Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Microchip in the head?

Yesterday was a very tiring day for both Annikki and me. I finished my morning chores including taking Unnop to learn about making dough for pizza bases and making arrangements for a meeting today on getting funding for a program to help foreigners in Oulu by working with WALDA (the youth organisation run by the City of Oulu).

Just as Annikki was about to start her afternoon shopping expedition, there was a doorbell ring. At the door was a person who was hearing terrible voices in his ear. He claimed that there was a microchip in his head. He was hearing thousands of voices and he had been walking around the city for many hours, unable to stop them from talking. He was tired but the noise in the head was deafening. He kept asking Annikki to remove the microchip from his head with tweezers.

Having come across this problem before, Annikki calmed him down, let him rest in the cellar bedroom for a few hours and then made a call to the Psychiatric Clinic and asked whether we could bring the man in for investigation and admittance.

Psychiatric Hospital in Oulu

At 17:00 hours we arrived at the Clinic.

We had to wait till 22:00 hours for the doctor to see this gentleman.

waiting area

The above photo shows where we had to wait.

Note the heavy steel door leading to the doctor's room. Just above it you will see a video surveillance camera. There is not even a magazine rack with any magazines or newspapers for the patients and their handlers to read while waiting. The bathroom door is locked so if one wants to use the facility it is necessary to call a nurse from the the locked clinic facility. The nurses inside are hostile to any callers. They do not seem to understand basic human curtesy, assuming that everyone who knocks at the door is a mentally ill patient to be abused.

This is a gulag.

This is an excellent example of the present Finnish efficiency and inhumanity to people who desperately need help and those who want to help them!!

I managed to pick up food for us so that when Annikki and I got home around 22:45, at least we were not starving.

Is it worth helping anyone if one is subjected to such inhuman treatment by the City Authorities?

The problems of this nature are growing in Finnish society. It is shocking that the most important aspects of Finnish Health care is being torn aopart by a set of people who are so far removed from reality and live in a bubble that they call Finnish politics.



This bare undecorated drooping Christmas tree, just less than a week before Christmas, which was in the waiting area of the Clinic, also seems to echo our views of sheer desperation and a sense of no hope!

As Annikki and I have faced such major problems in our personal lives over the last 14 years - we can say that it has steadily gone from bad to worse, year by year - and no one is doing anything about it or intends to.

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