psycho-analysis

My Dear Eurasian Readers

An Autobiography, Of Sorts

By Izzy Ess of Wordiness

My dear Eurasian Readers, who are you?

From Welland in Niagara Peninsula,

I welcome you to read my notions, moods,

Ideas and my poetry.  I’ve shown

You my High Horses and my Soapboxes,

From which I spout my pseudo-expertise

On many subjects, History, Arithmetic,

Geometry and Algebra,

And languages, my vain attempts to speak

To you in English, French and German, Spanish

And Italian, which I have a hungry,

Though not always accurate, big ear

And tongue.  Perhaps, you’d want to know my habits

And my phobias which are a love

Of cooking, food and wine, tobacco and

A lot of tea and coffee.  Wish I could

Say women, but I’m over 5 and 70,

And can no longer do what is expected

Of me, ‘xcept for shaking hands and gentle

Hugging.  Most my kith and kin are certain

That I’m daft and waste my time on poetry

And painting, which, they say will never

Make some money, which is their main goal

In life, it seems to me.  They won’t, or can’t,

Discern my meanings and suspect I’ve lost

My marbles.  Since my readership is mostly

Russian, Polish and Ukrainian,

I do suspect my origins, Hungarian

And Austrian, Ukrainian and Polish,

Have come to the fore.  My music is

Eclectic.  Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven,

Ravel are favourites while sometimes,

I’m in moods for Chopin and Muzorfski,

Pink Floyd, Chicago, Beatles, Simon/Garfunkel,

Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Stewart,

Weber, Sondheim, Gilbert and Sullivan,

Rogers and Hammerstein, Frank Sinatra,

Brubeck, Desmond, Eastwood, Oscar Peterson,

Amah Jamal, Neil Diamond and

Barb Streisand.  Favourite wines are Beaujolais

And Pinot Noir, Chablis and Schwartze Katz.

I listen mainly to the classical@wned.org,

And jazz@fm.91 from Buffalo,

NY, and Toronto, ON,

And Blue Jays baseball games on AM 590

From Toronto.  I do attend

A failing Synagogue in Niagara

Falls, Ontario and a huge thriving

Fallsview Casino, there.  I attend

A thriving Anglican, a thriving Canadian

United and a thriving

Sacre Coeur, French Catholic church in

Welland, depending on my mood, on Sunday

Mornings and which place of worship they

Serve coffee.  My room-mate is my Pee-Pee,

A Precious Princess Penelope, my

Calico kitten.  We do go for walks

In hallways of my tenement.  I love

To ride my bicycle and save a lot

On gasoline, around the town.  My birthday

Is in 1938, the 15^th

Of February.  I grew up in poorer

Neighbourhoods of Hamilton, Ontario,

Where my best friends were Japanese, Afro-

Canadian, native Canadian

And an Italian.  We played baseball,

Made igloos in the wintertime and ran

The rails of an industrial train spur

That came right up my street.  We lived across

The road from the Steel Company of Canada

Where during WWII they manufactured

Some small tanks and huge bomb shells.

Attending Hess Street Public School, I flunked

My Kindergarten, immature and underage.

I skipped grades 2 and 7.  I attended

Westdale Secondary School in Hamilton

And Vaughan Road, a Collegiate in

Toronto.  Graduating summa cum

Laude with high enough examination

Marks to enter Faculty of Medicine

At the demanding University

Of Toronto and graduated

Well with Letters and a Cup in Games

Of Squash and Water Polo.  Internship

In all subspecialties was done at Toronto

General Hospital and the

Toronto Hospital for Sick Children.

I was married in June of 1960.

We moved to Denver where my son was born

In 1962.  I studied cardiopulmonary

Physiology,

Learning the techniques of cardiac

Catheterization and angiography

And Pulmonary Function Testing.

I participated in research

In exercising at high altitudes

And some techniques of heart and lung transplants.

In 1964, we moved to

Chicago, Illinois, where second son

Was born in 1966.  I worked

At Michael Reese Hospital in the field

Of Medicine where I was Junior, Senior

And Chief Resident.  Some research, that

I did, involved techniques of saving patients

Who had deadly Cardiogenic

Shock.  The Hospital staffers at Michael

Reese, as well as the American

College of Cardiology, supported

My family for two years at University

Of Berne’s Physiology

Institute, where I learned fine techniques

Of measuring transmembrane voltages

And currents in cardiac muscle fibres

Gleaned from calves and sheep.  I studied the

Effects of Quinidine and found a reason

For the frequent incidence of Cardiac

Arrest, which I presented to

American Society for Clinical

Investigation and some other

Universities.  At Michael Reese,

From 1969 to 1973,

I worked full-time at the Hospital, teaching,

Patient care, research, administration.

Also, I gave Physiology

Courses to students at the University

Of Chicago.  My research was not successful and my research funds ran out, especially after Nixon was elected in 1972.  At that time, my marriage was failing.  After 14 years my wife and I called it quits and divorced.  My boys were 12 and 8, at the time.  Depressions which were mild until that time, became more troublesome.  I had started Psychoanalysis with Dr. Charles Shaiova, which continued for about ten years.  My worst depressions centered around the loss of my family, followed by the illegitimate birth of my daughter in 1974.  I felt extremely guilty and had tremendous mood swings, mainly unipolar.  The death of my mother in the 1980’s caused another series of dysfunctional depressions.  At one time I made no income for almost three years.  I did manage to have three important relationships with women, all of which could have led to marriage.  I’m sure that my instability was bothersome to others, as well as to myself.  I met and married my second wife.  The marriage was quickly seen as disasterous, inasmuch as my second wife and I were both unstable and unable to help each other with love and understanding.  In 1973, I had opened an office in Hinsdale, Illinois, and started what turned out to be a large practice in the area of Internal Medicine and Pulmonology.  My divorce and paternity suit halted my successes.  I made a suicide attempt in 1982.  Luckily, it was not successful.  I was hospitalized for 3 months at the Illinois State Psychiatric Hospital in Chicago, where I played Ping-Pong daily.  When I was released, my home had been robbed.  My car was already gone because of repossession.  I was given Lithium which I was able to get off in 18 months.  It stifled all my creativity and what I thought of as my happy disposition.  After my second divorce, I again became deeply depressed and expressed suicidal thoughts.  I was hospitalized for three months at Milwaukee Psychiatric Hospital.  I was given Prozac and experienced a severe episode of Mania, which only calmed down after the Prozac was discontinued.  The cognitive and behavioural modification psychotherapy I received was excellent and I felt I had better insight and was better able to relate to kith and kin.  I was, however, out of a job, out of a place to live and out of a car, which had been repossessed.  I called my sister, and brother-in-law, in Welland, Ontario, Canada, and they invited me to stay with them until I got back on my feet.  I crossed the USA-Canadian border, giving up my Green card and showing my Canadian Passport and there was no difficulty moving back to Canada after 30 years of being out of the country.  This was January 2, 1992.  I had left Canada June 23, 1962.  Most of the time, I lived in the USA, mainly in Chicagoland.  My time in Switzerland was from July 1, 1967 to July 12, 1969.  I reapplied for my license to practice Medicine and Surgery and was re-instated by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, after presenting my credentials, which were incidentally difficult to retrieve, as are any 30+ year old records.  I had made contact with a busy General Practitioner in Welland who was very interested in my moving into his office suite, and I did so April 28, 1992, the day the CPSO declared that my Ontario license had been re-instated.  I accepted the status of GP inasmuch as I had failed to successfully write the exams for Internal Medicine Specialization and Cardiopulmonary Subspecialization, during the time that I spent in the USA, practicing as an Internist.  My interest in Psychiatry had been growing with the time I spent under psychiatric care.  In Canada, I was able to become a GP Psychotherapist, not a specific subspecialty in the USA.  There were at one time 500 GPP’s across Canada; I was the only one in Welland and it attracted a large clientele for my practice in an office with several other practitioners.  At age 65, I called it quits when I was impecunious, again, and tired.  My source of income which was labouriously established are government pensions.  The Social Security payments from the USA, which should have been substantial were reduced drastically because of arrearage in child support payments.  This is still an ongoing problem.  However, the supplements and social security coming to me now is adequately enough to get me by if I can find lower rental apartments and ride my bicycle instead of my car, cancel my cable TV and keep the air conditioner off.  I may even be eligible for rent subsidization, which I have received in the past.  My sister and my brother-in-law and my brother have kicked in some money, at times for rent and other necessities.  I would certainly like to be independent enough to not have to ask my siblings for money, but sometimes there is nothing else I can do with a fixed governmental pension that doesn’t rise with the rising costs of everything.  I’ve won prizes for my poetry, but an income therefrom has not been possible.  The publishing that I do on the internet has seemingly suddenly come to the attention of many people.  My blogging programme has shown that most of my readers are from Russia, while my most responsive readers have been Polish, as far as I can tell.

I started writing this as a poetic appeal to my readers, whom I appreciate.  I would like to get some real feed-back, inasmuch as I’d like to know to whom I am appealing.  I am feeling better and freer than I have ever felt in my life-time.  One of my psychiatrists predicted this if I reached the age of 70 or more.  The pressure for making money is gone.  My mood swings have been getting smaller and smaller.  I don’t expect to be dysfunctionately depressed, again, but I may be over optimistic.  With patients and with myself, I’ve spent a lot of time estimating the degree of depression by testing.  I would estimate that my daily, “normal” moods now vary between +10 and -10.  In the distant past, I did have swings which were +100 to -100, though most of the time, my changes were over a period of months and generally non-dysfunctional, especially in the last 10 years.  My personality includes my talkativeness, apparently bothersome to my kith and kin from day one…

Well, my dear reader, I hope this is of interest to you.  If you have the time and inclination to give me some feedback, I would be overjoyed… I think.  Believe it or not, I did not include ALL the details that I could have included, but if you are curious enough to ask, I will do my best to answer.  If this has turned you off and you will no longer be a reader of my blogs, I guess, “you win some, and you lose some.”  If it has further piqued your interest in my blogs, then I shall have “won.”  If I have “lost,” then so be it.  Amen and Hallelujah!  May you find Peace and Happiness in all your personal and professional endeavours.

THE END

© izzy sommers, md., retired, Welland, Canada, July 14, 2013