A patient sits in the waiting room of the shot clinic where he, the patient, has been frequenting at least twice per month (if not: once per week) for eleven years to receive so called psychiatric "professionalism."
The forty year old patient was diagnosed with "schizophrenia" in 1996 and frequents the clinic where he awaits the nurse to call him in to a room for a shot in the buttocks, the which he has received at behest of the State for eleven years without fail other than on one occasion due to mitigating circumstances.
He sits in the shot clinic waiting room with his leashed dog awaiting the nurse to emerge from down the hall and summon him for his shot.
Two other male patients, who are about the same age as the patient with the dog, wait in chairs opposite the patient with the dog. A staff member emerges from the locked door of an office, strides up to the patient with the dog in traversing the corridor of the second floor clinic waiting room and confronts the patient with the dog about the dog.
"Excuse me, sir, but is that a pet therapy dog?"
The male patient with the dog turns his head and looks at the fifty something brunette with a weight problem wearing what can only be a moo-moo, black in color, and says to "take it up with my doctor."
"OK. So, your doctor knows about it?"
"Yes."
"OK. Thank you."
"Yes. Thank you," the man retorts sneeringly.
Later, he thinks of ways the conversation with the staff member should have gone. Maybe he should have said when the dumpy staff member asked him whether his dog was a pet therapy dog ...
"Excuse me! Do I know you?" or "Are you?"
Recently, staff were laid off at the clinic and subsequently new staff were employed who don't know that the male patient with the dog has been frequenting the same clinic for eleven years at least twice per month, if not: more frequently.
There was an incident several years previous to the scenario described above with the staff member who questions the patient about the dog without seemingly knowing that "to understand a person, walk a mile in their shoes" means "mind your own fucking business" because one never knows what another person knows.
In an incident several years previous to the above scenario on August 19, 2013, the man entered the clinic with his dog during July of 2008 for the first time since a recent hospitalization incurred by a suicide attempt and was confronted by a fifty something, female staff member who also wore a moo-moo type dress.
"Excuse me, sir! ... Hey, I am addressing you, sir ..." the female staff member in 2008 barked at the patient with the dog as he entered the second floor shot clinic door from the stairwell where the staff member addressing him was descending the steps and opening the now shut, stairwell door behind the man.
"Sir! I'm talking to you ... don't walk away from me when I'm talking to you," she barks behind the man with the dog emerging from the staircase.
The man turns to face the woman.
"You can't have dogs in this building. Is that a pet therapy dog?"
"Take it up with my doctor!" the man retorts to the woman staff member.
"But, I'm taking it up with you!"
"Well, I'm going to get my shot," the man responds and turns to walk down the corridor with his dog for the shot clinic waiting room only to see the staff member who addressed him so rudely storm into the office in the waiting room and then out of the stairwell door at the opposite end of the corridor from which the man and questioning, staff member had entered the waiting room for the clinic.
What "professionalism" is there if staff at the clinic don't realize that the male, forty something, diagnosed "schizophrenia" patient visits a children's ward of the clinic's psychiatric hospital to which he had been sent as an adult on an adult ward at least six times over the years?
The forty old, male patient visits the children's ward at the clinic's psychiatric hospital as well as five different nursing homes with his trained, pet therapy dog and has visited for at least 150 visits over the years because the man volunteers in lieu of not being able to secure a paying job due to the stigmatizing of his diagnosis in that staff at the clinic epitomize stigma of a patient with schizophrenia by addressing patients in commands and orders rather than introductions and niceties, as if staff are in control ingesting five laxatives and taking a five mile hike!
Whatever happened to inquiring about the weather when initiating discourse with a person whom one has never met before in life?
