Friday, May 18, 2007

the poor neglected woman with mental disorder

It was late in afternoon and before lunch, at the peak of my usual daily headache where a man with 2 women (one is in wheel chair) entered my room and the man anxiously asked that I help them by admitting his sister (in the wheel chair) to the our ward (the psychiatric ward). I asked them to sit down and tell me their story and the brother start to speak with anxious angry voice, interrupted at the peaks by the other (well) sister… the woman in the wheel chair was drowsy, sleepy, gave me a poor eye to eye contact at first but then ignored me and all the other surroundings and seem to be very sleepy…the story came as this from the mouth of the brother:
Before 2 days she was completely normal, not completely normal…. I mean…she has mental illness since years … but she was stable… till 2 days when we went to visit her in the home she lives in with her other brother… we knocked the door but she did not answer… we were sure she was inside so we broke the door and found her lying at the floor and blood was coming out of her ear…

What ear? (I asked..)
Her ear.. (answered her brother)
I meant left or right? (I asked him again)
What ear? (he repeated my question to the normal sister which did not respond but start to gaze at her sleepy sister)

I was surprised by their story, I was surprised because they came after 2 days.. what did they wait for? Why they came to the psychiatry unit? How come they did not know the ear that was bleeding?...
They felt that am feeling surprised so the brother said:
Doctor we do not live with her so we do not know her condition good
Where is the brother who lives with her?
He has work..
That meant he can not bring her to hospital..


I decided that I exam the woman.. she was wearing hijab, I asked her permission to take off the hijab, she did not answer, I took it off slowly and to my greater surprise found dry blood around her ear, and large ecchymosed area (bluish area due to accumulation of blood beneath the skin), my friend doctor wisam was hearing all the conversation so he asked them to do skull x-ray. The brother told us:
Doctor please admit her!
First do the skull x-ray (answered doctor wisam).

Doctor wisam wrote the paper that will let them get access to the free service of the same hospital we were in… they did not thanked us.. they went… we went to lunch… after that we were called to see the x-ray and it was this x-ray:




There was a bullet inside her skull… we searched for the site of entrance of the bullet but there was no site but the external ear opening!!
Take her to the surgical unit (doctor wisam said)
Her brother answered with cold blood that let me feel my forearm hair erected: doctor am tiered from going here and there.. is the surgical ward far from here?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow.....what a very sad and tragic story...and made even more sad in the fact that things like that are probably something you are faced with almost everyday...so, what did happen to the woman?


Thank you for you blog and the way it brings true reality in to my "sheltered" life, tracy bakestuff@hotmail.com