Honest Mistake: It Turns Out an Exorcism Was NOT What Grandmother Needed
Maybe exorcism shouldn't be our default medical treatment?
None of us is perfect. It takes long years of experience, trial and error, to figure out the best decisions to make for our loved ones.
For example, when Grandmother approached me one day complaining of an achy toothe, perhaps I should not have jumped to the conclusion she was possessed by a satanic demon which needed to be exorcised from her soul.
There’s no limit to the lengths we’ll go for our loved ones. The moment I determined that Grandmother was possessed by a fiery hell-beast, I called all the able bodied men in the village to come and help me chain the wretched creature to her bed. When the local priest’s powers proved insufficient to cure her of her unholy toothache, we sent for an expert.
The Exorcist travelled from a distant land to our little village to purge the evil from Grandmother’s heart.
For days they toiled. Hard the Exorcist fought to wrest the devil from its hold on her tooth. He tried all manner of spells, incantations, and tortuous devices to exorcise him, but the devil fought just as hard to resist.
In the end, the devil proved victorious. The Exorcist — once he was paid in full — returned whence he came. The battle betwixt goode and evil which tore at Grandmother’s mortal flesh had concluded, and evil had prevailed: despite our efforts, her tooth was still sore.
“I did my best,” thought I, as Grandmother’s frail olde body lay there on the bed, defeated.
It wasn’t until days after when, in consultation with a fellow who called himself a “dentist”, it was brought to mine attention that the cause of Grandmother’s pangs was likely something called a “cavity”, which bears little relation to Satan, and for which a demonic exorcism is a highly inappropriate treatment.
We all make mistakes, I suppose. I am no man of medicine, but I do mine own research. One must live and learn.
Next tyme Grandmother has a toothache we’ll stick to bloodletting.
