The Devil Wears Prada

It was about 3pm and medics brought in this guy on a stretcher, covered in sweat, all rigid and tremulous, shaking his head back and forth shouting ‘Nope nope nope, not gonna do it”.  I heard the medics telling the nurses “Yeah, his complaint is that someone put the voodoo on him and sold him to the devil”.   Mmmmm hmmm, I see.  The guy wasn’t combative per se, just resistive to treatment, not really wanting to get into the bed from the medic stretcher, in fact just kinda standing next to the bed… sorta bobbing and weaving, moving his feat back and forth, arms pumping up and down, kinda this Gangnam Style meets Techno Viking routine. In fact, as we watching his moves, waiting for security to arrive, one of the nurses started dropping a beat and shit got rather crunk for a hot minute. A B-52 and a 4 point later our hot steppa’ was all snug as a bug in bed. His brother, who had called EMS showed up and told us that when he saw him last night, he was perfectly fine and had just finished a shift at work. The guy had no past medical, never did drugs or drank, and in fact was quite religious. He told his brother he didn’t feel quite right this morning and over the course of an hour gradually went from normal to the rhythm machine that presented to the ED.  Before leaving, the brother placed an open bible underneath the patients head. How sweet.  A few hours later, our patient was awake and calm and pleasant. I sat down and had a little chat with him during a quiet moment, and learned that apparently, after his brother left he “went to the club with a woman I should have known better about”.  Ah, the devil wears stilettos! Who knew!

Looking back, I sincerely feel that if the start I had introduced myself as a doctor AND a priest, whipped off my white coat, fanned at him forcefully shouting “DEMONS BE GONE” we might have saved this guy from most of his troubles. Of course, he then would have fainted and we would have head a trauma on our hands, so maybe it wouldn’t have been such a good idea.