interest in mental illness, and my first exposure to the limitations
of 'modern' psychiatry.

I always preferred self-discipline to being directed by others. So I
took every advantage of having a teacher for a mother and studied at
home instead of being bored silly in a classroom. In Canada of that
era you didn't have to go to high school to enter university, you
only had to pass the written government entrance exams. At age 16,
never having spent a single day in high school, I passed the
university entrance exams with a grade of 97 percent. At that point
in my life I really wanted to go to medical school and become a
doctor, but I didn't have the financial backing to embark on such a
long and costly course of study, so I settled on a four year nursing
course at the University of Alberta, with all my expenses paid in
exchange for work at the university teaching hospital.

At the start of my nurses training I was intensely curious about
everything in the hospital: birth, death, surgery, illness, etc. I
found most births to be joyful, at least when everything came out
all right. Most people died very alone in the hospital, terrified if
they were conscious, and all seemed totally unprepared for death,
emotionally or spiritually. None of the hospital staff wanted to be
with a dying person except me; most hospital staff were unable to
confront death any more bravely than those who were dying. So I made
it a point of being at the death bed. The doctors and nurses found
it extremely unpleasant to have to deal with the preparation of the
dead body for the morgue; this chore usually fell to me also. I did
not mind dead bodies. They certainly did not mind me!

I had the most difficulty accepting surgery. There were times when