Fox encourages people to take a different path

Page 21

Frank (Fox) Morin's last drunk was 20 years ago, and he quit heroin, speed, coke and MDA three years before he got off the booze. Worked, got married, raised a family. Been living clean all this time. But suddenly, at age 50, he got really sick, nearly died, got a liver transplant just in time to save his life, and he says it was all on account of bad choices he made early in life.

Hepatitis C, which 10 years ago most doctors had not heard much about, destroyed Frank's liver. He could have got it from sharing a needle, or passing the bottle around. It's highly contagious and there's no cure.

Frank was born in Meadow Lake, Sask., in 1949 and was raised in Hay River, N.W.T., where "everybody drank," he said.

"I first hit skid row in Edmonton in 1965. I was already a very serious alcoholic."

By the early 1970s, he was also into hard drugs, and Frank said he did them all.

But he got clean, so the Métis man thought he was healthy until last March, when suddenly the dormant hepatitis strain hit him. That's when he found out he also had moderate cirrhosis of the liver. Between March, when he was diagnosed, and September, when he was lucky enough to receive a liver transplant after just five weeks' wait, he had lapsed into a coma three times. By the fall, not more than 10 per cent of his liver still worked, and Frank's life expectancy was measured in days and hours.

Eight days after his operation, Frank talked to Windspeaker from his hospital bed about his ordeal, to try to reach anybody who thinks partying won't catch up to them. Frank wants you to know he wasn't thinking about consequences either when he started drinking at age eight or nine. When he gets stronger, he plans to deliver that message personally to anyone who will listen. He hopes some will clean up their acts before ending up the same way.

"I was 21 years old. I spent 14 months on skid row, drunk on wine. And that's the way I used to drink. I was a binge drinker. I'd go for a year and maybe go to work for a couple months, go to jail for two or three months, dry out. And the last drunk, I was drunk one day short of one year. I wasn't falling down drunk every day, but I drank every day, and I did drugs every day, until one day I decided to quit, and I was 30 years old."

What made you change? we asked him.

"The last time I had gotten out of jail, I had set some realistic goals," Frank said. "The main thing was to find myself a nice wife to settle down with and to raise a family, because I was tired of being me. I was tired of going to jail. But I found when I got out of jail, I didn't take a look at the issue of what was causing me to go back and forth to jail, which was alcohol and drugs. And so, as a result, I was drunk for a year.

"I had met my wife," he continues, ... and it was the day after my birthday, on the morning of June 5. She had got up and was going to school and I was really sick and hung over, and she said 'You should take a look at what you're doing to yourself,' and that's all she said.

"And she went to school, and I was in this little shack by myself in Saddle Lake, [Alta.] and I was thinking about all the goals I had set about quittin' drinking."

Frank realized he wasn't the right kind of example to the little boy whose stepfather he had become. He was ashamed he was following the pattern of his own alcoholic stepfather.

"I wanted to make a change in my life, and I knew I was capable of doing it," he said.

"I suffered for four days there. I should have been in detox, but I went cold turkey. Well, four days later, I was laying on the bed - and this is a true story - I was one that never believed in spirits or anything like that, and this little shack that I sobered up in in Saddle Lake happened to belong to a friend of mine's brother, Francis Whiskeyjack, who is a sober individual also. His brother died in this little shack [in the same bed] from heart complications due to alcohol.

"I know that I was in that shack by myself that fourth ay, and I was struggling. I was just in pain and wanted to go and drink, and yet not wanting to. And all of a sudden I felt somebody tap me on my shoulder and I just about screamed. I realized then what it was, the spirit of my friend's brother. I recognized the fact he realized I was havin' such a hard time with this that he come and gave me a pat of encouragement. And you know, that's 20 years ago, and I never, ever had any desire to drink.

"I quit from that time on, and I started going to the sweat lodge, and I run to the Elders ... and they helped me through the spiritual road. And through that I healed myself."

Eventually Frank went through Nechi training and worked as an addictions counsellor at Poundmaker's Lodge.

"That helped me resolve a lot of my own issues, working in the field of addictions," he said.

And he worked with youth. "I did my training from off the street," Frank adds. "What better training do you get from landing on the street and being a skid row bum and a tramp and a drunk and an alcoholic and a junkie. That's one of the reasons I thought I was an effective counsellor. I was straightforward. I called it as I seen it, and a lot of people couldn't take it. But I tell you, when they left, after treatment, they had a different outlook."

For the last 14 years, he's kept young offenders in his home, and worked with "hard to deal with, end of the line kids," from remote communities. "Solvent abuse, alcohol abuse, sexual abuse, you name it," Frank said.

During this time, Frank also developed a reputation as a first-rate carver. He's travelled all over the United States and Canada, marketing his carved antlers at major art shows. The guy's really turned his life around. But that didn't save him from hepatitis.

There's more Frank wanted to share, but he was tiring. It was a 10-hour operation. Eight hours out of the operating room, internal bleeding from a tear in the liver forced a second operation.

"I had a total 13 units of blood," Frank said.

H's thankful that somebody signed the organ donation card that saved him and he's grateful for the donated blood that saved his life too. He wants others to think about donating blood and signing a donor card for organ transplantation. His wife Ruth helps him find the words.

"Our people are involved in violence, involved in car accidents and stuff like that, and yet how often do we promote things like blood donation. We need to give back too, and we need to, when we're well, think about it," she said.

From here on in, it could go any way, any time. Frank has a lot to live for, but he knows he can't take it for granted he'll see his grandchildren grow up. The rest of his life, he'll be on powerful anti-rejection drugs and he'll be susceptible to any illness going around. He's also got diabetes, which is one more challenge in the mix. The Fox thinks positive, though. He's got a mission now, to get the word out about the perils of intravenous drug use. He also credits a great wife and family who support him and he gains strength from his Native spiritual beliefs.