.
I am loving

Same as everyone I suppose
why do we deny this to eachother?
It is what we crave.

By 1000 people
My last leaf is trembling.

Common Sense Lawful Defense

How can we pretend there is a rational debate when the phrase "gun control" is mentioned without listing the previous centuries genocides associated with it in Armenia, Russia, Germany, China, et cetera?

When a "debate" is framed by non citizen entertainers antagonizing showmen on a forum interrupted by ads for toothpaste and car insurance.

When the "debate" is supposed to promulgate illegal legislation to change the seed agreements of our prosperous civilization.

Mind you the event precipitating the debate has not been fully investigated yet.  Normally a 2 week period...all records have been sealed for 90 days.

To date our press or Main Stream Media has shown photos of dead Al Caida members, children dead from the flu epidemic, but not a shell casing or drop of blood from Sandy Hook.  No autopsy reports.  No timeline that corresponds to the released nine-one-one tapes.  No surveillance camera tape.  And we are expected to support the castration of only hope for humanity.

What can I possibly mean by the "only hope for humanity?"  The hope that principled and heart centered people can control the US military and financial sector.
A free and critical press and an armed populace are the only things that can keep unlimited power in check.
Certainly in America we do not tolerate police brutality.  Around the world it is another story.

Think our government's force is nice?  Responsive to the needs of humanity?

Agent Orange cancers in Veterans and Vietnamese alike continue.
White phosphorous weapons are not even talked about.  What exactly does a drone strike do?   Depleted Uranium in Fallujah has caused 1/2 pregnancies to terminate early and more than 1/2  that come to term have serious birth defects.
What prevents that kind of firepower and toxic warfare from arriving on Main Street?  I'll tell you: Men who took oaths and have guns.  Good people need to have weapons that intimidate the state.  I say the state not because I am not hopelessly grateful for the American system of governance but because it is always under threat of manipulation by less than benevolent influences.  Good people need to have weapons that intimidate and therefore deter those malevolent influences of our free state.  If not--Armenia, Russia, Germany, China et cetera.

Unless by "gun control" advocates are referring to the practice of using two hands to steady ones weapon in common sense lawful defense of self, family, community and or humanity.

No one hugs like the people of Esalen.

This is the comment I imagine leaving at the end of the Esalen seminar I really want to attend but cannot afford at the moment:

**********

I remember when Esalen was a place for Heart centered living.
A place to heal and to find limits and bolt beyond them.

A community where ethical explorers created massage and psychic modalities,
Grew healthful food and medicine beyond the shackles of Big Agra and Pharma,
A place too far South and far too beautiful for the religious and political police to patrol.
A shinning community on a hill-- A hope for the world.

Now it is just a run down spa with a bitchy office staff.

...but the DJs are good.  And the poets. And the dancers.  And the gardeners.  And the cooks.  And the people cleaning and groundskeeping with light in their eyes...and no one hugs like the people of Esalen.

***********

First of all I want to thank you all for wishing me and my pharmacist colleagues a Happy Pharmacist appreciation month.  That kind of thanks really feels great.  We spend 8 years in school, borrow six figures to do it and stand all day scrutinizing sanscrit and heiroglyphic prescriptions for interactions to save lives.  And looking at sores, rashes and cuts and talking about laxatives.  So thank you.  The flowers, the Starbucks gift cards, wine...all of it.  Thank you...makes it all worth while.

This morning a  nurse called in a prescription for a patient last name of "Laughter'" and I jokingly said "Laughter has not been in this pharmacy for a long time."  I went three years without hearing it at one job.  The harried nurse began to argue, gave me the birthday and curtly exclaimed that this was the patients regular pharmacy.  "Yes Mam" and I took down the prescription.  "Thank you Mam."
Back to assembly line "healthcare."

Next a patient came in and requested a vaccination.  She argued over the cost and insurance billing vociferously for a few minutes.  She really leaned in to my tech--probably the friendliest man I have ever met.  It was getting heavy and I thought about calling the police.

As she went into the waiting room the next two ladies-- one in a wheel chair-- began to mock her.  In a way I could not even dream of doing.  And then these infirm ladies began to cackle.   A cackling that maniacle witches around a cauldron might cackle in the midnight hour after casting a most diabolical spell.  And then giggling-- like those furry laughter toys.  The ones that children like to activate over and over again and they just can't stop.

   I  t    

                   d i d    

                                   n o t    

                                                s t o p.

The pharmacy staff began to get nervous...what the heck was going on out there?  We could not help but smile.  And the line at the pick up window-- 5 deep and dour-- began to crack and smile too.  A giggle-fest was errupting.  Like those pre-teens at camp.  And then rapidly spreading down the dental care aisle.  From the floss all the way to the Dr. Scholls foot care section people were looking up and smiling.  Smiles. Triumphant. Abounding.   Asthmatics began to gasp for air between big belly laughs.  The lady in the wheelchair needed help to right herself.  Was the flat affect schizophrenic who waits solemnly by the vitamins until all are gone to get his meds actually cracking a smile too?  Except for him***EVERYONE*** was laughing.  Some uncontrollably.
I thought I would have to call the paramedics....as one of the older ladies might have broken a rib.  It was out of control laughter like I have NEVER heard in 15 years of pharmacy work.

Totally made my day.

Made my pharmacy month.

No one has actually wished me a happy pharmacy month.  No flowers, Starbucks cards nor wine.  But am so grateful for today's experience that I would like to invite you, should you find yourself in a dour pharmacy line to tell some jokes and bring some levity.  Laughter is so rare in the pharmacy and it was a great gift today.  And I'll make a plea also to please call three days ahead for your meds-- it's the only way it works smoothly these days.  New motto: "Down to 3? Call the Pharmacy!" And if your medicine is helpful or life saving...please consider wishing the staff a happy pharmacy month.

Happy October.