Things that make you go OMG!

There is no disputing that Dale Elliot’s Untold Stories has brought a number of pertinent issues to the fore in vivid television imagery, as never before. Not only are the episodes well researched and presented, but they are also quite engaging and sometimes entertaining; amusing even.

Take, for instance, the recent episode of Untold Stories that I viewed on HTS for instance. It was titled ‘Bedlam in the Cerebral Cortex’ and focused on two brothers. One of them, Hamlet Mangal, a former student of St. Mary’s College, is an interesting character who spends most of his time on the streets of Castries. He is also a mental patient.

After explaining to the show’s host his time spent at Golden Hope undergoing treatment, being injected and medicated with all types of drugs and even once being shot by police for leaving the mental facility, he was then asked about a short-term employment he had received after leaving the mental institution.

“Let’s talk about your job at the lab at the hospital,” Elliot said to Mangal straight-faced.

“Oh that wasn’t very long. I was a lab attendant in charge of getting results compiled and taking them to the different wards for the doctors to see what the results of the tests they had required were, and sometimes I would have to clean test tubes and set up apparatus for experiments, but I didn’t stay there long; I stayed there for six months,” Mangal said. What he stated next was what had me quite bemused.

“One day, a Saturday, there was no one, no technician around, and a lady from Mon Repos came down for a blood test so I took a syringe and took a sample of blood. I didn’t do any haematoma you know. I did it good but they told me that was out of my jurisdiction, get out,” Mangal explained. He said he thought he was doing something good, given that the lady had come a long way, and he didn’t want to tell her to come back Monday since there was no one around who was qualified to draw blood. “That seemed to have been a wrong thought,” he said with a smile, drawing a grin from the host and sheer laughter from me in the comfort of my home.