LJ Idol Week 24, Bats in the Belfry
I was fairly new at my job when I met Dangerous Mind. It is a habit of baxaphobia and I to give our clients names that protect their identity yet let she and I know who we are talking about in a conversation. We can’t talk in public about Mr. Smith but we can talk about Dangerous Mind, Violent Woman, Pregnant Girl, The Mayor and so on. Anyway I met Dangerous Mind on a cold rainy day. He had a review form he needed help filling out. I had never done this particular form before and I had never dealt with a client as mentally ill as he was.
Dangerous Mind hadn’t had any of his medications for several weeks because his health insurance had been shut off for lack of completing the form we started working on. He saw the Native American things hanging on my wall and pleaded with me to find a medicine man to heal him. He said there was something dark in him which brought on the extra voices. He told me people were following him because he had an evil curse put on him. He worked on the form but kept checking his pockets and back pack to make sure everything was there because people were stealing from him and he couldn’t find his stuff. I kept reassuring him that his belongings were safe in my office, that I didn’t know a local medicine man, and talked about ignoring the voices so that we could fill out the form. It was hard for him to concentrate and he kept talking to his voices. I was just gently persistent and helped him work on the form. By the end of our session together Dangerous Mind had decided that he liked me. In fact, he was willing to let me sign on as a third party to receive his health care information so that he wouldn’t get behind on the forms again. In the space allotted for a date when my right to his information was to be revoked he wrote, “When I die.” I had gained his trust in our hour and a half together.
Over the months and years Dangerous Mind would return for assistance with various things, usually paperwork but sometimes to use the phone. One day he had an issue involving needing to make several phone calls. I set him up in our mail room with the phone and the necessary numbers to call, a common occurrence at our agency as we teach people with disabilities to advocate for themselves. Maybe on another day I would have walked him through each call, but he had walked in off the street for help and I had other appointments. I left my office later and headed to the mail room to check on Dangerous Mind’s progress to find him lying on the floor, the phone pulled down with him, his papers tossed all over the room, and my coworker yelling about how he could not lay all over the floor. He was throwing a temper tantrum fit for a five year old and became distraught kicking his feet in the air and the whole tantrum bit. He cried and pled for help and I got him up off the floor and his papers put back to right. The phone calls had to be finished on another day. When he returned again he would pace the halls as he often did, unable to sit still, and fret over his belongings and whether or not anyone had followed him. When I finally solved his dental insurance issue he wanted to hug me, or that is what he said, but he didn’t want to get into trouble.
My guide dogs have both adored Dangerous Mind playing with him on his good days or being very quiet with him on days when his emotions were coming unraveled. My coworkers, most of them, didn’t seem to like Dangerous Mind and the receptionist is afraid of him. I find that unfortunate because I find him to be a likable guy who happens to have a mental illness.
There was a period of time where I hadn’t seen Dangerous Mind in months. Finally one day he came in the office with a tale about how he had been in the state hospital because he had supposedly hurt someone but he didn’t remember doing it. He talked about the state hospital and how they made him cut his long hair because they wouldn’t let him have a brush to take care of it. He told me how scared he was in the hospital but they had gotten him back on his meds and he was looking for a job. The voices had stopped telling him to hurt people and when he heard the voices they were much nicer. He seemed very calm and reasonable. He had gone from the man who was scared to listen to my computer’s screen reader talk, to the man who was relaxed and just stopping by to fill me in on his life instead of with another crisis. The only thing he seemed afraid of was getting locked up again.
I’ve only seen him one more time since then and he was working doing lawn care. He was in the newspaper for a violent crime, but it ended up not being true and ended up being a set up. I hope he’s doing well. For someone that anyone would dub crazy enough to have bats in his belfry, he turned out okay. I have no doubt that he’ll show up again needing help with something. Guys like him always seem to pop up now and then when they need help most. I’ll look forward to seeing him, no matter what state his mind is in. I’ve learned a valuable lesson from him. No matter how crazy a person is, they’re still a person and deserve all of our respect and what help we can give them. He really showed me how to treat my other clients with mental illness so I’m glad I met him early on in my career. I hope his mind stays away from the voices that tell him to harm other people, and that he does well and stays employed, but either way, I’m here to help him when he next returns.
Dangerous Mind hadn’t had any of his medications for several weeks because his health insurance had been shut off for lack of completing the form we started working on. He saw the Native American things hanging on my wall and pleaded with me to find a medicine man to heal him. He said there was something dark in him which brought on the extra voices. He told me people were following him because he had an evil curse put on him. He worked on the form but kept checking his pockets and back pack to make sure everything was there because people were stealing from him and he couldn’t find his stuff. I kept reassuring him that his belongings were safe in my office, that I didn’t know a local medicine man, and talked about ignoring the voices so that we could fill out the form. It was hard for him to concentrate and he kept talking to his voices. I was just gently persistent and helped him work on the form. By the end of our session together Dangerous Mind had decided that he liked me. In fact, he was willing to let me sign on as a third party to receive his health care information so that he wouldn’t get behind on the forms again. In the space allotted for a date when my right to his information was to be revoked he wrote, “When I die.” I had gained his trust in our hour and a half together.
Over the months and years Dangerous Mind would return for assistance with various things, usually paperwork but sometimes to use the phone. One day he had an issue involving needing to make several phone calls. I set him up in our mail room with the phone and the necessary numbers to call, a common occurrence at our agency as we teach people with disabilities to advocate for themselves. Maybe on another day I would have walked him through each call, but he had walked in off the street for help and I had other appointments. I left my office later and headed to the mail room to check on Dangerous Mind’s progress to find him lying on the floor, the phone pulled down with him, his papers tossed all over the room, and my coworker yelling about how he could not lay all over the floor. He was throwing a temper tantrum fit for a five year old and became distraught kicking his feet in the air and the whole tantrum bit. He cried and pled for help and I got him up off the floor and his papers put back to right. The phone calls had to be finished on another day. When he returned again he would pace the halls as he often did, unable to sit still, and fret over his belongings and whether or not anyone had followed him. When I finally solved his dental insurance issue he wanted to hug me, or that is what he said, but he didn’t want to get into trouble.
My guide dogs have both adored Dangerous Mind playing with him on his good days or being very quiet with him on days when his emotions were coming unraveled. My coworkers, most of them, didn’t seem to like Dangerous Mind and the receptionist is afraid of him. I find that unfortunate because I find him to be a likable guy who happens to have a mental illness.
There was a period of time where I hadn’t seen Dangerous Mind in months. Finally one day he came in the office with a tale about how he had been in the state hospital because he had supposedly hurt someone but he didn’t remember doing it. He talked about the state hospital and how they made him cut his long hair because they wouldn’t let him have a brush to take care of it. He told me how scared he was in the hospital but they had gotten him back on his meds and he was looking for a job. The voices had stopped telling him to hurt people and when he heard the voices they were much nicer. He seemed very calm and reasonable. He had gone from the man who was scared to listen to my computer’s screen reader talk, to the man who was relaxed and just stopping by to fill me in on his life instead of with another crisis. The only thing he seemed afraid of was getting locked up again.
I’ve only seen him one more time since then and he was working doing lawn care. He was in the newspaper for a violent crime, but it ended up not being true and ended up being a set up. I hope he’s doing well. For someone that anyone would dub crazy enough to have bats in his belfry, he turned out okay. I have no doubt that he’ll show up again needing help with something. Guys like him always seem to pop up now and then when they need help most. I’ll look forward to seeing him, no matter what state his mind is in. I’ve learned a valuable lesson from him. No matter how crazy a person is, they’re still a person and deserve all of our respect and what help we can give them. He really showed me how to treat my other clients with mental illness so I’m glad I met him early on in my career. I hope his mind stays away from the voices that tell him to harm other people, and that he does well and stays employed, but either way, I’m here to help him when he next returns.