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Hearing a voice warning us of a health problem could be the starting point for a fantastic film. However, this is what happened to an English patient several years ago. A case studied by science.
What would you do if you heard an inner voice urging you to get checked out because of a health problem? This is what a woman in her fifties experienced in London in 1997, according to a medical case reported by our colleagues at Futura-Sciences.
Please don’t be scared, but go get a consultation
The patient born in the 1940s then lives a fairly ordinary life: a husband, children, good general health. But in winter 1984, while she is reading, a voice speaks to her:
“Please don’t be scared. I know it may be shocking for you to hear me talk to you like this, but it’s the easiest way I’ve found. My friend and I work at the Children’s Hospital on Ormont Street and we want to help you. “
The voice then mentions three pieces of information to verify, all of which turn out to be correct. Disconcerted at first, the patient believes she is going crazy. She consulted an emergency psychiatrist, Doctor Ikechukwu Obialo Azuonye, a psychiatrist at Adult Mental Health Unit of the NHS in London, which takes care of her. He thinks he detects a functional hallucinatory psychosis and prescribes thioridazine, an antipsychotic used in schizophrenia. A treatment that temporarily calms her down.
But a few weeks later, despite the treatment, she again heard the voices begging her to seek immediate treatment and telling her to go to an address, that of the medical imaging department of a London hospital.
A tumor actually discovered
Back in the office of Doctor Ikechukwu Obialo Azuonye, the patient is agitated. According to her, the voices indicated a brain tumor. She ends up being prescribed a CT scan, despite the absence of symptoms. And then comes the shock: a meningioma measuring 6 cm by 3 cm nestles on the flax cerebri, a membrane that separates the two hemispheres of the brain. She is operated on.
When she wakes up, she claims to have received a final farewell message: “We were happy to help you. Bye” and never heard a voice again. His unique story was nevertheless published in a medical journal.
Lies or reality?
Since then, the case of this patient, presented at a conference on psychiatric disorders, has been debated. The most skeptical see it as a simple lie, the sensational invention of a woman who already knew she was ill and wanted to attract attention. Others follow the path of telepathy, and believe that a benevolent signal could have been sent this way. Finally, another theory suggests a third possibility: that of a body and a mind which sense that something is going on in the brain and an unconscious fear which materializes in the form of a voice.
For the psychiatrist in any case, the total disappearance of the symptoms after the operation proves that the voice was indeed linked to the tumor. Everyone will have their own idea here.