Saturday, March 25, 2006

New batteries

Dispatched to a psychiatric case at a tram stop in the inner suburbs. Apparently the person had been 'shouting at everybody' and had been asked to get off the tram. On the way there I pictured a bunch of travellers all huddled down one end of the tram while some mad old woman ranted and raved down the other.

We got to the tram stop and there was a little old lady sitting quietly at the tram stop with a couple of shopping bags at her feet. I walked up and introduced myself and asked her what was happening today, she frowned at me with a puzzled expression and so, I repeated my question. "I CANT HEAR YOU" she suddenly shouted at me really loudly, "MY BATTERY IS FLAT" and she pointed to her hearing aid.

Five minutes later after writing a few questions for her on a notepad, we worked out that she'd asked somebody for some help with the ticketing machine on the tram, only this person thought she must be a nutter 'cause she was shouting so loud, so they just walked away. She then asked for help from a few others on the tram, getting frustrated because nobody would help her (so she probably got even louder) before the driver finally stopped the tram and escorted her off.

A man sitting at the tramstop while we chatted to her offered to help make sure she got a ticket when the next tram came along. We thanked him, wrote down an explaination of what was happening to her, shouted goodbye to the perfectly sane "psych" patient and headed off to our next case.

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