23/03/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/18ZVDM73Y7/?mibextid=wwXIfr
In 1984, a woman known only as "AB" was sitting at home reading when a male voice inside her head told her he and a friend had once worked at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital and wanted to help her. To prove it, the voice gave her three pieces of information she had no way of knowing. She checked them out. They were all true. Convinced she had gone mad, she sought psychiatric help.
Her psychiatrist, Dr. Ikechukwu Azuonye, diagnosed her with functional hallucinatory psychosis, prescribed medication, and the voices went quiet. Then she went on vacation abroad, and they came back — this time with a specific message: she had a brain tumor, her brain stem was inflamed, and she needed an immediate scan.
Dr. Azuonye requested a CT scan largely just to reassure her. The request was initially rejected. After negotiating approval, the scan revealed a meningioma — a tumor in the left posterior frontal region extending through to the right side of the brain. The neurosurgeon noted she had no headaches, no neurological symptoms, nothing that would have triggered any investigation under normal circumstances.
Before the surgery, the voices even weighed in on where the operation should be performed. They suggested the National Hospital in Queen Square, London, which specialized in neurological diseases, but told her to go ahead at the Royal Free Hospital because it was urgent.
The tumor was successfully removed. When she woke up from surgery, the voices returned one final time. They said, "We are pleased to have helped you," said goodbye, and were never heard from again.
Dr. Azuonye published the case in the British Medical Journal in 1997. After presenting it at a conference, colleagues suggested she had faked the hallucinations to get free NHS treatment — but she had lived in the UK for 15 years and was already entitled to care. The more likely explanation, Azuonye believed, was that her brain somehow detected the tumor before any conventional symptom appeared, and expressed it the only way it could. He called it a miracle. It may be the only documented case in medical history of a brain tumor helping to diagnose itself.
