Kids’ Doc in Jos

Two year old Grace came for a follow up visit this week and her well-educated, professional father asked whether I thought the cause of her illness may have been witchcraft. The visit caused us a mix of happiness and sadness. Sadness because we saw this cute little girl who was fine two months ago, now seriously disabled. She is learning to sit, stand, and hold her head up again, but cannot talk, walk, or use the left side of her body well. We were happy because of the progress she has made in 6 weeks. When she was discharged she was just beginning to come out of her coma, cause unknown but most likely (?) viral encephalitis. She was in the hospital two or three weeks and frequently had family visitors and was frequently prayed for.

This week, though, the father asked me what I thought about the cause of illness, then told a long story that amounted to the fact that their house girl had admitted to causing the illness through witchcraft. She had also implicated a neighbor woman, but when confronted the neighbor denied the accusation and said that the girl had probably stolen her (the woman’s) face while she was sleeping in order to disguise herself. The girl had proven her power to the family now by lying down flat on the bed, concentrating, at which time Grace was able to stand up, which she cannot ordinarily do. So, doctor, what do you think, was there a spiritual cause to this illness?

This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2005 at 8:58 am and is filed under Mike's jottings, My patients. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.