[zoeboboey]

treatment for possession?? why not arrested for possession

kiddin - the 2 minute sternal rub on the unit cracked me up real good!

SEE, you guys even got me tawkin foony...

[estrogen]

Originally Posted by jmcclellanprofrn

Briefly, I had a doc tell me about a man who was dying on him scream that "my feet are burning, they're coming for me," and for him to "please help me". The man of course died but this freaked everyone out. How about you?

WHOA!

[SARAH CONNOR]

wow. what small minds and big egos we all must have to deny others thier beliefs! i wonder what people thoughtwhen they heard about the parting of a whole sea! part a sea, kiss a snake. what ever you believe is ok with me.

in all reality i probably would have cracked up at the whole incident as well. but generally if some one tells me they are God or the devil, i believe them until proven otherwise. how do i know they are not? could they be crazy? sure. we tend to lean to "crazy or wierd" when beliefs are different than ours.

i worked in a place where hassidic (sorry if spelled wrong) jews put thier dead relatives on the floor after an arrest as part of thier beliefs, the amish shun thier own family members for reasons, some use medicine men ect. i guess the bottom line is what ever gets the patient better. isn't that the goal? questioning and making fun of others beliefs is why our world is in the pickle it is in. lets just co-exhist and have fun.

[HONEYBEAR]

Originally Posted by 2ndCareerRN

Had a pt come in the other night, female about 40 y/o. She was brought in by her husband and her pastor. She was dragged from the car by them and placed in a wheelchair, and was then intercepted and directed straight to the back. This lady was unresponsive, yet SPO2 was 99 on RA, NSR, good pressure, and a very good corneal reflex. Hmmmmm...we all said. Got a line in her, o2 on her, and then it was off to CT, which was totally normal. Drug screen was negative, all labs were normal....hmmmmmmm, we go again. As she was lying there, her hubby would grab her hand and start talking what sounded like gibberish and you could see her eyes move under her closed lids,....hmmmmmmm we go again. We did a couple of hand drops and never did her hand come close to her face,......hmmmmm we go, this is getting better and better. After a shory while (about 45 min), the pastor returned and both him and the husband started chanting together while running their hands in the air above her body.... by this time we had quit going hmmmmmmmm...just started to .
This lady remained in an unresponsive state, and then the pastor and husband confided that she may have become possessed by a demon! I even kept a straight face when he told me that. What was the real kicker was they wanted us to call in a Catholic priest so that he could perform an exorcism on her right there in the ER, before the became so strong in her it would not be able to be exorcised.
Well, to make a long story short, NO, we did not call a priest. We admitted her to the floor due to altered loc. The floor nurses said they kept up the vigil most of the night, except when they thought there was no one near. Then she would come out of her "trance" and talk to her hubby. Somehow, someone was able to convince a priest to come in the next day, whether he did an exorcism or not is unknown, but she had a miraculous recovery and was able to leave that evening. So the
lost another one and the good guys once again prevailed in the fight between good and evil......I think.

bob

This is one the reasons I never went into psych CRAZY.......

[talaxandra]

I'm very comfortable with respecting the belief systems of different cultures, I just don't think that this qualifies.
After all, the Catholic church itself is very reluctant to claim that people are possessed, or to perform exorcisms. So much so that I doubt you could get a priest to perform an exorcism on a newly-presenting patient with altered LOC FI.
And if there was a pastor there I'm don't get why (given that he clearly favoured the exorcism concept) he didn't call in a favour with the archdiocese and skip a hospital admit altogether. After all, if you don't think there's a medical problem why would you present to a medical centre?
Given that the patient recovered without an exorcism (or, from the sounds of it, any other curative treatment), I think that heaping scorn upon the idea of stanic possession, at least int his case, isn't exactly unwarranted. Positing conversion disorder or attention-seeking behaviour seem pretty accurate as well

[tvccrn]

Originally Posted by 2ndCareerRN

The floor nurses said they kept up the vigil most of the night, except when they thought there was no one near. Then she would come out of her "trance" and talk to her hubby. bob

I think everyone here has missed this small but significant statment from the OP. Ya'll have been so quick to jump on the "religious freedom bandwagon" that is was overlooked that the patient wasn't really possessed. She was faking it!! She didn't have need of a religious nature, but one of a pysch nature.

[Jessy_RN]

Sounds to me like someone was in a desperate crave for attention and nothing else. Don't get me wrong, I do believe that Good and evil exist....but daing!

[nurse_wannabe]

Has anyone else wondered who is going to pay for this expensive attempt at attention-getting? For some reason I get the feeling that the taxpayers are footing the bill for this one. At least she didn't arrive via ambulance!

Bob, what religion were they?

[Angie O'Plasty, RN]

I've never heard of an exorcism in an ER before.

I don't even understand why she was brought there if they really believed she was possessed?

[talaxandra]

Originally Posted by tvccrn

I think everyone here has missed this small but significant statment from the OP. Ya'll have been so quick to jump on the "religious freedom bandwagon" that is was overlooked that the patient wasn't really possessed. She was faking it!! She didn't have need of a religious nature, but one of a pysch nature.

Yeah, that's why I was comfortable with labelling the behviour psychiatric in origin