Exorcism in the ER......NOT

Specialties Emergency

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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 :rolleyes: .

This lady remained in an unresponsive state, and then the pastor and husband confided that she may have become possessed :devil: 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 :devil: 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

:devil: lost another one and the good guys once again prevailed in the fight between good and evil......I think.

bob

Nah, this is what in the Navy we would have treated with a DEEP IM (gluteal, with a 16 or 14 G needle) injection of STERILE WATER. Ouch!

Works on all sorts of attention seeking behavior and fixes narc seekers right up. They thought they were getting something REALLY strong--"that's why it burns so much--" that couldn't be given by mouth. What it was remained our little secret.

and you have to admit, the best attention seekers make the best buds of the best jokes! i like a good laugh so i don't mind those pts. they are fun to play with. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

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...are you aware that that's seriously illegal??? And how the heck is it supposed to be therapeutic for anything, I don't know... :nono:

Uh---yeah. (I mean, DUH!) This WAS 30 years ago, after all.

And it wasn't ABOUT being "therapeutic," it was about making people who were seriously and obviously faking to avoid work (malingering)or people who were seeking narcotics think twice about doing it the next time.

These were not USUALLY military people; (although sometimes the guys that were in the brig were an exception--they got very creative in their grocery lists of "symptoms" designed to get them out of work and sent to bed, hopefully with a NARCOTIC on board--) more often they were manipulative dependent housewives who were bored and seeking drugs for "recreational" purposes (hence wanting some Valium or Demerol) or attention seeking or trying to keep their husbands from having to go out on submarines (every 6 weeks, ;like clockwork, attempting "suicide" by scratching their wrists superficially, they stating, "Oh, I don't want to DIE---I just don't want him going out to sea anymore. I want him OUT of the Navy." We didn't know the word "drama queen" in those days, but that's what they were. :rolleyes: They would have (and often did) refused any psychological counseling---after all, they didn't feel that THEY had problems; they just hated the military (and blamed the military for their inability to cope with ADL) and everything about it, so they just weren't "understood." It was a different world, then, too.

Lighten up. :uhoh3: Gosh, I am betting you are MANAGEMENT--take everything too dang seriously.

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you have to really gauge what consists of a genuine situation or a behavioral axis II type situation... The way this story was explained..... with the responsive corneal reflexes..... and the arms falling but not hitting the face..... my main concern as a nurse is to determine the source of the problem. ..... At no point did i demean the speaking in tongues or anything, and the soap suds enama was actually a joke... lighten up, you'll have to if you're a psych nurse.... but i appreciate your input...

P.S. becoming an er nurse?

you really do need to lighten up and not take everything at face value. things in the er are different. throw your axis' away and don't read into every little thing. it is NOT all text book. you will find that in the er you will never determine the source of the problem of most of the patients. you will have to learn to accept the "treat and street" mentality.

the er is it's own entity and follows no ones rules.

good luck and i hope you do well. :) :)

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Uh---yeah. (I mean, DUH!) This WAS 30 years ago, after all.

Lighten up. :uhoh3: Gosh, I am betting you are MANAGEMENT--take everything too dang seriously.

:balloons: i like you!

sounds about right :rotfl:

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P.S. becoming an er nurse?

you really do need to lighten up and not take everything at face value. things in the er are different. throw your axis' away and don't read into every little thing. it is NOT all text book. you will find that in the er you will never determine the source of the problem of most of the patients. you will have to learn to accept the "treat and street" mentality.

the er is it's own entity and follows no ones rules.

good luck and i hope you do well. :) :)

yeah really, you need to lighten up if you expect to survive in the er. don't take everything so serious. your not even an er nurse yet. chill out but have fun doing it! :p

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:balloons: i like you!

sounds about right :rotfl:

Like you too, Magik Girl. :)

I have always intrigued by Magik, Wicca and references to The Goddess, but am not really knowledgable about any of it. Everybody I have ever met who WAS knowledgeable about these things was one of the most thoughtful, kind and creative people I have ever had the good fortune to cross paths with. Theynever take life too seriously, and have a great time LIVING it. I am certain, also, that crossing paths with them was predestined--part of some higher plan--and that each encounter had a profound influence on the way I look at things.

Bet you are among them, and hope I will meet you one day. Maybe I have already, in some previous life!

I wonder why estrogen didn't jump all over the post about rapid sequence intubation?! I mean, surely doing cricoid pressure and attempting to intubate someone like the "possessed" woman in the ER--that is, crashing her-- (and without benefit of Succs--not to induce general anesthesia; but because cricoid pressure alone--even without an attempt at intubation--would then surely make her open her eyes, start gagging and attempt to talk--presumably in English, too; not in ancient biblical tongues-- and ask them to STOP---presto; demons BEGONE!! problem SOLVED!! another ER SAVE!!!) would raise some management eyebrows as being "inappropriate" and "non-therapeutic--" but, hey, some ER patients are "inappropriate" and need "unconventional" and "non-therapeutic" interventions----otherwise they end up as "frequent fliers" at that ER, or others where their "unconventional" behavior is tolerated or even encouraged (and attention, time, money and resources diverted from other patients who actually NEED emergency care) in the name of "patient satisfaction." What a colossal and outrageous waste.

(Remember what "GOMER" stands for, estrogen? GET OUT OF MY EMERGENCY ROOM!!!) Ah, I miss those days!! :chuckle

Personally, if anyone was going to suggest crash induction in front of this patient, I would have made sure to LOUDLY say, "And grab some rectal Brevital, too!" to whoever was assembling the laryngoscope, ET tube, etc. in preparation for intubation. LOL, that would have made the "possessed" woman sit right up, worthy of Lazarus---AN ER MIRACLE!!!

Anyway, I don't think the person who posted about crash induction was serious about actually DOING it--and I, too, am well aware that deep IM injections of sterile H2O would not meet management approval in this day and age.....

But maybe they SHOULD ....... :rotfl:

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I've read the whole thread (I'm a bit more awake now as opposed to when I posted last night) and there's something that I don't get.

The OP described something like speaking in tongues. That USUALLY goes along with pentacostal teachings. So why did they want to call in a Catholic priest instead of following their own teachings for something like this? (whatever it might be in their book)

Talk about a waste of everyone's resources. Not only the ED, but the chaplain's office, if not a Catholic hospital a priest might have been called in. I'm really glad that there was a wise doc on that night who said "no" to calling a priest in.

I think that someone had the right idea in removing the husband and priest from the room and presenting the negative findings to the woman and respectfulling giving her some options.

Wow, that sounds like they wasted lots of people's time and money. :rolleyes:

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I had a 14 year old boy in the ED chanting, "I am the devil!". We had his mother and the guards following him around, to the bathroom ect. Every time he passed one of us he did his little chant. On one particular pass when the guards weren't too close, I whispered "Nothing a good spanking wouldn't cure!"

He didn't give us one bit more trouble (at least in the ED).

I would have lowered my voice and whispered in a gravelly voice, "You can't be the devil, because I am!" Watch him freak out..... :rotfl:

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Lighten up. :uhoh3: Gosh, I am betting you are MANAGEMENT--take everything too dang seriously.

....Ummm, no I'm just a little ole LPN in a little ole med surg unit. And I didn't take it seriously, I just didn't think it was that funny. Sorry.

So, since you are comming back to this, let me elaborate...

I wasn't around thirty years ago (as a matter of fact I was just born around that time) and on top of that in a different country, so I don't know if the ethics of nursing were somehow different then, but to be honest I thought that you are making this up.... So it is more shocking to me, if this is infact true, as it seems from your second post.... Not the fact that it is in fact cruel (you yourself were vividly describing how painfull it is to get such an h2o injection), very judgemental and presumptive, but more so the fact that in this day and age a NURSE would think this kind of practice is agreeable...

And it is still illegal and still not therapeutic...nor is it moral or ethical.... And not funny either.... Sorry once again. :rolleyes:

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Oh, my word!

If it had been legal, yall could have really had some fun with that one. lol

Wouldn't ya like to make her think twice about pulling a stunt like that again.

Sounds like the preacher and the husband needed a dose of what you COULD have handed out.

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Specializes in ER.
....Ummm, no I'm just a little ole LPN in a little ole med surg unit. And I didn't take it seriously, I just didn't think it was that funny. Sorry.

So, since you are comming back to this, let me elaborate...

I wasn't around thirty years ago (as a matter of fact I was just born around that time) and on top of that in a different country, so I don't know if the ethics of nursing were somehow different then, but to be honest I thought that you are making this up.... So it is more shocking to me, if this is infact true, as it seems from your second post.... Not the fact that it is in fact cruel (you yourself were vividly describing how painfull it is to get such an h2o injection), very judgemental and presumptive, but more so the fact that in this day and age a NURSE would think this kind of practice is agreeable...

And it is still illegal and still not therapeutic...nor is it moral or ethical.... And not funny either.... Sorry once again. :rolleyes:

It's called placebo...and that's not illegal...down with the fakers!!!

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It's called placebo...and that's not illegal...down with the fakers!!!

Thank you. Exactly----a deep IM injection of sterile water is a well-known placebo, and it's been around a long, LOOONNG time. And, no, I was not making this up--we did this often (for malingerers and narc seekers) when I was a military corpsman, (age 21) working in the emergency room. Of course, it was ordered by a physician--we didn't just do it arbitrarily.

It burns like crazy, (but does absolutely no harm----unlike IV Phenergan, which I absolutely will NOT administer, under any circumstances--that type of burning means it is damaging a vein) which makes the malingerer or narc seeker think he is getting something really good, and he or she goes away happy as a clam---but next time remembers how much it burned, and thinks twice about coming to the ER faking various symptoms of various maladies, thinking he has cleverly fooled us all when he gets his "drug." He even fools himself into thinking that he is high.

Placebos are a wonderful thing, and will always have their place in medicine. In fact, they are downright therapeutic.

It was not administered to be cruel. Would you have preferred that we simply gave them their narc of choice, (p.o., so that it wouldn't hurt, of course) no questions asked, and sent them on their merry way--until next time they showed up, demanding more narcotics, in ever increasing dosages, for non-existent problems--only to repeat the scenario?

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