No!! Wait. How do you know that praying didn't cause the problem to happen in the first place, and that prayers aren't prolonging the paralysis? How do you know the consequences of a prayer?
People, please!! If you are going to going to bring awesome cosmic powers to bear on this problem, you need to do it responsibly. You are meddling with supernatural forces that can shape galaxies, part seas, resurrect dead people, inflict or cure cancer, turn people into columns of salt, and win football games. We have already had it explained many times to us, that these things "work in mysterious ways" and that their plans are not always apparent to us, and their minds are beyond our capacity to understand. We can never assume that they want what we want.
If you are going to call on beings of infinite power, don't you think you ought to first understand the causes and effects? Wouldn't that be prudent, in a basic "not totally reckless and negligent on a potentially PLANETARY scale" sense?
Perhaps this patient was paralyzed as retribution for some conceit of hubris on her part, as one of life's lessons. By allying with her (i.e. interfering with her enlightenment), you might be paralyzed next, whether as punishment for defying the will of the gods, or maybe even as little lesson in hubris of your own.
Ok, maybe she was paralyzed by The Great Enemy, because she was close to uttering the Word of Justice that would undo all the Enemy's plans, so by calling on the Enemy's enemy, you might be able to help her, get the Word uttered, and all evil will finally be banished from the world forever and ever. Yet it is just as likely, that she was about to utter the Word of Despair, plunging America into yet another Eight Years of Apathy, and it was only by some hero's hours-long (and expensive, due to the rarity of some of the herbs and oils used) ritual that managed to stop her, and by bringing Great Powers into this, you might bring about the Eight Years of Apathy.
It could be happening because of something as mundane as the tumor "cover story", but then whichever god answers your prayer and cures her first (you know that prayer works, but do you know how it works, how it propagates, etc?), will be owed a favor by her, which might be a horrific lifelong struggle for her; whereas without your arrogant meddling, she might have recovered naturally anyway, without any long-term spiritual debts. Or -- are you sure you truly understand all the mechanics here, and that not only have you totally mastered Law of Man, but you also have perfect insight into the Law of the Gods -- perhaps the debt will be YOURS.
If a doctor were to idly carve on her brainstem without knowing what he was doing, you would be among those crying "malpractice!" But here you are, barging in with your hasty invocations of the mightiest powers that history has ever known, using a bulldozer-the-size-of-a-mountain to swat flies on the rim of a teacup. You would purify a pint of water with a lake of iodine, poisoning the drinker. You would shoot a man for snorin' too loud, light a cigarette with a hydrogen bomb, and write a "hello world" program that compiled to a 6 terabyte binary.
I beg -- no, insist -- all those considering resorting to the extremity of prayer, to first carefully consider all the ramifications. Make sure you understand how it really works, Whom you are really contacting, what you're really asking of Them, what it truly costs, etc. You may be doing more harm than good, and you might be involving innocent third parties.
Indeed, even if it were just one person's life at stake (and it's not!), I don't think it would be too out of line for me to demand that you first prove (to reasonable degree of certainty; we don't have to get all mathematical here) that the effects will be benign. At least do some controlled studies.
Is that not reasonable? I submit to you, that you would ask the same thing of a much less powerful, and much less dangerous doctor. No neurosurgeon's erroneous scalpel, can possible destroy a galaxy, summon The End of Time, create zombies (well, ok, maybe neurosurgeons can do that, but not a whole plague of them), time-travel everyone on Earth six thousand years back in time to The One Day of Cretacious, turn every firstborn daughter instantly into a lesbian, or alter history such that the second amendment never got ratified. God can do that, and just might, unless you're saying you're Him and you know what He's thinking. Is that what you're saying, punk?
