I am a Prosthetist. I mean I am a limb fitter, I make artificial legs and hands to restore mobility to my patients. My profession has exposed me to a lot of people living with limb losses and their individual characters as depressed persons. Sometimes I follow them up from the surgery to rehabilitation.
My happiest moment is always that moment when an amputee takes his/her first steps and starts shedding tears of joy. Oh my God... this moments make me feel important too, when they appreciate me and I know I will live on their minds for a long time, and even become a part of their family or their life.
But as with every human relationship, it is never all fluffy. Some times things go messy. This post is to relay one of such experiences.
I met a patient in June 2016, with a below knee amputation. A church Bishop, he has good connections in the government. I mean he is a very senior citizen of my state, I was too happy to have this senior man as my patient and was all out to give my best of services to earn his recommendations and as well create a great relationship with him.
But all things wouldn't go as I expected; after giving him a cost for my services for a below knee prosthesis, he made his bid and thrilled me to accept it with several promises including introducing me the governor and other prominent persons and organisations. I accepted his bid on a condition that he will pay off the agreed sum at once to enable me execute the job, he breached the agreement by paying only 70% of the agreed sum in a stretch of 6 months. All the promises that motivated my acceptance of his bids were not fulfilled but yet I delivered the job and now asked for my 30% balance. At this point he shut down on me, stopped taking my calls and didn't respond to my many messages for a period of 5 months.
After this time he tried using a corrupt police officer to assist him in circumventing my payments; it didn't work though and he is now asking for a refund of the 70% he had paid. I know that because of his disability, he is psychologically unstable and every time I try to prove myself right I really do get him upset because he feels no one is paying attention to his needs.
What should I do? He needs to regain his mobility, Make a refund or psyche him to collect his prosthesis?