The Misinterpretation of Dreams

Now I’m a Durban girl, but after living in the Western Cape for two years, I decided that I didn’t like Durban all that much. However; over this past weekend I saw Durban anew! I’ve decided that there are some things I still love about Durban.

I think it could be that I was viewing everything from a different perspective, or it could be that living the rural life has just made me gagga for any city. But having breakfast alone on Saturday morning and watching everything go by, this is what I thought:
Durban is the only place where on a Saturday morning in July (the middle of winter) the sun is shining brightly and the beach is FULL of activity. I sat at a window seat at a little restaurant along the beachfront called The Deck and watched the guys playing volley ball, the ricksha men looking for and finding customers, the Muslims dressed in full attire wading in the shallow water, a black boy creating a sand sculpture of Ganesh!!, couples cycling past on their two seater bicycles and of course the surfers with their sculpted bodies making art on the waves. I also caught a glimpse of something slightly inappropriate: a twenty-something year old girl showering topless at one of the cold water showers meant for getting rid of the sand and salt water! But no one batted an eyelid, everyone just went on by as if it was completely normal. I realised that maybe Durban wasn’t as conservative as I sometimes think. Or maybe it’s because toplessness is actually traditional attire for Zulu women, so maybe that’s why it’s not thought of as over exposure on a Saturday morning on the beach?!
I also realised that I don’t have any pictures of Durban, because the camera only tends to come out when I’m on holiday in new places and Durban has never been a new place to me. So on Saturday morning I pulled out my camera and decided to get some pictures of Durban. I wish I knew how to post pictures to my blog so I could share them!

All in all, I came back to the sticks, from my weekend in Durban, feeling refreshed. A change is as good as a holiday, even if the change is just the way you look at something!

As you all know, I watch Oprah. Today she had a man on called Harville Hendrix. He is a psychologist who specialises in couples therapy. He has come up with a form of couples therapy called Imago Relationship Therapy. This form of therapy is founded on the theory that we are inadvertently attracted to a person who is basically like our parents. We are attracted to this person because they’re supposed to heal the wounds inflicted on us by our parents. The reason that relationships don’t work out is because we are unable to succeed in this healing process. Part of the Imago theory states: …we marry for the purpose of healing and finishing the unfinished childhood business.

How depressing is that??!! I refuse to accept that. I will not be a part of proving that theory.

A good friend and I were having a similar discussion about the scars that parents leave on us, and we came to the conclusion that in our parents’ day they had married and had children before they had time to really find out who they were and to heal the scars left on them by their parents. So they just passed the baggage and hurt on to us. Not purposefully or anything, but it’s just the way it was. In their case Harville Hendrix may be right. But I, for one, refuse to accept this fate for myself. I refuse to accept that my most significant relationship needs to be a constant struggle. Is it not possible for us to recognise the childhood issues we carry with us and try to work through them on our own, in order to ensure that we can have happy and healthy relationships and marriages in the future, which can produce minimally scarred children? I’m not saying that there will come a day when we are miraculously healed of all the hurt caused to us in the past, I believe that it’s a constant work in progress. But I certainly do not want to go into a relationship with anyone, expecting them to heal me, to make all the wrongs in my past right. Do we have a choice in the matter? Or is who we’re attracted to, and end up with, something we don’t really have control over?

I refuse to accept the Harville Hendrix theory in my life. I would rather die alone than burden one person with the task of fixing me. If I can’t fix myself, how can I expect someone else to do it for me? It’s not fair to go into a relationship knowing you’re a broken person looking for a fix.
But what if we really don’t have a choice in the matter? What if we may think we’re fixed; only to find, as we continue in the relationship, that we have indeed been drawn to a person just like our parents because of some subconscious need for fulfillment and resolution of unfinished childhood business?

A sure sign that I’m getting old, is that I don’t go around purposefully making controversial statements anymore!
This change has come about so quickly! Just last year I started a group on Facebook called: Kaffir- it’s not a colour it’s a state of mind. I basically started it to get people thinking and talking and to shock a few people. But, recently I’ve found that I don’t make controversial statements anymore! I can’t remember when was the last time I said anything that raised some eyebrows!
Now don’t get me wrong, I haven’t become a coward or succumbed to popular belief, but I just find that I’m not voicing my opinion quite as often.

I do still believe that white trash is the worst trash. This is a breed of people, who were sitting in the gravy on the train for the past century or more, saying: “Ek gaan nou nou ietsie eet. Ek wil net eers gou die laaste bottel brandewyn gou klaarmaak!”
They woke up with a shock as they were kicked off the train and landed on their butts on the wrong side of the railway tracks to find: “Die F@#KEN kaffirs eet nou my gravy!!“

I do believe that JZ did it and then took a shower! But what can we expect from an uneducated ex-con? I think Bob has neurosyphillis; as did Napolean, Hitler and many other mad world leaders. I do find it amazing how these crazy men manage to rally so much support! It just shows how desperate people are for someone to lead them, someone to look up to.

I believe, inspired by a friend, that it should be necessary for us to have licences in order to have children. Women should be born barren and then have to take conceptive pills, instead of the other way around. They should only be allowed to obtain this pill after they have passed numerous exams in order to obtain a child bearing licence. We need licences for guns, licences to drive motor vehicles and even licences for TVs! Isn’t child rearing way more important than any of those? And yes, financial stability should be one of the considered criteria on the child bearing licence application form. I’ve seen way too many children die of malnutrition and related complications. Do you ever wonder what the world would be like if there were less people on it? Would poverty be a thing of the past? If those below average intelligence were not allowed to reproduce, would we have less crime, less socioeconomic problems? If children were brought up properly, would our jails be empty?

Success is one thing most people want, but what exactly is it? We’re all chasing it, but how do we actually know when we have it? I think success is something different to different people and at different stages in life.
A 6 year old might feel successful after winning at a game of marbles. (Do 6 year olds still play marbles, or have they never even heard of that game? Playstation vs marbles, I’m sure there’s no competition!)
At present I’m feeling successful, because I managed to get 6 hours sleep during my 24 hour call. (Even though it actually had nothing to do with me. I can’t choose how much sleep I get on call. It’s all up to the patients.)

Most of society seems to equate money with success. Forbes has lists of Top 20 earners in numerous categories, and it seems that making it onto that list is the epitomy of success. The eternal question is: can money make you happy?

I really can’t answer that question. I’ve never been around anyone who even comes near to making it onto the Forbes list and it’s definitely not one of my goals. It seems though, that for all the money that people make, they still can’t escape some common human problems. No money in the world can make icecream the end product of the digestive system.

The problem is that these ridiculously rich people are glorified. We’re constantly told that these are our heroes. This is what we need to aspire to. If we’re not ridiculously rich, we’re not successful. This is just way too much pressure for me. If I spend every minute of my life trying to make as much money as I can, will I ever actually enjoy that money or will die before I get the chance? Will I be happy? Will I even feel successful?

Now don’t get me wrong, money is not a bad thing. I’ve said before, that although money can’t buy you love or happiness, you can’t actually be happy if you’re starving or can’t afford good healthcare when you’re ill. Once again, it’s about balance. There’s a difference between healthy ambition and greed.

For me, I think I will feel successful when I can be satisfied with what I have, and stop comparing myself to other people. Comparison is a difficult pitfall to avoid. It’s a method of measurement and can be a source of great dissatisfaction.
Until I have achieved my great success, I will have to be satisfied with the sense of accomplishment I get from achieving smaller goals: sleeping well, saving money every month, eating healthy, exercising now and then, being able to go on holiday every so often. These things make me feel happy, even if my bank balance has fewer numbers than the letters in SUCCESS.

As mentioned before, being newly single, I seem to find myself at home on the couch on a Friday night more often. The fact that our hospital has only 4 doctors for the month of July is not helping either! I’m on call so often, that when I’m not on call, I’m too tired to do anything else but sit on the couch!

I’ve decided that the characters I dislike most on TV are the doctors! Because:

1. They’re always perfectly dressed with perfect make up on even after a 48 hour shift!
2. They send patients for MRIs (a high tech investigation, not readily available in the average South African hospital) when they present with a one day history of uncomplicated headache!
3. They always know what to say to patients and their family! I never know what to say.

• I don’t know what to say to the 23 year old girl who’s pregnant with her first child and has HIV. She’s come to see me because her CD4 count is 79* and she needs to start antiretrovirals (ARVs). She hardly understands what’s going on and why I’ve ordered an FBC, U&E and LFT** on her. She’s tired, she’s been at the hospital all day. She gets her blood results after 16h00 and I see that her Hb is 6.7^. I tell her I can’t prescribe the ARVs now, she has to stay at the hospital overnight and in the morning she will have to give sputum to test for TB and do a CXR^^. It can’t be done now, because it’s after 16h00 and the Xray department and lab are closed. She’s come to the hospital alone, she’s waited all day and she still hasn’t gotten what she came for. She just starts crying. I have no idea what to say to her! I just sit there and look at her and watch her crying for a while. I pass her a tissue and tell her she can wash her face at the basin. And I watch her crying some more. I can hear the other people outside the door in the queue, complaining about how long they’ve been waiting.
• I don’t know what to say to the man who wants to kill himself because he found his fiance with another man. He works in the hospital mortuary and he thinks that death is better than his life right now. He is the sole breadwinner in his family, meaning he has to support his mother and alcoholic father and other siblings besides his own children and cheating fiance. She’s been admitted to hospital because she attempted suicide, he has to pay for her care at a private institution! He can’t afford private care for himself, he’s come to me for help.
• I have no clue what to tell the old lady who comes to me because she’s having bad dreams. She think it’s her treatment she’s been taking, she says the dreams started when she started taking the pills. None of the medication she’s on is known to cause bad dreams, at least not according to the South African Medicines Formulary.
• I don’t know what to say to the 8 year old who’s been raped by her brother.
• I don’t know what to say to the 6 year old girl who’s got HIV and TB, she’s been on treatment for the TB for the last 3 months but it’s still not getting better. She now has a hole in her neck draining pus (for the medics: a draining sinus from her TB infected lymph node) and she weighs around the same as a 2 year old. She’s on antiretrovirals for about a month, but her baseline CD4 count was 3,3%*! She’s not really eating anything and everytime anyone who works in the hospital comes close to her bed she says: I want to go home, please can I go home! Maybe it would actually be better for her to go home to die.

I have no idea what I could tell all of these people that would help to make it better. I am struggling to sort out my own life, what qualifies me to be able to fix their lives?

Last night, however; I actually discovered something that I do like on TV: James Bond!
Now, I’ve never been much of a Bond fan, I find the action genre of movies mentally unstimulating and somewhat far-fetched. I think I’ve watched 1 of the newer Bond movies and it definitely didn’t excite me. But being at home on a Friday night and all that, I watched Dr No and part of From Russia With Love.
To my surprise, I found that the idea of what constitutes a sexy woman has DEFINITELY changed over the years. The Bond girls had curves! Bond bumps into a girl called Honey Ryder on the beach in Jamaica, she’s wearing a bikini and she has meat on her bones. I definitely thought she was attractive, and Bond seemed to think so too.
I think the problem is, that these days the entertainment and fashion industry is run mainly by homosexual males and women with low self esteem!% Because I’m sure the majority of straight men don’t find the stick insect, Calista Flockhart look-alike, breath takingly attractive, but it’s the image we’re seeing and being told to aspire to.

I’ve decided that I like the old James Bond movies! The women were gorgeous and don’t look like they’ve got drug habits, the fashion is almost exactly the same as what’s in magazines now just 2 to 4 sizes larger, and the young Sean Connery is not at all bad to look at!

*CD4 cells are a type of white blood cells in the body important in fighting off disease. In HIV these cells are depleted. In South Africa the criteria for starting antiretrovirals is having a CD4 count of less than 200 or stage 3 or 4 HIV. A healthy person has a CD4 count of above 500. In children we use a percentage instead of an absolute value; children 1 year and below with a CD4 below 25% should start on ARVs, children from 1 to 12 years with a CD4 below 20% should start on ARVs or any child with Stage 2 disease or worse.
**Blood tests: FBC- full blood count, counts the red and white blood cells and platelets
U&E- urea and electrolytes, an indicator of kidney function
LFT- liver function test, self explanatory
^Hb- haemoglobin, part of the FBC, it’s often low in HIV positive patients, but if it’s below 8, we have to look actively for TB before starting antiretrovirals. In healthy people the Hb is always above 10.
^^CXR- chest xray
%This is obviously a general statement, I have nothing against homosexuals and I know some people in the fashion industry who don’t have low self esteem!