1993 – 1995

This woman first came to see me in September 1993, and was by far the most difficult case I have had so far.

It was difficult, not because the remedies were hard to see, but because she was so mentally ill, she had to rebuild her entire mental landscape from practically nothing. This she is now well on the way to accomplishing, and she has used the remedies for every step of the way. My reason for presenting this paper is to point out that no remedy in the world can replace lost time, lost education and lost life. This has to be relearnt after the block has been removed.

First consultation 13.9.93
Female aged 43, tall, rangy and spare, brunette and wearing glasses. She was quiet and soft spoken and self conscious, I had to lead the consultation throughout. No information was volunteered and she sat clasping and wringing her hands, looking downwards. She had no facial expression and did not smile.

Rheumatism in left knee and both hands < left hand, dull ache. Arthritis in right knee. The pain (dull ache) can be quite bad and the knee can give out, so she falls. GP gave her medication, but it worsened her stomach ulcer and her IBS. She also has a deep ache in her hip, her hands ache constantly and this can extend up her forearm, and she may drop things as her hands will not clasp.

“Lots” of other problems, including many attempted suicides, endogenous depression, alcoholism and anxiety for 25 years for which she has had ECT and ‘every known psychiatric drug’, and many residential stays in mental wards, plus lock ups. She has had ‘every sort of psychotherapy and counselling’.

FAMILY HISTORY
MUM’S SIDE: Irish, arthritis, gout, gall bladder operation, gynaecological cysts/benign tumours, cancer of womb, stroke, HBP, heart attacks, glaucoma.
DAD’S SIDE: Family history not known. Dad was brought up in a home and had severe arthritis after an accident, and glaucoma. and his half brother had a heart attack and emphysema.
SIBLINGS : she has a younger brother who is in good health, but overweight and a smoker.

Her earliest memories are of abuse (uncle) and arguments and temper tantrums.

She was fully immunised and had measles and German measles, which left her with sight and hearing problems.

She also had mumps and chicken pox.

She was bullied at school. She had only two close friends, one from when she was five years old and one she met at secondary school. This latter friend committed suicide after school one day. Shortly before this, a beloved aunt died.

She reported acne as a teenager, which was ‘skin stripped’ by the local hospital. At 18, she took her first overdose. She was “completely and utterly withdrawn, her parents were ‘frightened and withdrew and couldn’t cope, they looked to the hospital to cope for them…’.

Other physical symptoms of headache and stomach ulcer and IBS have ‘gone’ since she came off all medication, and saw a hypnotherapist in 1993.

She has headaches from her sinus’ across the bridge of her nose and above her eyes “like something in there trying to get out”. She has also had profuse nose bleeds from her left nostril. She has no other physical problems, her appetite, menstruation and sleep are normal.

She would not speak of her dreams beyond saying that they were “nasty” and of “hearses and coffins with my name on it”.

She is chilly, especially her hands and feet, and she cannot cope with extremes of temperature. She gets a heat rash and blisters from the sun ‘but I do like it’. She is a dry person. + autumn and spring.

She is not married, her dad died in 1987 and she is the sole carer for her now invalid mother. She is very short sighted. She has mercury fillings in all teeth.

This poor woman left me feeling sadness and profound grief. She had started crying when she reported her friends suicide, and then had cried through most of the interview. However, it was the convulsive, silent sobbing with a red face, no tears and hysterical silences, she sobbed silently with her shoulders heaving, while she hid her face with her fingers spread over her nose and frontal and facial sinus, that remained with me.

She was not closed, but more unable to say more. She was frankly hysterical, but this was very suppressed. Apart from grief, she did not display, nor give any indication of being able to display any emotion, she was totally flat and repressed. She avoided eye contact almost totally and stared at the carpet or hid her face with her hands constantly. I was surprised that she had come at all, judging by her state, she must have wanted to be out of my gaze and alone. She was very, very depressed.

September 1993 – February 1994
During this time, I gave her ignatia and phosphorus and she duly discharged from her chest and sinus’ and after an initial mental improvement, when she actually laughed once, she then plummeted into the ‘silent sobbing routine’ and did not appear to be able to move on from this, saying only ‘I can’t get out from underneath it’. I then gave her some aurum and she started to access ‘awful isolation and fear’.

She began to have psychotic interludes and visual projections of ‘past lives’ which she described as ‘seeing photo’s of a girl and I watch it like a film, in a long hall with a fire at a feast ( the year is 1472 AD, and I am in Breystone near Hanton and Warwick, I am 15 years old, pregnant and alone, my name is Annie)’.

The scene then changed, she is in labour and lying in an old woman’s hut. It is winter and there is straw on the floor and pigs milling round. She then has the baby (a girl called Alice) and she was sick and hot with a constant cold and chesty. She is very frightened and the old woman is watching her (her name is Joan) with a contemptuous frown, as if she has seen it all before. Joan has brown clothes and matted hair.

The scene changed again, she is lying in a room on filthy blankets, the baby is dead and she is alone. She then had a couple more scenes, one was 1593 AD, ‘I was 14, called Alice and illiterate, it was a house in Greenwich and I had to take wine to the master, walking downstairs. I entered the master’s room (his name was Thomas Braby) and Sir John Gay was with him and they were whispering. In a corner a chest and a smaller chest with a big ugly cross and candles and a cloth. Then it stopped and I had the feeling that something was awfully wrong, with awful fear and awful isolation’.

This was biggest speech I ever got out of this mainly monosyllabic woman. We had a long discussion of all of this phenomena, she really needed to talk it all through. ‘I suddenly became my Granny Alice (Father’s mother whom she was never allowed to visit) and she became me – I am Alice!’

February 1994 – March 1995
During this time, she continued to plummet down and down. She went through psychotic periods and slowly began to access her anger, but she stopped here for many months, resorting to long periods of sullen silent sobbing, as if totally able to touch the core of her boil.

The remedy pictures came up quite clearly and the major remedies during this time were:
anhalonium (for delusion that she was totally alone on a desert world)
cimicifuga (for terrifying hypnogogic images before sleep)
opium (for terror and stuckness)
arnica (for shock and trauma, follows opium)
carcinocin (for the life long history of unhappiness)
glonoin (for explosive headaches ‘as if I’d been shot in the head’)
hydrogen (which I tried due to the dream that she had died and seen her name on her own coffin – see Jeremy Sherr’s proving ‘delusion dead woman coming back to life’)
bellis perennis (for her courage in coming back up after being constantly trodden on)
syphillinum (for the history of violent attacks and alcoholism during a nasty relationship when he punched her in the stomach and caused a miscarriage at five months – she called the baby Alice)
thuja (for the condition of her skin when all her teenage acne returned – it quickly disappeared with this remedy)
nat mur (for constantly being locked in the past)
mercury (because of her suspicious state, this remedy follows Thuja well and it also stabilised her temperature)
colycinth ( for red faced fury which she quickly suppressed again).

She had periods when she could laugh and she actually started to cry (the sobbing sessions had previously been totally dry eyed), but by far the most common picture she presented was sullen silent sobbing, when she would refuse to talk.

We had several sessions when she threw my remedies at me and stormed out, but she never forgot to pay me! I had put her on fortnightly appointments from December 1993, and this patient very definitely became a ‘heartsink’ patient for me from very early on, and I was myself affected by her profound distress and was being pulled in by her grief.

I very quickly surrounded myself with peer group support and soldiered on!

From January 1994 to February 1995, she did not sleep, except in the first part of the night, as if she woke every time she entered REM sleep. She angrily denied any dreams. Also during this period, she became anorexic and lost three stone in weight very quickly before she stabilised (mostly on hydrogen).

In October 1994, she attempted an overdose, but amazingly pulled away from the final act herself and phoned me.

From October to January 1995, she was completely locked into her sullen, silent sobbing routine, refusing to even speak to me, even though she turned up every fortnight for her appointment and paid me for every visit! I had very little choice but to sit and allow her to do this – it was as if she simply wanted me to witness her grief.

At this point, she turned on me and asked ‘what’s in this for you – why are you still here?’ I tried to explain that I was simply allowing her the space to heal (OK – I was operating by the seat of my pants!), but she seemed to need to test me out constantly to see if I were really trustworthy.

At this point (January 1995) I gave her electricitas 30c at Linda Razzell’s suggestion to remove the block of the ECT, and she came out of it. She then told me that ‘I’ve tried this technique on every consultant psychiatrist I’ve ever seen and they all fell for it and changed my medication, but you never did, you just sat there and let me do it’.

Slowly, she began to tell me that she’d never felt wanted. Silently and quietly, she described for me the scene of her birth in vivid detail.

I was immediately struck how close this was to her previous ‘past life recollections’. She described the room, the midwife, her mother turning away from her and her sense of rejection and isolation and total loneliness. After all the high drama, I was quite stunned by the quiet composure with which she described this scene. I gave her lac humanum 1m split dose, and she has come right up into the light and so far, she has maintained her improvement.

At our last consultation (March 1995), she sat and told me black jokes until the tears ran down her face and she laughed and laughed for over an hour. These jokes were about death and dead bodies and dead babies nobody wanted.

I have referred her to an osteopath (who has been working mainly with her muscles, which are drawn painfully tight all over her body), and she has been seeing an aromatherapy colleague of mine for many months (for physical touch and contact).

Throughout treatment, I simply gave the currently indicated remedies as they came up, which they did with great clarity. This had the effect of bringing her delusions and mental symptoms into the real world, where she could translate these feelings into actions that slowly resolved her defensive mind set and allowed her to feel and to act in a different way.

I feel, and so does she, that we have still much work to do. She has indeed been dead for many years, but she is now showing all the signs of life anyone could wish. The reason I have prepared this case for presentation is to say that even with the ‘right remedies’, the psyche needs time to heal.

She went through many phases, at one stage I was dealing with an angry baby for many months, only occasionally seeing the adult part of her. I still feel that major parts of her remain to be accessed.

I really wrote this paper to illustrate how difficult psychiatric cases are, and that simply getting the right remedy is not all there is to it. I could compare them to learning difficulty in children, my own son is a case in point. He was dreadfully dyslexic, and eventually DPT 30c really plugged him back in.

Suddenly, he could spell, it was wonderful. However, he’d got an awful lot of backlog education to catch up on, and this needed time and immense effort to do so. This analogy is very pertinent to this type of case, where huge chunks of the persons life have simply been missed for whatever reason.

I suffered greatly taking this case, but I have learned more from this patient than I can tell in one short paper. More than anything, I admire and respect this woman for her tenacious and lonely fight back. I am also profoundly grateful for the tremendous support and encouragement I had from friends and colleagues. I could never have gone through this case alone, and I would not recommend anyone to try doing so. We have a lot to learn about homoeopathic psychiatry, I hope this paper helps.

Sue Young RSHom
April 1995

Copyright© Sue Young

Published in The Homeopath Summer 1997 No: 66

There is much evidence to suggest that most cases of severe mental and emotional pathology arise from abuse somewhere in the time line, thus practitioners can find themselves on the look out for this, even when it isn’t there.

When a client first presents, there is often no way of knowing what the aetiology is, as the case history or time line may not reflect the true picture due to denial or fragmentation (i.e. loss of significant portions of the memory).

In this case, the client’s mother and her brother had been sexually and physically abused by their father, resulting in the uncle (mum’s brother) requiring mental hospital admission and ECT. This client’s mother however, had ‘survived’ and managed to parent my client adequately, even though she was a strict disciplinarian who lashed out with her hand. This information ‘predisposes’ the practitioner to look in a certain direction, which may be quite misleading!

This 41 year old woman first consulted me on 10.7.95, giving a history of severe depressive episodes. Her GP had told her she was a ‘psychiatric case’ and her osteopath had told her that her frontal lobes were ‘rearing like frightened horses’. Throughout the whole of the initial consultation, she cried and sobbed very loudly, screamed at every question and was completely hysterical.

I will radically summarise the case here:

Family history:
Cancer
Non Hodgkin’s Disease
Stroke
Psychological problems
Nerve trouble
Sexual and physical abuse

Siblings: Twin elder sisters

D.o.b. 1954

As a child: scarlet fever/whooping cough/stuck hairgrips up her vagina (required hospital admission). Outdoor type, liked team games and walking, also loved books and knowledge. Used to cry in bed ‘about where I will go when I’m dead’.

As a school child: she couldn’t get into twin sister’s social set (fought all through childhood with them because they thought she was the ‘favourite’), always hung around with mum who was ‘my best friend’. Mum was dominant in her marriage, but ‘dad wound mum up’. Dad always put me down. She loved school and worked hard, getting grade one passes in all exams. She was a leader ‘disruptive, mischievous and obedient’, she got into fights with boys. She was a tough child who stood up for herself. She liked to ride horses.

As a young adult: She completed her degree (with distinction) and then went abroad to Iran in 1977 and lived in Istanbul for two years where she married a Turk. Then she divorced him and came back to London. She went to Germany in her late 20′s and got depressed over a fight with a neighbour and lost her confidence. A German psychiatrist worked with her around her father (‘who always ridiculed me and threw my Lenin books out of the window’).

She returned to London and hated it, her GP gave her tablets for being sad and unhappy in the City, she took too many and ended up in hospital and saw another psychiatrist for a few weeks. The nurses in hospital called her nasty and evil which upset her considerably!

She has always hated London, but finds its the only place she can work, so she took frequent time outs abroad – working as a hotel cleaner in Europe and Germany, coming back to London to teach supply and then off abroad again – often back packing around Greece, North Africa and Eastern Europe, preferring to travel alone.

At the age of 30, she moved from East to West Germany and the woke up crying one morning and couldn’t stop. She saw another psychiatrist and worked through her parent’s relationship as it affected her. ‘I wanted to be a vet, but mum and dad stopped it – I hated (the job I do), living in the city – and I knew I had to go back to England!’

She has smoked cannabis all her life.

Back in England, after an unhappy love affair, she was again sad and the GP gave her amitriptylline – ‘I got so scared that I would get off centre so I smoked loads of dope all the time’.

She was soon back in East Germany again and happy ‘I loved this – no pressure and lots of long distance walking alone, but I was lost and directionless’. She then had two miscarriages in Germany and began to be depressed in the winter, but was happy enough with the ‘state supporting me and lots of friends’. Her directionless life began to take its toll and she began drinking on her own, but smashed all the bottles against the wall one day and returned to London in 1989.

Settling down in London: Back to work in London, she continued to back pack at every opportunity. By 1991 she was pregnant and had a daughter. She began homeopathy in 1992 as she was always ill with head colds and had developed a terrible fear of HIV/ME. Her mother died in 1993 of cancer.

By autumn 1994 she was hypomanic, SAD was diagnosed at the hospital, by February 1995 she was on amitryptilline and prosac, which ‘rocketed me off’ into panic and anxiety, with visual disturbance and vertigo and hysterical fear.

With the summer coming she was terrified. Her homoeopath couldnt pull her out of it and she panicked and wanted to change to a female homeopath. Her previous homeopath had given her stramonium/ staphysagria/phosphorus/ ignatia/ sepia/ sulphur/ medorrhinum/ calc carb/ calc phos. She has been ‘bombing’ arg nit all day just to get to see me. She is seeing an osteopath.

She is doing a further degree at present, which she says eases her, as she always works obsessively and constantly. She reported her only ameliorating factors as working and walking.

Remedy: This was the whole case as I received it that day. She was crying uncontrollably all the way through and I was put off asking too many questions because she just screamed and jumped – she had come prepared to tell me this story and having done so, had run out of steam.

I have been treating her child since 1993, but I’d no idea she was in such a state as she usually presented to me with a very good calm, controlled persona, which was proved time and again interacting with her over her daughter (who had very severe chest infections and eczema, and required weaning off steroids. I’d always found her to be sensible, competent and mature). I gave her hyoscymus 200c hourly.

12.7.95 to 19.7.95 She slowly calmed down on the hyoscymus, tailing this off to one a day, which enabled me to get some more information. She told me that she has panic attacks in Tesco’s and is unable to shop (caught shoplifting aged 7 and is still terrified of being found out). She has had gushing diarrhoea and a ‘quivering anus’ so she can’t go out the house.

Remedy: aconite 10m as required and lac humanum 1m twice a day, phosphorus 30c as required (a remedy she had found very helpful from her previous homeopath and pleaded to continue).

19.7.95 to 2.10.95 She slowly calmed down even more. The osteopath was pleased that her head felt more normal and the pressure in her head normalised a bit. She felt that the aconite helped her to re live her mother’s death and she feels better about this. She reported good sleep, but dreams of tidal waves and rats. She was angry about her partner who ‘puts me down’.

She began to report symptoms of PMT, complained of a blocked nose and a constant feeling of having the flu with a headache and right ear ache. She says the congestion in her head builds up until her period releases the pressure. She looses very little blood and uses only panty liners during her period. She is extremely conscious of ovulating, saying she gets the ‘flu’, itchy eyes and a headache from ovulation till her period, then has a few days off before the whole cycle begins to build again.

She is obsessed with counting the days of her cycle. She reports very offensive fishy odour during this time, and reports a heavy vaginal discharge which can excoriate and dries to mustard yellow and will not scrub off her clothes. She has genital herpes which also flares up at this time. She is exhausted most of the time.

She also builds up pressure with weather and rain releases this pressure. Her sleep is ‘great’ since the hyoscymus, but she reported a recurrent dream of snakes coiling around her ankles – an old symptoms from the past – with a great fear of snakes – but recently she has been able to tolerate pictures of snakes. She also reports a fear of heights.

She told me about an ‘attack’ by a male lecturer in February 1995 over her degree course work ‘he raped my thoughts’ and ‘negated my existence’ – she cried over this for a long while. She was frightened to give up the lac humanum, but I finally convinced her to stop this, and all other remedies and take kreosotum 30c one a day for five days 2.10.95.

2.10.95 to date During this time, she as very exhausted as she put down all the panicky behaviour and began to normalise. However, her fear of winter and SAD proved troublesome. She continued to count every day of her cycle for the whole of this period. Her itchy eyes resolved. Her ‘free floating anxiety’ eased off. She continued to walk and overwork to ease off her anxiety, saying that this was the only thing that really helped. She finally went to visit her mother’s grave.

Her osteopath struggled all winter to try and ‘release’ her head. She reported post nasal catarrh, with constant nasopharyngitis and sore throat, and pressure in her ‘brow chakra’ which makes her squint her eyes. She complained constantly and bitterly about her offensive vaginal discharge and ‘smelly armpits’ and offensive gas. She reported skin rashes when ever her skin is exposed to the sun, which itches violently.

She had plummeting PMT with every period, with screaming and sobbing, exacerbation of all her ‘flu’ symptoms and she refused to be left alone (which necessitated rotas of friends to keep her company around the clock). This whole picture worsened as winter onset. She would crescendo into her period from ovulation, till her period released the state, then she would become excessively tired and then manic as the build up began again.

She cried huge amounts of tears. She used hydrocortisone on her skin every time she felt any sunlight, suppressing urticarial type, bright red rashes all over her hands and forearms.

She repeated the kreosotum 30c one a day x five days on 2.10.95 and 4.12.95, and began to report a ‘click release’ in her head, ‘I felt something shift’ and she felt a bit better. She had a return of her gushing diarrhoea and became very irritable, remembering incidents from the past when she didn’t fight back, screaming and shouting about events long gone.

She spent her time walking long distances and crying, but began to report islands of feeling better in between these outbursts, and in between her crescendoing build ups to her periods.

She began to get very close to her dad, spending more and more time with him, thus seeing more of her sisters and getting much closer to them and their children. She and her dad cried in each other’s arms on the last visit. At other times, she felt vulnerable and alone.

I was now able to get some details on her previous physical history, Which I was very eager to do, but all this time had been taken up helping her to control her hysteria. I have been her daughter’s homeopath since 26.6.93, a full two years before, so I knew this woman reasonably well. I also knew the story of her pregnancies. I was eager to see what the overall physical history actually was.

She reported a history of huge multiple recurrent styes in 1991 when pregnant, she had a coil fitted in 1977, which was replaced in 1979 whilst she was living in Turkey. She then had a ‘very bad infection’ which required hospital admission and a fight over whether to operate or not, and whether they should remove the ovaries, with multiple antibiotic usage and crawling about in excruciating pain.

She already had a history of genital herpetic eruptions. In 1981, another coil was inserted, but she had pain and mid cycle bleeding, so she insisted it was taken out. The GP couldn’t find it, neither could the hospital – it had burrowed its way up and out of the womb and was removed by laparoscopy. She has never had a coil since and cannot wear tampons, which she used to do. Sex is a problem before a period due to deep dyspareunia.

From her daughter’s notes, I quote the following:
‘Uggh, do we have to talk about pregnancy?’
H/O five previous miscarriages ‘like living on a knife edge’
This pregnancy was a twin, but at 16/40 there was a ‘bloody, gungey discharge’ and then evacuation – ‘something came away’, but the other twin ‘stuck like a Klingon’ and survived. This child suffered intensely severe chest infections, behavioural swings and skin eruptions of a rapidly varied and fluctuating nature.

Always crises would be signalled by a ‘fungal circle’ that would appear on her tongue. After three years of treatment, and only this ‘circle on the tongue’ remaining as a symptom, streptococcus in potency removed the stain of the disease from the daughter, and the ring from her tongue.

Back to mum’s case:
During this time, I gave her opium 30c od x 3 days 16.10.95 (to try and stem the flood of shock hysteria) and pyrogen 30c (to try and address the putrid nature of her discharge and her ‘head flares’ – I was aware that I was dealing with an active inflammatory and infective condition – kreosotum seemed to give her a bad emotional ride and she refused point blank to take any more – ever!) She pleaded to keep the phosphorus 30c (which she was convinced as calming), so I agreed.

After the opium and the pyrogen, she dramatically normalised, had some nose bleeds between ovulation and menses, noticed the pain in her uterus behind the discharge and a reduction in the offensive odours. She reported a history of bowel trouble before the first ‘episode of emotional trouble’

in Germany in 1979 when she moved from Turkey. This was the date of her first infective episode with the replacement coil. So this woman had never been emotionally well since an episode of bowel trouble, followed by a PID infection in 1979?

The original picture at that time was headaches (German GP sent her off for a scan which showed no abnormality) and symptoms of IBS.

Then she had a sudden episode of depression.

This pattern has been repeating ever since, and has been treated by all concerned, even the patient like a mental/emotional illness, no doubt because of the presentation and because of the family history.

The truth is little bit different!

It took another fourteen months to calm her down and to treat through the consequent emotional disaster area that this state had caused. I gave her very low doses of staphysagria, sepia, hyoscymus, nux vomica and nat mur, in short burst of three or five days over a period of eight months, all the while intercurrenting the case with pyrogen 30c, hydrogen 30c and eventually streptococcus, which I use in the 200c as this seems to be the most efficacious potency imho!

She took streptococcus 200c od for the period between ovulation and menstruation for two months, and she had a good summer.

She then had a flare up on 9.9.96 (going back to work after the holidays and SAD threatening). These anniversary hiccups in these type of cases need to be prepared for, and sure enough she started to blow out (starting with her tyre on the motorway) and the resultant adrenaline rush brought on the period and a flood of responsibility, a decision to move house, change her job etc., renewed obsession with counting her days between ovulation and her period, with exhaustion and run away fear states and restless legs and desire to run away – but this time, she knew it was coming because we had all the time line mapped out, she knew that streptococcus had released the state in her head before, she agreed to a similimum prescription, and prepared to confront her central dilemma.

Prescription: Tarantula 30c one split dose 9.9.96.

She plummeted a bit, but her osteopath was jumping around – her head had changed and stayed changed, but her womb was stuck fast! She blew out lots of gas with lots of severe cutting pains, her body odours increased and had lots of crying sessions. Her nose began to run ‘a snot factory’. She did enormous quantities of work (is finishing her degree this year).

Tarantula 200c and some arnica 10m (for the depth of the toxic shock picture) in odd doses sailed her through the winter. The osteopath was convinced that he had found an old concussion in her right temple (lots of falls from horses as a child), and he also found evidence of ‘falls from horses’ in her right hip and knee.

She finally reported the extent of her skin rash history, which she has always suppressed with 1% hydrocortisone and pseudo cream < any sunlight. The dry skin on her face returned, the irritating little sore place between her little toe (right) which she has had for years returned.

She sorted out her partner (who has been violent to her), such that he just sat with his head down and agreed to do better (February 1997)! She has also been given one split dose of carcinosin 1m 16.12.96 and a further dose of staphysagria 200c one dose 10.2.97, but has normalised to such an extent now that she is managing her own discharge from treatment with me, and has discussed with her GP (who is very pleased) her wonderful recovery.

At this time April 1997, she has no remaining problems, and has been very well throughout this winter. Her confidence in her mental and emotional health is very clear. She is at present experiencing the total release of her head congestion, with old green discharge post nasally, which is slightly excoriating and the route of the lymphatic drainage down the front of her right chest/breast is a little tender. Her right cheek, ear, nose and upper teeth have flared up on the second day of her period for the last two months, and she has had some blood spotting from her right nostril.

Otherwise, she has no build up between ovulation and her period, no offensive odours and she can feel her eyes clearing. The osteopath has finally released her head and is now working on releasing her right cheek bone and the tightness in her right hip. She was complaining of sneezing in the sunshine and a sun sensitive dry, itchy rash on the back of her right hand, which she is still daubing liberally with pseudo cream and 1% hydrocortisone.

I have given her mercury 30c one a day for five days.

This case could only really be sorted by reference to the physical history of streptococcus infection, which is quite characteristic when you have become familiar with this remedy. In fact this whole case is really a case of streptococcus.

The bias to look for psychological causes is very strong, but there is a physical underpinning to this case. I have seen a lot of these type of cases, and a lot of sexual abuse cases. They present almost identically which predisposes the practitioner to a certain line of treatment.

However, all the talking in the World would not have helped a case like this.

Sue Young RSHom
April 1997

Copyright© Sue Young

1993-5 This case was difficult. It started easily enough and then blew up in my face!
1st consultation 4.11.93

Female aged 33, thin, tall and brunette. She has flu at the moment, with non specific symptoms of malaise, thirst and exhaustion.

Her problems were “years old”, but she had made good headway on her own. She was an ex heroin addict (8 years ago), and had received very good counselling at that time. However, she now finds that she is being pulled down by anxiety, self hatred, feelings of inadequacy due to sexual abuse during her childhood by her father. She is taking 2mgs of valium a day and has been trying to reduce for eighteen months.

She feels that the anxiety prevents reduction and leads to an exaggerated resentment, causing depression. She feels anxiety “all over”, centred in her throat and stomach. Her anxiety takes different forms, she can be hyper or very quiet and “paralysed by it”.

She has tension headaches across her brows, extending to eyes and hairline. The pain is pressing and throbbing. Also, cramps in her bones (knee and elbow joints and legs) with grinding and knotting > reducing stress, baths, swimming (every day when possible- up to 40 lengths a time “it keeps me sane”), stretching, solitude < encounters with people, stress, going out.

Very thirsty + cold, sour. “I feel hot all the time”. Hot in bed at night. No sweat, dry skin and a tendency to dry redness on her face, she blushes if she is the focus of attention.

PMT “is a major problem” normally, but she had her first child four weeks ago. Her periods used to be irregular, but evened out over the last couple of years. Her PMT is like “emotional jip”, lots of different things,”I need to be alone, but I need to be with people who appreciate me”. “I’m a critical person, especially of myself”. “I have depths of resentment from unjust criticism of me, I’m uncertain of my own worth, I flare up into mammoth hatred. I used to drink a lot (lager/brandy), I don’t know – I’d get into rows when I was drunk, I’d get physically violent with resentful anger. “I started drinking when I stopped the heroin”.

FAMILY HISTORY
IRISH MUM’S SIDE – breast cancer, TB, pleurisy, cyst burst in lung, chest infections
DAD’S SIDE – leukaemia, alcoholic, estrangement, orphanages. Dad’s mum ran off with a tinker (she was Catholic!)
SIBLINGS – She had one brother who committed suicide aged 18. “He petrol bombed the local nick’ and then ‘hanged himself in prison”. He left a note about his father’s sexual abuse.”

I was 21. When he died, I attempted suicide by overdose, we were very close. Mum and dad were divorced by then, I was at University in Manchester (philosophy) but I didn’t finish due to my suicide attempt. Dad (16 years older than mum) was in an old people’s home, mum went off her head, so did I -there’s lots of denial in mum – she denied knowledge of abuse, but she did tell my counsellor “that was just a game, he used to stick his fingers up their bottoms.”

She was a healthy child, all the childhood illnesses, emotional and moody, weak physically and not confident. The abuse was denied until her brother wrote to her from prison “I still have only flashes and emotions, I have hardly any memories of childhood’. “I had gelsemiun a few days ago for my flu, it moved it along a bit, it made me stream a lot. I used to throw things at the wall, I was a good student”.

EXTREME TIREDNESS with mad energy bursts < PMT (she admitted to attempted self mutilation with razors during PMT and would stand in front of the mirror and punch herself in the face until the blood ran).
At secondary school “I was the outsider”, with”fleeting friendships”. “I had one friend, we were united in alienation, with hatred of the other kids, bullied and attacked by a gang of girls in the 4th year. We became estranged in the 6th year, I was a punk, but we’re still friends now.”

“I was raped at 16 and at 18, smoking grass and sniffing glue”. “I never told anyone in case they (parents) kept me in – I was exotically dressed – I’d already retreated so far -further than human hands could reach – I expected to be raped. They were both strangers, but I felt that I knew them. The one at18 – I thought he was going to kill me”.

Menarche at 13 was OK “I liked it”, periods started slowly, always irregular (< drugs > acupuncture), sometimes quite heavy, always slow and dark, flow for “a few days only”. She floods occasionally, has had clots over the years. She has had three abortions, an infections after one and then her periods were long and heavy for a while. She has always had PMT.

(She has a history of burrowing abscesses during injecting heroin – one travelled through from her right buttock to her right groin, and another travelled through to her left buttock. She has extensive scarring at the points of exit for all three abscesses – (this I found out in March 1995).

Appetite is fairly good.
+ yoghurt, shellfish, fruit (can go off this), nectarines, fish, soups (thick home-made), bacon sandwiches, black chocolate (occasionally)
- milk, soggy sponge puddings, sweet stodgy food, sweets, milk chocolate, biscuits, pickles, vinegar
“I was always weird about food – beginnings of bulimia -then I got into nutrition in a big way, deliberately to redirect my weirdness”.
Bowels – always regular, except when pregnant (constipated).
Urine – H/O cystitis (now gone) < alcohol “I may be a bit frequent”.

‘Previously, I’d slept around a lot, but when I met my current partner (seven years ago) – I just knew him – I’ve not really had any clairvoyant stuff – but he’d been abused by his mum. I’d never been out with anyone for more than three months’. He is kind and understanding, although he can be ‘strong’ with her. She feels guilty that he is so nice to her, but she needs this and is very dependent on it. ‘I need to be constantly in the company of empathetic people’.

Strangers and neighbours make her feel quite threatened. She needs contact, consolation and good conversation. She can be reassured, but this is only until ‘I’ve gone away and thought about it and then it all comes back up again’. ‘I’d been off methadone for a year then, and moved house and all my old connections were severed’ (Hospital withdrawal with largactil, sedated twenty hours in every twenty four for two weeks. “I’d discharged myself due to my intolerance of authority and such”).

“Things have been on the up since then, we’ve had growth, painful, experiences that have been very positive. Its a good, close relationship – I’m very reliant on this relationship – he’s the only person in my life who hasn’t let me down”. The pregnancy was planned  “but I hated it!”

The birth of her child was painful and frightening, with slow dilation, sobbing and screaming with the epidural, but “no tearing or anything”. She is breast feeding well and well bonded with the child.

Sleep – “I love sleep, but its pretty elusive – an escape from the world”.
Dreams – “Mad dreams, all the time”. She keeps a dream diary and does regular work on this. She has recurring dreams of cripples, bloodshed, violation and death. “It changed when I was pregnant to wild animals, magic fortresses, when I had to kiss the black wolf”. The dreams of cripples are around “a crippled girl in a wheelchair, about three years old, with deformed legs that are too little and could snap- but lately she is standing up and walking”.

She talked easily and confidently, sitting forward, friendly, slightly nervous as to my reaction. I hardly asked any questions throughout the entire session. When I did, she talked over me, increasing the volume of her voice to keep the conversation in her court, so I tended to lapse into silence. She knew what she wanted to say and she said it!

She was a exotically dressed, large (too large) kohled eyes, a fixed face which was quite remarkable for its lack of expression, even when she smiled – a mask. Her skin looked stretched and yellow, she was very thin -slender and willowy, dressed to effect with slightly transparent clothes despite the weather, or clingy fabrics which showed her body. Her hair is dyed. The whole effect is dramatic and exotic.

However, she has a keen mind and misses nothing! Her vocabulary is extensive, her language and expression is well educated and she sounds like a literary poet, weaving words to equally dramatic effect. Also, she is quite ill, with fevered flushing and red cheeks and glassy, shiny eyes. She looks like a phosphorus, sitting well forward on her chair and holding her face as near me as she can and being very expressive with her hands and arms, making sweeping graceful gestures.

In contrast, she has a beautiful month old baby who looks totally wholesome, well fed, well looked after and very different (pink and healthy). She had a well kitted out baby bag with every necessity and she was very attentive to the child, very appropriate maternal behaviour.

November 1993 to August 1994
My main fear was that she would abuse every substance I gave her. During the course of treatment, she has taken valium, temazepam, co-codamol, methadone, prosac, lofeperamine, sertraline, DF118, ecstasy, tobacco, brandy and beer. I had to get over my fear and anxiety about loosing control of prescribing and the amount of substances she was taking, so I began to give her triads of remedies to remain within (I’m always looking for my three legged stool!) On the whole, this worked well, although she did try other remedies occasionally, and she paid for it!

She was already knee deep in homeopathy, having procured several books on homeopathy and a materia medica, and quite a stock of remedies. She had all the Californian and Bach remedies and knows far more about them than I do! She self prescribed these for herself throughout. She is also a great self taught astrologer and explained throughout about her Pluto transit as it occurred.

She had done lots of previous work with sub personalities and knew all about Carl Gustav Jung‘s work. She is religious with her chakra work and her diet is impeccable. At many times, she was out of control of the many substances, but equally there were many times when she was, if not in the drivers seat, at least in the cab!

Her own keen mind and gut determination and ability to look deeply and truly into what had happened carried her through times of no hope and great pain, terror and awful physical illness, to a steady improvement back to health and life.

Looking at the case now, a deeply explosive atmosphere pervades throughout. Of all the many substances and remedies she took during this period, the one she remembers the most is plutonium.

Countdown
I started the case with nat mur, phosphorus and carcinosin, which resulted in lots of physical, fevered, discharging flu’s and chests which responded classically to the remedies given. This led to her very quickly expressing part of her central delusion in a very paranoid manner which resolved with kali brom, stramonium, opium, arnica and rad brom.

She also went to her GP and asked for antidepressants. She also took ecstasy and methadone.

She had images of black creatures and magic towers, which deeply reflects her basic inner romantic nature and her Classical education in literature. She quickly overcame these, mastering visualisations with aplomb. She then entered a calmer mental state, where her PMT `disappeared’.

Her baby walked for the first time in front of the Health Visitor at a developmental check, and she was showered with professional praise.

The next day she was sexually attacked in the park 24.8.94. Her first question to me, was ‘is this the return of an old symptom?’

Within two days, she had another return of her old symptom of cystitis (the GP said PID), but also the onset of a viral illness which lasted till November, no matter what remedies we tried. She entered a belladonna state: dilated pupils and frightened staring expression, violent fevers with drenching sweats, shivering, hot head, cold body, `traveling’ sinus headaches and deep abdominal pain.

She’d had PID for one year, four years previously, although the hospital did consider glandular fever and hepatitis as well. She has antibodies for hep A. She developed shooting pains in her joints, bruising and cramp and post nasal catarrh ‘fluorescent green’. Fear and panic began to mount ‘like a war going on inside me’. She feels like “the sulking child, trying to keep the surface calm but simmering under the surface with out of proportion explosions”.

She is covered with nettle rash all over her limbs (HO as a child). “I hate everyone with a kind of dull, disinterested hatred’. ‘They took my whole childhood away from me, it was stolen, along with my self worth and my confidence – stolen! Then I cry!’ ‘I feel inadequate and fall back on the smug assumption of being cultured (Convent girl, Bohemian type knowledge).

I feel my performance is a sham, I’m trying to make myself seem interesting and vivid, this is what is the sham. I have to do what is safe, I’ve spent enough time doing chemicals, but I must cross this bridge safely, I don’t want to end up in the cauldron. I went into the spare room and imagined I was alone in an enchanted tower surrounded by safe protective golden light. I have to put magic circles around me, its not enough protection, so I put magic fir trees around that, its not enough, so I put a light bubble over the whole lot- a psychic fortress – is this enough? I feel everyone is a demon, people are demanding, I will hide in a doorway rather than speak to a neighbour as I feel people drain me. I want to be on my own”.

She has terrifying nightmares of being threatened, losing people she loves, public humiliation. “I’ve always felt that I needed this level of psychic protection, so I used to do drugs to cut it off, then I invented a mythical me, like I was trying to be an archetype and not a person, like I was Morgan Le Fey, I wanted to enchant people and to weave spells. I did this as a little girl, people have always been threatening, I’ve always felt violated by innocent encounters with everyday people. Now I’ve hit bottom and now I’m real and my God! I need protection. I’m only me! Your remedies have made me climb down enough to ask for help!’

At this point, she opened a dialogue between two subpersonalities – Morgan Le Faye (‘dad picked me up and smacked me and I flew into Morgan’ ‘I saw how she came about.. she’d saved my inner child…but she didn’t know what to do with her so she stuck her in a secret place and she starved. Morgan was lording it about as a sexual harridan’) and Nimue (‘she is necessary to heal and to become an adult’). ‘Nimue is talking Morgan through it’.

From 26.8.94 to 25.11.94, she continued in this acute state. She lost weight and began swimming (40-60 lengths) pouring out dialogue between her sub personalities and having violent rows with her husband as rage and ‘delusions of war’ and ‘fear of the World’ exploded when she collapsed in the street swearing, crying and praying ‘my soul thirsts for God’, and on 9.11.94 she developed a tooth abscess (L) (new symptom). The mental and physical state then eased.

Belladonna had been the main remedy throughout, but it would often fail to act: mercury, arsenicum, phosphorus, lycopodium, aconite and opium always got the belladonna working again, but belladonna continued to fail throughout. I put her on arnica 6c mene and bellis perennis 6c nocte permanently, as I was worried about a liver abscess, and after discussion with Robert Davidson, I included syphillinum 12x od too.

After the tooth abscess, she developed a chest infection`self experimenting with staphysagria’ (!) which responded to sepia, but mentally, rage exploded into another argument with her husband. She was tormented by awful dreams of mutilation and was taking methadone, also occasional ecstasy.

The GP had tried Prosac 18.5.94 (which she reacted to dramatically) and tried to settle her on lofeperamine 12.6.94, but transferred her to sertraline 25.11.94. Her fever had returned, but her abdo pain was gone, but she now had terrible headaches. Her cystitis was intransigent throughout and two courses of antibiotics 3.9.94 and 21.12.94 only abated it temporarily. The remedies helped, but failed to hold. I was left with the decision of going on with the same old remedies or trying something different.

Plutonium 10m, one or two – made on the machine 25.11.95.
From 25.11.94 till 4.12.94 she settled into a mildly fluey state, she broke contact with her dealer and refused methadone twice. She slept without sleeping pills, she had a ‘turning of emotional energy for the better’.

On 3.12.94, she had a mild flare up of the `belladonna’ state with a stomach focus >mercury/phosphorus, the fever continued and found a head focus> nat mur.

On 9.12.94, she took ecstasy. She also took some methadone. The viral nature of the illness was very much mirrored in other clients in my practice at this time, all showing this week off, three weeks on pattern. It was quite a bug!

She then developed cystitis and haematuria and resorted to antibiotics. Arnica, sepia, streptococcus failed to hold. She’d given up on belladonna!

Then old cigarette burn scars on her arm from twelve years ago broke open. Her baby got cystitis too and she took 10mls of methadone. However, her mental state cleared and she returned to her sub personalities ‘Morgan and Nimue are assimilated… but Morgan still needs to be calmed down…’

She then developed acute gastric flu after a row with her husband and the whole fever state flared up again 10.1.95. She was on 5-10 mls of methadone a day and her symptoms then moved into ripping and tearing pains in her joints (HO from childhood frombeing given coffee).

The co-codamol weren’t working and she became constipated and < methadone. Her fever subsided, she ‘refused an E last night’ and had palpitations and shaking > coffea.

Then the Housing Benefit was withdrawn plunging them into poverty 23.1.95.

On 25.1.95, she developed fever and sore throat. On 26.1.95 there was a violent fight with her husband whom assaulted her. Also, her mother fell off a ladder and injured herself badly. When I saw her she was a mess. Bruised face and cut lip (L), black eye (L).

‘Morgan was cool headed… she just got me and the baby out…’

Resolution
The post traumatic headache crescendoed from 31.1.95 to 10.2.95. Her methadone went up initially, then she stopped it dead! DF118′s from the GP weren’t holding. I gave her her old standbys, opium and arnica. She was in shock.

She told me about the original sexual abuse from her father when she was three, when her brother was born. She’d been ill for a year afterwards with UTI, colds and flus ‘the headache seems familiar…’ She was delighted that ‘Morgan had allowed herself to be afraid.. I let myself be rescued… never in the past would I have allowed anyone to come that close’.

On 7.2.95 she remembered the head injury from her second rape. This frightened her so very much because her rapist had actually killed his two previous victims, she, as his third, was the only survivor. They’d caught him after that and he’d hung himself in prison. Her mum had confirmed a head injury aged 3, she’d ran out into the hall, slipped on the rug and hit the wall.

‘I felt something deep from the plutonium… it resulted in the explosion between me and (my husband), blowing out all of the crap. I’ve lived in a hall of mirrors since I was 18′.

On 9.2.95 she told me about the first rape ‘I didn’t tell anyone `cause I thought it was my fault’.

Her head pain was`excruciating’, pills, remedies, substances – did nothing. I referred her to the GP for a head exam, who said OK. She then went to an osteopath who told her it was a whip lash, with blocked bones in her head and face and released it all. Her mental state then eased although she was shocked and ashamed ‘the abnormality of my past’. Her energy is ‘going mad… I used to damp all this down with drugs… I’m exhausted by my own energy’.

On 13.12.95 she read through all her writings and faced up to the pain of the rapes. She confessed all to her mum ‘I feel dramatically changed’. ‘That plutonium is from the bowels of the Earth’. She’d had images of grinding rockplates ‘magma plates’ when she took the remedy.

On 18.2.95, she collapsed in tears and will go and see the GP for methadone withdrawal. She is scared of having to go back to the DDU. More old fag burns have broken out. She has had images of addiction being ‘a horrible slimy black demon laughing in my face and mocking. I was praying… I had to embrace it to defeat it. It must be treated with love… its the abused child who needs to be reclaimed. You can fight and fight forever but as the demon has your face you can never win…’

On 23.2.95 the full horror of her addict past hit her. She saw the GP on 24.2.95 and began withdrawal ‘Morgan doesn’t fight anymore, after talking to Nimue she has changed tactics – a quieter strength’. On 25.2.95 she told me about ‘Primrose’ and ‘Fire Child’ – her sacred personalities. Fire Child was inner child, and Primrose is her potential, yet to be achieved.

Today, this woman is still withdrawing from methadone, but she is different. She undoubtedly has a long way to go, but she has learnt that she can work it through. She is down to 7mls of methadone and currently taking platina ‘…and I’m getting nastier by the minute… its great!’

She has just found out that her grandmother is dying.

Three Guardians

I feel like a flower
which has curled up its petals tight
shut out the world
embraced the night
To seek an old crone
deep in the forest
who guards a sacred fire.

I look back with rage
at the bloody wilderness left behind
and forwards with doubt
what shall I find?
A fire-dancing child
beating the drum
while she sings the oldest song.

Do I dare a new trust
That the exiled queen will reclaim her glory?
Or at last meet her death
dishonoured and gory.
To the flaming red witch
blood sacrifice is given.
And yet she does not demand it.

And all the while
a small primrose blooms.
Concealed so well it was never found
and though many have sought to pluck it away
the Crone and the child and the flaming red witch
Keep watch while its roots grow deep in the ground.

(Poem written by the client before she met me)

Sue Young RSHom
September 1995

Copyright© Sue Young 1998

VIRUS 1994

This autumn, I have had several cases which have really taxed and fascinated me; they were seemingly all related to the endemic flu virus in my area, but proved very difficult to treat.

CASE 1 FEMALE AGED 41

In September 1994, this existing patient of mine consulted me for a severe right sided headache, which started in her right forehead, travelled to her right eye socket, and then travelled to her right upper teeth. This was a neuralgic pain which lasted overnight.

The next day, her headache travelled to her left forehead, then to her left eye socket, and then to her left upper teeth. The day after this, it travelled back to her right side, again affecting her right forehead, her right eye socket and ending up in her right upper teeth. She had to stay in a darkened room as the light hurt her eyes. It then cleared on the evening of the third day, leaving her with a ‘poisoned feeling’ a ‘horrible metallic taste’ in her mouth and very constipated. Apart from this headache, she felt well in herself and ‘quite high and positive’.

Eight days later, she contacted me again with another left sided headache, same pattern, but this headache dissipated the next morning after she had been up for a while. Four days later, she reported ‘strange dreams of being a ghost and being hardly able to walk’. Ten days later, she reported swollen glands and cold symptoms with weakness, a ‘cotton wool brain’ and a ‘fever like a tight skull cap’ and a ‘sensation of a band around her forehead’.

She said that she had felt like this when she had had ME 5-6 years ago, and just after her second bout of pleurisy. She was still having ‘strange dreams’. She has had anal fissures all week which have been painful and bleeding.

Two days later she phoned very upset, reporting more ‘strange dreams’. Six days later, she reported another left sided headache, starting in her left eye socket, traveling to her left cheek, then up to the vertex via her left ear, and the ending up in her left upper teeth. The pain this time was a dull pain which throbbed on movement. This headache was very severe, the taste in her mouth had returned and her tongue was furred and blue grey with red underneath. She was ‘desperately thirsty’ and constipated again. She is having ‘anxiety dreams’.

Seven days later, she reported another left sided headache, slightly less severe. She is still having ‘strange dreams’.

In the following three weeks she experienced constant intense headaches, starting invariably on the left side and moving to the right side, again in this strange pattern affecting her forehead, eye sockets, temples, ears and upper teeth, first on one side and then on the other. Each headache lasted for about three days on one side, then travelled to the other side. The pain was now a dull congestive pain, but the intensity was such that it was waking her in the night and preventing her from working. She was still experiencing the ‘poisoned feeling’, her tongue had cleared at one point. The dreams are subsiding.

During this time, the flu came out in aching limbs, sore throats, swollen glands and hunger. Also at this time, she experienced ‘strange clicks in her head’, followed by sinus drainage post nasally. Towards the end of the third week of this pattern, her head pain was constant, dull and intense, but the pattern was by then traveling from the middle of her forehead to her nose and then her cheek bone and then her ear and to the top of her head.

She has constant tenderness in her eye sockets. She still has the ‘poisoned feeling’, ‘even water tastes poisoned’ and her tongue was again coated. She then had about five days clear, and then the headaches started again, this time from right to left, lasting over three days. Then the picture cleared and she began to recover. She had taken remedies during the whole period, which seemed to ameliorate only certain symptoms (her fissures and constipation cleared and her mood remained buoyant) but the remedies did not seem to affect her headaches at all.

After Christmas, she again consulted me again with a three day flare up of her headaches, starting on the right side, traveling from the right forehead sinus, to her right upper teeth and nose and then into her right ear. The headache switched to the left side the next day, traveling from her left forehead sinus to her left upper teeth, but dissipating before it reached her ear.

She said it was not so bad as previous headaches, and that it had been precipitated by an emotional shock. She was left feeling ‘post migrainous’ and weak. Her eyes were very sensitive to light and her eye sockets were painful.

CASE 2 FEMALE AGED 43

Another existing patient consulted in November 1994 with a throbbing, bleeding left upper gum, which may have resulted from biting on a stone in a Chinese take away. A remedy given at that time had the effect of ‘releasing the gum into my left ear’, she had a constant left sided ear ache and swollen glands on the left side of her jaw.

She then developed a left sided headache which travelled to her vertex from around her left eye socket, and then settled in her left ear.

She had had mouth ulcers two weeks previously which had resolved with a spurt of blood from a burst blister in front of her right lower teeth. These mouth ulcers had developed after an infected 1cm pocket in the gum behind her right upper teeth after a sensation of ‘a channel down the right side of my face to my tooth’ (an old recurring symptom subsequent to chronic pyorrhoea several years ago, which may have been responsible for considerable loss of bone from her lower jaw). She had also had a large, sore ulcerated patch inside her left nostril, which has improved, but not cleared up to this day.

Three days later, her left ear developed a discharge which resolved her swollen neck glands, but the whole side of her left neck and face became tender and swollen and her ear continued to discharge. This lasted for three weeks, eventually clearing up with antiseptics and remedies and with lumps of wax falling out, then the discharge cleared up.

However, she then developed conjunctivitis in her right eye, which then traveled to the left eye, and then back to the right eye, and it is still sore to this day in her left eye. Her right eye socket has been tender on and off during this period. She is very worried about her eyes, as the vision in her right eye is very poor (congenital).

CASE 3 MALE AGED 44

This man consulted in November 1994 with sinusitis occurring after spraying Rentokil damp proof chemical in his house. He had gone first to his dentist, who found a small cavity in a right upper molar. This was filled, and it did indeed greatly help with the hot and cold sensitivity of his teeth, but it did not help the headaches. The first remedy (streptococcus 30c) worked instantly.

Three weeks later, he consulted again with a ‘flare up’, describing an ‘excruciating’ right sided headache, neuralgic, moving around slowly from his right upper teeth to his cheek bone, then to his right ear and then down to his right lower jaw. He had been very ill with the flu for the past two weeks. The remedy given helped immediately.

Four days later, he reported a recurrence of the pain, which was now spreading from the right upper teeth to his right cheek bone, spreading across his forehead and traveling to his right lower jaw. The pain was intense, and he repeated the last remedy, which did not help, so he came to see me and we reviewed the case.

After spraying the Rentokil chemical, his head pain had been so ‘diabolical’ he couldn’t remember the pattern of it. He explained that it was so painful, he had not been able to ‘pin it down’. He did recall that the pain shifted about, changing from his upper teeth to his lower teeth, and then back again. He also remembered that it ‘tracked’ up the side of his face into his forehead, into his cheek bones and then into his ear. He said that it occurred on both the right hand side and the left, but he couldn’t remember where it had started. He was certain that it did not always start in the same place, but he definitely recalls that it can start in his left forehead (very intense), but that it can start anywhere from his forehead to his lower jaw, on either side of his face.

He also said that he had very similar ‘sinus pain’ as a young man, and that he had collapsed with the pain on one occasion.

Also, he has a ‘rash’ on his forehead, which on close examination covered his whole forehead, was red and raised and forming a solid continuous raised area, standing proud and completely covering his forehead and his cheekbones bilaterally. He said that this rash started at the same time as the headaches, and that he first noticed this in all of his orifices, especially his anus, and that it itched, but not intensely so. He had also had it all over his abdomen, but this had now cleared. His wife and son have also had this rash, but it had affected them all slightly differently, and he is the only family member to have headaches with it.

The head pain he has starting at the moment is bilateral and intense across both eyebrow ridges. He is increasingly photo phobic with it.

CASE 4 FEMALE AGED 34

This patient is also an existing patient, and she has a history of substance abuse and sexual abuse as a child, but she has really been making good progress during 1994. During October 1994, she developed an abscess in her liver (she is positive for hepatitis A, B and C) after a sexual assault, which resolved with remedies into the flu.

At the beginning of November, she developed a left sided toothache in her upper jaw which travelled up into her forehead up to her hairline. The pain was neuralgic, but not severe and resolved with a remedy. However, within a day, she had become hysterical, shouting, swearing and crying in the street and praying to God for help. Three days later, she was much better, but then developed a chest infection and severe constipation.

The next month was spent being very ill with the flu and the chest infection, and she became hysterical and psychotic. She described a ‘terrible headache’ pressing and deep, ‘grinding’ in her forehead and traveling to her vertex via her temples and then into her upper teeth. A remedy brought out the flu symptoms and she felt a bit better, although the flu continued to rage and her headache became ‘hot’ and ‘heavy’ and more diffuse and she developed a profuse post nasal drip which stopped and started on and off, then settled down into a profuse green and thick nasal discharge.

Thereafter, she got slowly better, developing multiple headed cold sores on her top left lip and a kidney infection, and cystitis with blood in her urine. Her headache changed into a ‘chronic hot head’. Her recovery was slow but steady afterwards, but she is still relapsing into acute symptom states.

Summary:

These are just a handful of flu cases from my practice during Autumn and Winter 1994, and there are only vague similarities in some senses, but I was beginning to really prick up my ears when patients described this ‘traveling headache’, or right – left, left – right symptoms.

I simply assumed at the time that these were epidemic symptoms, but unlike the 1993 flu, there was no epidemic remedy picture, and all my patients were given different remedies. I have to say that I did not feel my remedies were being very effective; the thing simply ran its course despite me, recurring every so often, no matter what I did or what my patient’s did.

Then in January, I was asked to see a young man who had been very ill during 1994 and wanted my advice about commencing homeopathy.

CASE 5 MALE AGED 32

In June 1994, this man went swimming off a Welsh beach and obviously ‘caught something’. The first symptoms were headaches, first in the left frontal sinus resulting in severe headaches in the left temple, which then travelled to his left occiput and left vertex. The headaches then became right sided, affecting his right vertex, and then traveling to his right occiput and right temple. He illustrated the route of the headaches by drawing circles over his head with his hands to explain how these headaches ‘tracked’ on either side of his head. These headaches lasted five weeks in all and were extremely severe.

Then followed a complete paralysis of his body, during which time he hallucinated vividly for about four weeks, not even being aware of the fact that he was comatose, paralysed and bed ridden. During this time, he would have periods where he became violent and had to be constrained in a straight jacket by ward orderlies. He was totally unaware of this, seeing only the vivid hallucinations which remained so clear and so vivid that he was able to tape them in great detail afterwards.

After this four week period, he woke up and he was indeed totally paralysed from the neck down and blind. His lungs collapsed due to the badly affected nervous system, but the medics were able to reflate them. He had a strange displaced sensation in his left arm, being convinced that his left hand was clenched and his left arm was lying by his left side. In fact his left arm was outstretched and paralysed with his hand open.

His whole left side was very much weaker than his right side, but he has since regained much of his physical function, although he is not quite in control of his left side, but he has no actual sensation in his body. He has had to relearn all his skills again, even walking and he was particularly upset by the fact that he had no ability to thrust his hips.

When seen in January 1995, he was still as weak as a baby, walking with sticks, unable to correctly control his fingers and he has remained incontinent. His optic nerve is still very badly affected and he is very photo phobic, but his vision is slowly returning. However he has large areas of his visual field still missing on either side.

Obviously, this is a very complicated case, and there are many interesting factors here, but what really stood out for me was the pattern of the infection, which his consultant neurologist assured him was a viral infection. Strangely, they were unable to determine any secondary infection, despite five lumbar punctures, all the tests came back negative. He feels, and I tended to agree with him, that he still has a site of infection behind his left eye, either in the sinus cavity or more probably, in his left optic nerve branch.

Once I had taken this case, I began to look at my other ‘flu’ cases with more interest. What was this thing? I noticed that in all the above cases, there was underlying emotional trauma, which seemed to exacerbate the symptoms, either just before the acute onset, or to resolve before the symptoms eased.

The relapsing pattern seemed to very much match the upsets the patient’s were experiencing directly. When they became traumatised, the headaches ‘flowered’, and when the trauma began to ease off, so did the headaches.

Case 5, told me that he had visited Bosnia in April, ‘just to see what it was like to dodge bullets’, as if he needed to front death in some way. He has severe unresolved bereavements from his teenage years, and this was reflected in other areas of his case too, and he did indeed manage to have a very dramatic experience with his illness. Note that he caught the ‘virus’ within one month or so of returning home.

Case 1 was wrestling with a decision to throw out her boyfriend, and every upset and row with him resulted in a flare up of her headaches. She ended the relationship and her headaches resolved, only to recur immediately after Christmas when her son’s father started to threaten them again.

Case 2 was sorting out her bruised emotions after separation from her long standing partner in the summer of 1994.

Case 3 was experiencing the first anniversary of the death of his 18 year old son in December 1993 (his son was diagnosed with Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy aged 4)

Case 4 speaks for itself!

By November 1994, I was getting superficial relief for my patients by giving them streptococcus 30c, which I arrived at via a deductive process with the help of case 3′s wife, who is still having real trouble with her rash. She was told by her GP in November 1994 that this rash was something he’d noticed in his patients with the current flu epidemic (she has actually had this rash on and off for two years and has not had the flu), but this gave us a clue when she remembered that she had not felt like this since she was 14 and had been bedridden for months with a very severe streptococcus tonsillitis and resultant collapsed physical health.

Case 1 has a very poor history of ME, pneumonia, pleurisy and dreadful, long continued emotional shock and upset for many years.

Case 2 has a similar history of septic infections that will not heal and severe emotional trauma over a very long time.

Case 3 has a history of what he calls ‘sinusitis’ and also very severe and prolonged emotional trauma , and case 4 again speaks for itself.

Case 5 has a similar traumatic history, but this is his first experience with any infective process.

They have all had a pattern of recurrent, relapsing states during this current epidemic illness. They all had the same pattern of ‘traveling’ headaches and left to right alternation of symptoms, and cases 1, 2, 3 and 5 are still quite poorly. Case 4 is on the mend in terms of the viral infection, although she remains quite physically ill. I believe this is due to the fact that she has made such major strides on a deep constitutional level, being only temporarily shaken by the assault.

Although streptococcus 30c acted like a ‘wonder remedy’ in Cases 2, 3 and 4, it did not hold, as it could only deal with the secondary infections resulting from what seems to be a rather nasty ‘virus’. It has not helped Case 1 (but pneumococcus 30c did), or Case 3′s wife (we are trying sulphonamide 30c). I was interested to note that no secondary infection could be found in Case 5.

As we don’t ‘really believe’ in virus’ in homoeopathy, I was left feeling that I had been dealing with some sort of ‘Porton Down Special. I still have a handful of rather poorly patients, and although I am relying on classical constitutional remedies to do the deeper work, and they are all progressing, I am at a bit of a loss protem.

I am also concerned at the severity of Case 5′s experience, and I wonder if this ‘thing’ is traveling through the community, loosing strength as it goes, but still strong enough to really make people very ill.

I was concerned to discover that Case 1 has often swum off the particular Welsh beach in question, and did so all through the summer of 1994. The fact that it is affecting people with a profound and pre-existing ‘disturbance in the force’ is also a cause of great concern. Has anyone out there got any thoughts on this?

Sue Young January 1995

Copyright© Sue Young

Marion 1992-1995

In November 1992, this 49 year old woman originally consulted for homeopathic support for her current radiotherapy after radical mastectomy of her left breast in March 1992. She has finished her chemotherapy. I gave her rad brom 30c od during treatment.

She was in a highly nervous state, not due to her cancer, but due to work stress, even though she was mid way (10 out of 18) through her radiotherapy. She would attend for her treatment at the hospital at 9am and be at work at 9.30am. Her boss was being very difficult and unsympathetic and she was also very distressed by her husband’s breakdown and subsequent referral to a psychiatrist due to his own work related stress.

She had previously received two years of homeopathy, acupuncture and osteopathy, and was currently receiving physiotherapy for a frozen left shoulder since the mastectomy. The breast cancer occurred after HRT which she took ‘against my previous homeopath’s advice’. She is of course taking tamoxifen.

Mum’s family: One of ten kids, poverty and poor diet cancer, heart attacks, senile dementia, ‘nerves’, gynae operations and osteoporosis all feature in her immediate family.

Dad’s history: Rheumatic fever, panic attacks, ‘terrible temper’ and cancer all feature in close relatives.

Both maternal and paternal members were all musicians and all performed regularly. She herself has ‘always been highly strung and nervous’ and ‘terribly all over the place’. There was a ‘row between mum and dad the day I was born’. Mum had ‘lots of operations’ when my client was little, leaving her to ‘walk home in the fog alone on my own… I would scream and cry’.

A very shy child, she would ‘organise music festivals as a child but was always to shy to perform in them… was never very good… I could never play in front of other people’.

She was ‘very well’ (apart from mild whooping cough) until her mid 30′s. She had always wanted to act but ‘was too nervous to perform in front of an audience’. Despite her nervous and panicky nature, she excelled academically and had lots of friends. A failed love affair and then a disastrous relationship where she was denied children and eventually abandoned upset her considerably, then she met her current husband and ‘we have been beautifully close ever since…’

She told me that poverty has overshadowed her whole life, that she is in ‘Libran balance (logically) but totally out of control (emotionally)’. She had addressed a great deal during previous treatment (causticum, mercury, sepia, folliculinum, lachesis, calc carb, pulsatilla, thuja, tuberculinum and phosphorus) and burst into tears as she told me about recent events at work.

From November 1992 to June 1993 she actually did very well, troubled by constipation and diarrhoea and letting her physio work with the frozen shoulder, which set off panic in her solar plexus, which ‘I’ve had all my life’. She told me her osteopath reported a twisted spine, misalignment of her left hip which may have been a birth deformity. She remembers her mother taking her to the doctor as a child for a twisted left leg; the GP told her mother she was imagining it!

She was however, panicky and terrified throughout this time, suffering flushing, complaining of her mind ‘running little movies for me all the time’ about work stress and she would confabulate all over the place, swinging violently from one extreme to another. I was never able to get her to discuss anything coherently due to her panicky states.

Although she said the ‘memory of all the pain from the mastectomy operation was in my body’, she would panic and sweat and get upset whenever she tried to address any central issues, and in fact never would do so, preferring to socialise and lose herself with her friends. She was also plagued with temperature fluctuations and sensitivity to smoke, so she would panic and flush in social situations.

She was getting lots of ‘tangled dreams’ and ‘weird dreams’ but insisted she couldn’t remember them. When pressed, she reported anxiety that she’d left something behind, dreams of being in a train, then realising she was traveling the wrong way, dreams of river mouths and flooded plains, going up and down in lifts, trying to tidy up haunted houses, dreams of the house she grew up in, trying to find something she’d lost’. She described the dreams and ‘teasing and not tormenting’, but admitted she’d given up trying to sort it all out as she was too confused.

She was often loquacious, I couldn’t get a word in! Often, she would sob hysterically then laugh hysterically. Her physio was very good and managed to release her shoulder.

She consulted frequently and continued to pour out her distress about ‘games at work’ and her spiteful boss, but she eventually acted to solve this. Both she and her husband resolved their respective work problems and she felt much better, more in control and she stopped consulting in June 1993 ‘for a rest’. During this period I gave her radium bromide, phosphorus, ignatia and opium.

July 1994-August 1995

For a year, she did not consult, but would phone for a chat now and then. She was in a new job, both she and her husband were happy and content. Her GP had advised continued counselling, which she had agreed to. This went very well initially but tragically, as she was gaining in confidence and opening up to her counsellor, this was withdrawn suddenly ‘the counsellor had opened me up, then seemed unable to deal with my upset and panicky state.. I cried hysterically in front of her and she refused to see me anymore. She called me a drama queen’.

This left her very vulnerable and ‘ripped me open’ on the anniversary of her radiotherapy, so she came back to see me to ‘mop up’!

I was appalled at the damaged state, with the return of all her previous symptoms and a flood of old symptoms from the past which left her clamped up tight, with fear and hysterics and suspicion was undermining her relationships; she was ‘scratchy, strung out and tired and upsetting people’. She felt ‘Pandora’s box has been opened and you can’t put it all back in again’.

She has been snapping with friends, has joint aches and clenching around her liver. Her solar plexus was relaxed. I gave her mercury 30c and chelidonium tincture. Throughout Autumn 1994, she suffered headaches and bloating and picked rows with her husband and expressed much anger about the counsellor, which made her cry until she couldn’t stop.

On chelidonium tincture she settled into a painful cough and a tickle in her throat, which acted like hair trigger < stress < smoke < cold. This was ‘an old pattern of ENT stuff’ which had disappeared with the chemotherapy Spring 1992, and the tamoxifen (which she is still taking).

The remedy had helped, but she couldn’t get through the panic, so I returned to ignatia 30c and she felt better, but at this point I felt she went into denial to protect herself from the ‘humiliation and shame’ brought up by the inappropriate counselling.

In September 1994, the cough was very sensitive < thinking about it, dust, smoke, atmosphere, chemicals, perfume, machines at work. She was still working very hard and trying to control everything, but had a ‘sense of everything falling apart’. I considered rad brom, but gave arsenicum 1m which helped and hepar sulph 30c sorted out her loose bowels and cystitis (HO from childhood). Ignatia 30c helped her to stop crying.

Her dreams became ‘pleasant’ but her mood was ‘black’ with despair and exhaustion, a ‘sensation of evil… a great threat…’. She was getting flashbacks to her childhood, fury at the counsellor for ‘taking me to this and then abandoning me’. ‘My parents were not Worldly and couldn’t cope.. I was scared and unable to cope’.

Lycopodium 30c helped her bloating, gas and burning in her stomach, her flushings stopped, her palpitations eased, her sleep was peaceful, but her voice kept going hoarse and cough kept coming back. Her ‘misery’ was < sitting upright, but the spasmodic tickle kept returning, which she linked to where they’d ‘put the tube down’ her throat (operation March 1992).

She was angry about her failed relationships (aged 26 and 41) and said her ‘parents were too elderly and I had no support, no money, no advice’.

In November 1994, nux vomica 30c ‘cleared up my throat like magic’. She described ‘anger at that counsellor locked in my throat and choking me’. She ‘screamed the place down’, nearly pulling the steering wheel off her car ‘I did this in post op’ (March 1992). She then had an anger outburst in the Post Office. Seven days later, she decided to go back into hospital for more chemotherapy and lots of drugs including diazepam. ‘I’m looking them in the eye and I’m furious’.

In February 1995, she came to see me. The consultants had disregarded her cough, and said her lungs were clear, and her liver cancer was in remission. After the chemotherapy, she was bald and anaemic and back at work. ‘What that counsellor did was to open me up like the core of a boil… tempt me to trust her and then slammed the door in my face.. this has happened so many times in the past’. ‘I was so angry… the cough… I didn’t know how to displace it so I got stuck in the anger=cancer!’ (No remedy)

In April 1995, she was regrowing her hair, settled and happy in Art Therapy and calm and content. She has Reynauld’s from the chemotherapy (and drugs to counteract this) and is taking tamoxifen and nifedipine for low blood pressure, and diazepam.

This calm state left as the Art Therapy allowed her childhood fears to mount, and her cough returned. She became ‘indignant with the NHS.. I was tortured in hospital. I know it was my choice, but you have to be very passive and let them do it… the pain was fear, fear of cancer’. She admitted ‘denial about childhood’. ‘I was a nervous child and every adult decision exacerbates this’. She was falling into terror and stuckness and loosing her memory. Opium 30c ameliorated her immediately. ‘I was so frightened that it was all crashing… I felt relaxed in my core… you’re either dead or alive in there… I’ve let go of all the emotional stuff. She is sleeping well.

In May 995, she was picking rows with her husband, frozen in fear from what Art Therapy was bringing up. Her cough was back. She was alternating between panic, anger and calm. She was making jokes about herself to ‘help other people’s fear of cancer… this makes then relax and feel better… some people would take advantage if they thought I wasn’t coping. I can play the whole bit… conscious survival strategy… I can manipulate the dangerous people to keep them safe’. Aconite 200c helped her to relax, but didn’t hold the state.

She stopped consulting in May, and in August her husband phoned to tell me she had died surrounded by friends.

Sue Young RSHom

22.10.95

Copyright© Sue Young

RAD BROM: THREE CASES

January 1994

After College, I remembered Rad Brom afterwards, whereas other remedies didn’t even establish a short term memory trace! Thank you Ian Watson!

This was useful, as this remedy is not well represented (if at all) in our repertories. These three case where I prescribed Rad Brom shared some interesting similarities, which I didn’t really notice at first. However, I then decided to take another look.

CASE 1

31 year old woman consulted with depression, having been on prothiaden since 1982, when she got married She had become hysterical and anxious, with ‘attacks’ of panic and violence which resulted in psychiatric referral.

The patterns of anxiety were similar to childhood states. She would not talk about her childhood much, but reported tonsillectomy at 2, resulting in anxiety and panic and feelings of ‘being different’. She had been ‘unhappy’ and ‘hated her sisters’. All normal vaccinations, measles, mumps and chicken pox (at 11 when her sister was born).

‘I just wanted to belong’. Anorexia at 15, finding school very difficult, competition to succeed, never praised, always struggling ‘I was trying to be a good girl, but I can’t…’ Her weight dropped to 6..5 stones and her menstruation ceased. Her teeth have no enamel now (bulimia?)

She has been in counselling since then. Leaving home had been ‘a big drama’ and she became very promiscuous. She then married a gentile and the whole family blew up (1982) ‘a disaster zone’. She continued to be promiscuous and she became so violent toward her husband, he fled. (1985). However, he got the house.

She presented with hot, dry, urticarial rash over her whole body and continuing anxiety/panic attacks > swimming 15-20 lengths every day. The rash had started under her rings after her husband left (new allergy to metal) and spread to her whole body, especially under both arms, around her belly, thighs and arms. Hydrocortisone cream, anti-histamines, eurax and anti-scabies creams had no effect. She finds she is now allergic to chlorine and complains of constant lethargy and fatigue > exercise, gym and aerobics.

She has poor circulation (hands and feet go red (heat) and blue (cold)

She has always been chilly since childhood

She has constipation with PMT before menses

Her appetite is good, always hungry ‘anorexic in my mind’.

– meat (fear of poisoning) tomatoes, aubergines, sea food, slimy food

+ sweets, cakes, salads, potatoes, pasta

She has always been thirsty since childhood

Sleep is always poor, never refreshed, frequent waking, always tired and lethargic. Recurrent dreams of being in a boat and flying over a never ending room.

Fears of being alone, claustrophobia, suffocating and drowning, consolation

She cannot cry (except when screaming and hysterical)

F/H Jewish mother: psoriasis, depression father: angina, diabetes

Rx: Rad Brom 30c

At follow up one month later, she ‘felt better’, her skin was not so itchy. However, she felt irrational and had a violent dislike reaction to her aerobic teacher and stormed out. She had cried a great deal in therapy lately, she was dreading Christmas – always a bad time. NB: During the case taking, this woman was all over the place, it was difficult to get her to concentrate. She complained of ‘not being able to let anyone near me’, but wanted to talk about her many sexual conquests ‘two morning after pills in the past two months!’… The last thing she said was ‘I know myself very well… I don’t want to be here..I just want to sleep.. there is nowhere safe any more’. She was red faced, controlled, tears behind her eyes, touching her eyes continuously and laughing and humorous and loquacious.

DNA’d further follow up appointments.

CASE 2

38 year old woman referred by a friend to ‘sort out’ as she was chasing ‘my man’, and had already broken up the relationship.

She had pneumonia aged 3-6 months, tonsillectomy aged 3 years. At 3.5 years she spent eighteen months in traction for previously un-diagnosed Perth’s Hip (congenital dislocation), after which she wore a calliper. Measles, chicken pox and mumps before age 7. fully vaccinated

< penicillin. Aged 20 years, she had woken up the morning after a broken relationship covered in acne, and had creams and antibiotics continuously for many years. A childhood incident from aubergine allergy, resulted in ‘going purple’ from the neck down, big, swollen blotches. Her fatigue started when she had chicken pox at 28 years, very badly for 6 weeks. It took her a year to recover. She had german measles at 36 years, badly, with a fiery red rash all over

< chest. Lasted 7 weeks.

F/H English Mother: Sudden, violent mental breakdown after husband’s death. Thyroid removal, early menopause, anxiety and depression. Full recovery.

Father: 4 strokes, gangrene, cancer, duodenal ulcer, death.

School phobia/home phobia, acute sense of smell ‘I can still smell nursery school’. Migraines at secondary school, every Friday on the bus home, copious vomiting all weekend. Unhappy home, with screaming and shouting and silences. Dad very ill, mum totally broke down when he died and she had to take all responsibility. Married sister with three kids was of limited help.

‘I was always earning from age 13′ Busy and fastidious.

She presented with fatigue and lethargy As an adult, she has constant hip pain (screw like, dull and shooting and aching all day)

>> exercise < < divorce (who gets the house – she lost!).

She stopped eating and weight dropped to 5.5 stone. Her menstruation ceased. She phoned the Samaritans and has been in counselling ever since. She cannot cry (but did so when hysterical after marriage break up) Husband was below knee amputee she met in hospital ‘mother hated him’. ‘I tried to subjugate myself ….I tried to please everyone…I wanted to be liked’ ‘Sometimes I feel as if people can see inside me’

Now she has a skin rash which started with a hot, dry, itchy patch on her left arm

< wheat, eggs, dairy, turkey, tomatoes, chocolate and coffee.

She also has hot, red, itchy blotches between her breasts since their divorce. She has psoriasis on her ‘knicker lines’ at the front on both sides and on both knees. She uses hydrocortisone cream.

Bloating after eating < bread and pastry

+ peanuts, chocolate, ice cream, sugar, bread

- offal, monosodium glutemate, milk, eggs

She has always been thirsty since childhood

She has always been chilly since childhood. Feels cold inside and out ‘inward tension thing’.

Profound sleep, 12 hours a night. Recurrent nightmares < stress ‘things flying towards me’

Falling down a lot recently < stress. Speech slurred, mind racing. BUSY.

< drafts, damp/cloudy weather, hot baths, before storms

> exercise (yoga), sun (but has to avoid prickly heat, itchy and lasting for weeks), water (daily baths), rainy days, thunder and lightning.

Allergic to triludan

Poor circulation (fingers and feet go white) (they go red from hot baths)

Severe athletes foot. Constant, copious vaginal discharge ‘it just pours out of me’.

Menses, very light and regular. PMT for 15 days before bleed, rage and anger at mother, with bingeing (nuts, rice cakes, bread, spinach, liver)

Rx Rad Brom 30c

At follow up two weeks later, after the remedy she had rapidly broken out in multiple small boils, white headed with circular redness, but they didn’t bother her and they are already clearing from body and are now mainly on legs and arms. She is anxious and unfocused and cannot cry, she has no friends. Three weeks later, she reported being lippy and quarrelsome at work, pushing for the sack or resignation. She reports ‘cliques’ and ‘games’ at work, ‘I feel different from them’ ‘They accuse me of keeping myself removed and alone’. Obsessional about being clean and tidy and ‘just so’, she is BUSY. Anxiety on waking, she has decided that she NEEDS and WANTS consolation.

NB: This was a difficult woman! She tried several times to engage me in hour long phone calls in between consultations. Loquacious and demanding, the original case took over two hours. Our mutual contact reports that this woman is still behaving ‘like a drama queen’ and that she has a habit of pouting and ‘cutting her eye’ and giving conspiratorial glances and whispering. ‘No ego devolvement!’

CASE 3

52 year old woman with severe allergic reactions. GP had advised no medications and no vaccinations/immunisations after severe reaction to yellow fever vaccination.

H/O OVER-MEDICATION with penicillin, antibiotics, triludan,

F/H French Mother: unmarried, unrequited love, single unwanted pregnancy, the family didn’t like him. Mum worked up until delivery (one month early) as a nurse in Paris during WW II, delivery was in midst of air raid with bombs dropping all around. Mum was moral and religious and BUSY. Emergency rations and poverty. Father: married, illegitimate and unknown! Died in war.

She reacted badly to milk at birth and had to be fed on vegetable soup, She was allergic to sugar from birth and would vomit even from the smell (later she developed headaches from the smell). All childhood illnesses, H/O sore throats ‘I would suck penicillin like sweets until my throat went raw’. Skinny, she refused food, and aged 7 she had appendectomy and grew normally after this, although she was noted to have hyper-mobility syndrome. ‘Mum preferred to work and had to let me down’. She lived in Brittany while mum worked in Paris (mum had had a heart attack and was very ill for a long time).

Constant right ear infections treated with RADIUM in Paris (experimental usage of radium after WW II ). ‘Total cure’. Consultant pronounced all clear in UK 2/12 ago. Then secondary school, where she developed pericarditis, and spent a year in bed back in Brittany. She noted that the fatigue and lethargy dates from this time, and it was so pronounced that she would often slump on the desk at school, She debated politics, was ‘social, lively and difficult’ ‘I argued with my mother’

‘I have always had a pain at the root of my nose’. At 16 years, rhinitis developed. At 20 years, she moved to UK and got married. Then, her first real allergic reaction ?cause? right sided rhinitis and right side of face swollen and red with sore throat. At 22 years, she had a rhesus negative miscarriage. At 28, normal vaginal delivery but severe allergic reaction to gas and air resulted in swollen, black eyes for three days ‘because I cried’, plus a migraine.

At 29 years, she divorced. She was ‘always BUSY’. Redecorating house, she had severe allergic reaction to petro chemicals (DIY stuff). High temperature 104, constant ulcerated sore throat, acute episodes every 3-4 weeks. She took tetracycline and had ‘out of the body ‘experiences so she stopped this.

At 30, she was prescribed librium, she took two tablets and had severe allergic reaction: loss of consciousness for three days, high temp 104, fever, chills and burning. Right side of face swollen ‘like a cauliflower’, ‘orange’ skin, red, burning, swollen, whole throat ulcerated (accused in hospital of drinking caustic substances), with bleeding and cracking of ulcerated parts and nose. Skin peeled off in sheets. Pneumonia developed and voice and sense of taste was lost. Migraine, malaise, fatigue and lethargy. Consultant in Marseille diagnosed ‘total allergy syndrome’ ‘worst case ever seen’ advised a plastic tent. She refused. It was suppressed with cortisone internally and she then had a course of desensitising injections and discharged on triludan.

She became a hypnotherapist and counsellor, but she was becoming very ill on the triludan with intense fatigue lethargy and blackouts, ‘I didn’t eat anything but bread’, fear of heart attack. GP stopped medication. Within days, original picture of 12 years ago re-established itself and her back stopped aching (H/O slipped disc, joint pains, < L knee & R elbow) , but it took her ‘three years to recover’. She then developed angina, fear of stroke, fear of brain damage, she was ‘ashamed of depression’.

Today, she is still having attacks every 3 weeks, which start like flu. Her discolouration is now purple and she avoids most substances. She is still BUSY and redecorating her home. She is undergoing mercury removal and she has constant pain at the root of her nose, which often develops into migraine. X-rays (to which she does not react at all!) show facial sinus’ clear, but her sinus’ feel ‘like raw meat’ and the pain radiates out to both temples. and then ‘explodes’ to occiput and throbs, lasting for weeks, fading slowly. She cannot put her hand within 4″ of her hair due to pain. She still has joint pain and back ache < R knee

Fatigue and lethargy – she falls asleep ‘like a coma’

She has been chilly all her life

Poor circulation

She has always been thirsty since childhood

> sun, dark room (migraines)

< petro chemicals, gas fires, radiated heat, artificial light, fax machines (vomiting and swelling), smells (acute sense of smell) sun, (sunburn, cannot expose skin), heat, bacon, wine, walking on uneven ground (back and joint pain). She is ‘aware’ of machines when turned on. She uses cortisone to control attacks.

Rx Rad Brom 6c

At follow up two weeks later, she had a mild flare up of allergy syndrome, which has gone now. This has never happened before, as attacks have always had to be arrested by cortisone. She phoned two weeks later to say she was going on holiday. She was still getting odd mild reactions, all ‘jumbled up’ and ‘not in the right order’, with slow not sudden onset, mild and often fading over night. Her right nostril is running profusely ‘it hasn’t done this for ten years’. She is very tired.

NB: She was a very difficult patient and several times phoned in between consultations trying to engage in very long conversations. The original case took over two hours. She said that friends say she pouts.

She DNA’d further appointments, but I still hear about her progress from a mutual aquaintance, she is free of attacks and has been well, but she is ‘a bit directionless and needs to make her mind up’.

COMPARISON?

Chilliness runs through all three cases. In each case, this was volunteered with emphasis. Similarly, all three volunteered that they had always been thirsty. As a child, case three ‘used to pick my legs to make them bleed so I could go and get a drink’.

There is a threatening, explosive and destructive atmosphere around these woman, mentally and physically. The intolerance of emotional or physical stress, coupled with the difficult course of interpersonal relationships seems a recipe for disaster and confrontation. The impact upon me as a practitioner was noticeable and memorable.

These people are active >> exercise >> industry.

They display sociopathic traits. ‘I feel unapproachable..I give off negative stuff’ (case 1).

All three were pre-occupied with houses (two lost theirs, one is still redecotating after 20 odd years). All three were loquacious, difficult and demanding, quarrelsome, manipulative and confrontational, either when young < stress or grown < stress. They had all been in long term counselling and all three DNA’d after two or three consultations.

All three had refused food and suffered profound weight loss (as a child Case 3 or as adults cases 1 and 2) with serious complications (cessation of menses cases 1 and 2 and appendicitis case 3). They all report great unhappiness as children (religious, moral, poverty, war, death, sudden mental and physical breakdown, cancer, diabetes and skin reactions). All report a family history of disapproval of the husband, in two cases, the father died. All describe family discord, ‘trying to please everybody’, ‘wanting to be liked’, ‘having to be let down’, ‘hating my sisters’. Violence on mental, emotional and physical levels is obvious. Promiscuity in cases 1 and 2 opposes the moral restraint in case 3, where the client (and her mother) lived alone for many years after the death of the partner or the divorce.

‘I have always…’ was a phrase used a great deal by them all. None of these women can cry unless under considerable distress or in therapy. Sleep was either profound, ‘like a coma’ or absent. Two had recurrent dreams/nightmares of flying (‘things flying towards me’) or ‘in a boat’(?).

All three report poor circulation > exercise < hot baths, all three had a F/H of heart problems, case 3 has already developed angina. Severe mental, emotional and physical reactions are seen throughout these three cases, all resulting in over-medication, a rapidly developing pattern of allergies and skin rashes (hot, burning, red, purple, itchy sun (mental) < hot baths). All three react to sugar (< smell of sugar), two are < aubergines and two < milk. (I did try and ask case three about food, but I couldn’t get a word in!)

Rad brom is obviously an explosive remedy (case 3′s migraines exploding from her sinus’ to temples to occiput). These women live life in the dangerous lane, the next stress may be lethal (but note how case 2′s mother made a total recovery). However, their health is breaking down, their ability to tolerate the environment is diminishing and their options with allopathy reducing. The noticeable periodicity ( every 3-4 weeks) in case 3 is very pronounced.

The situational materia medica seems to indicate war zone mentality, with a strange, radioactive atmosphere

‘I feel as if people see inside me’

‘I can sense when machines are on’

< artificial light

< radiated heat

< sun > sun

(Case 3′s non reaction to x-rays is, as Spock would say ‘fascinating’).

Other remedies which came up in repertorisation included:

nat mur, ignatia, sepia, staph, nux vom, phos. Kali carb was also a good contender, as was causticum.

These cases were not difficult to ‘see’, like the rad brom lecture itself, these cases stood out. It ‘suddenly struck’ me the other day to compare them, and I was amazed at the similarity when I did so. I hope this paper will help to widen our understanding of this remedy for our time.

Copyright© Sue Young

The Classical Reaction

Published in The Homeopath No. 64 Winter 1997

17th November 1988
Male d.o.b. 20.8.66 Tall, slender, pale, very nervous, sits all coiled up, tense, hands around face. Consulted for ‘nervous knot like permanent butterflies’ around heart, which ‘pounds fast with nausea’ < anticipation.

HO suicide attempt aged 15 ‘to do with being gay’. Very frightened of adults (earliest memory aged 4 is of father throwing him against a wall in temper). Both parents drank and they divorced 14 years ago, but have just recently got remarried. He is the youngest boy with a brother and two elder sisters.

The overdose was a cocktail (about 40 tablets) ‘all downers’, which resulted in a stomach pump and waking up after two days, crying, ‘freaked out’ and ‘me legs didn’t work’. He had lots of injections in hospital (doesn’t know what) and was on a ward for ten weeks. Seeing the state of the other patients ‘shamed’ him into walking again.

‘It felt very strange being 6′ instead of 3′ tall’ and he remembers ‘terrible aches’ in his legs, tight knees, tense muscles, continuous, preventing sleep. He still gets this when ‘highly strung’. He has constant low back pain, sharp ‘like a nerve trapped’ which radiates in a circle from L3/4 to mid thoracic and over both hips. It starts two hours after getting up, lasts the whole day and is < evening, but goes in sleep. It is not > hanging or yoga.

Always top of class in school, he took his O levels in the 4th year, A levels in the 5th (Art and English). He got a CSE English lit grade 1 ‘without taking the exam’. With his brother, he swam competitively from the age of 6 to 13 years; at 10 ‘they mentioned the Olympics’; by 12 he was swimming for England ‘I loved competition, I loved winning’.

He saw a lot of violence in his youth and had a strangling and a knife attack. His brother bullied him mercilessly. Then he rebelled, ‘cannabis, pills, sulphate, cocaine’, ‘I was out of my head all the time, I thought people were beneath me’. Friends pushed him into his first sexual encounter with a boy at 16 years, which left him ‘lacerated’ after anal sex. He had been a ‘goody goody’, and the rebellion and his parents divorce resulted in the suicide attempt. Since then he had trained in child care and had been a full time nanny, regretting that he’d turned down a fine arts course. He was now out of work and staying in all the time, living with his sister and wondering his next step. He has just broken up with his boyfriend.

Physically, he had a normal delivery, was breast fed, had all the vaccinations, all the childhood illnesses (except mumps), plus scarlet fever age 9 and croup aged 7. He had constant R ear infections, and his ear ‘leaked all the time’ (clear fluid < swimming) with constant ache. He still gets this on occasion. As a child he had lots of styes that would burst.

He has always been very chilly > closed, warm rooms. He never sweats. He ‘loves all weather’. He is either a doormouse or has insomnia, he always feels > evenings and < mornings. His head always ‘thumps like a clamp’ with acute ‘thumping headaches’ 2-3 a month. They always affect the temples and always come on at 4pm <<< sudden movement < bright light < tension.

His skin has always formed a welt from any touch, he showed me by lightly drawing the end of a match along his arm – within seconds, a HUGE, raised, red welt had appeared . He used to do this deliberately to get out of games at school, if he scratches and rubs himself with a towel his face will distort ‘I can look like elephant man’. If he jumps too hard, the soles of his feet will swell up. He has no known allergies, but thinks salt may exacerbate his headaches.

Colds go straight to his chest with a itchy, burning throat that makes him gasp for air < cold air, frost, fog but always > lots of ice cold water to drink. ‘I love water – I want to sit on a rock by the sea and stay there forever’. He is very thirsty for ice water, fresh orange juice and fizzy drinks.

He ‘HATES SALT’ as it was given to him in hot water when he took the overdose. He is also ‘paranoid about having a heart problem’. Everything I eat goes straight to my heart’. He ‘HATES FISH’ with phobic reaction and nausea. He ‘Hates’ vinegar, spicy foods, hot food, yoghurt, sweets (though he has lots of sugar in his tea). He ‘craves’ veal and raw steak with green vegetables raw and beans on toast with cheese. He is a finicky eater that happily goes for ‘days’ without food, and forces himself to eat with no appetite, or sudden ‘hunger binges’. HO kidney stones, painful and frequent ‘I could pebble dash a beach’. He has always passed them OK, his urine is OK, frequent and he forgets to go, with a very strong bladder. His bowels are fine.

He remembers being a bright, enthusiastic child, very aware of fear of male violence due to his father and brother. He was ‘quiet but extrovert’ with temper tantrums. He does lose his temper ‘like a bomb’, he throws things and ends up crying. He cries very easily and in front of people, and he is more likely to cry or sulk than lose his temper < reprimand. He is restless and fastidious, his memory is ‘excellent’ and his concentration is ‘excellent’.

He is clairvoyant, having had ‘visitations’ since childhood, ‘from nuns, from an old man who used to visit at night’, he used to sit and talk to them ‘the nun came to me in hospital and sat on my bed and told me it would be OK’. He turns it on and off at will and remembers clearly as a child telling his mother ‘when I was a man I had big black horse and a house’. ‘Michael’ seems to want to be his spirit guide, but ‘I am not really interested, I feel him occasionally linear to my own form, he is not troublesome’. He admits to being a ‘bit freaked’ by the light that surrounds everyone, but he mostly ignores it as ‘its always there’.

He meditates and reads ‘vast quantities – always reading’. He has constant vivid dreams, being shot at, heights, of helping people in a war, stopping a woman jump off a bridge, telling people they will get better, of speaking different languages, of being sucked into a mirror by something evil (just before suicide attempt) when his brother saved him by pulling him out by his arms (his brother did actually save him by making him vomit before the ambulance arrived).

As I was a student under supervision in 1988, I took the case to my home tutor and my college tutor group. Much animated discussion followed. Lachesis, aurum, nat mur, apis and stramonium were discarded in favour of syphillinum 1m.

Prescription syphillinum 1m given 30.11.88

On 3.12.88, he had a violent temper outburst involving head banging car windscreens, tearing up a seat in a cinema, bending iron railings with his hands, he then attacked his best friend, but was luckily held down by five friends. He then came round to my house and smashed in my front door. Oddly enough, I was not frightened of him, I merely told him to go, reminded him there were children present and he ran off in tears. He was a child and not dangerous. I phoned his sister, and twenty minutes later she appeared, hand on hip walking her brother down the street by his ear. He was sobbing and they came in and sat down and in the end, we had to give him the tea towel to mop up his copious flood of tears as he’d used up all the tissues. The crying storm lasted a good hour. ‘I did it because others were enjoying themselves and I felt alien’. I did give him some nux vom 30cs to take home with him!

Within a month of this reaction, this man changed his boy friend, his hair colour and style, his style of dress, his job, his home, his career and his outlook. He moved to the other side of London and took up a professional job. I still get postcards from him now and then, he’s never looked back and he thinks homeopathy is ‘brilliant’. He has never needed another remedy to date.

But I learned a huge lesson from this classical reaction. Awesome power? Whoa! This is a great weapon in our ……. Hang on a minute that’s rather warlike terminology.

I have stepped back from this spot a good deal since 1988. Firstly, to the Organon, where in 270 Hahnemann talks of it as a ‘spirit like’ medicinal power. I have pondered great deal on what aggravations really are, and why spiritual? Healers don’t get them.

I would like to pose a question regarding the unfoldment of the vital force under the influence of a true similimum remedy. My problem is what do we do when the pent up emotional and mental energy is released when the symptoms are removed, and the circumstances of this release. Can we judge the force with which the organism has taken up it’s stance?

Can we really comprehend what has happened to some people or are we too scared to do so because of the implications this has on our own connection to the Sacred, the Profane and the Taboo parts of our nature? Do the symptoms represent a ‘really intelligent position’ taken up by the vital force; a defense posture?

lf the central disturbance results in a certain pattern of symptoms to balance that central disturbance, what happens when we come along with a remedy and affect that balance? Do we simply see amelioration? Classically, this is what we are taught. A “melting” of the central disturbance, a release on every level and a relaxation of the “Mexican stand off” within. The centripetal direction of the Vital Force is encouraged to flow in a centrifugal, healthy expression of energy. So have we simply just removed the organism’s “defense” posture? The stance the Vital Force has taken up in interaction with the world, contaminated and affected by the miasmatic inheritance?

The question I do not feel is being addressed here is the function of the symptoms, because they are serving a function. They are protecting, intelligently, the organism. If we remove/affect these by prescribing a remedy – the central disturbance must surely come up to the surface to be addressed and to be reworked.

CASE
Client who presented to me with chronic obstructive airways disease. She explained that it started with arrested breathing from shock upon discovering her murdered daughter four years previously. Her son in law had beheaded his wife in my client’s kitchen. Aconite 200c one dose released the breathing and the whole symptom picture disappeared. Great? No! She antidoted the remedy three weeks later because she couldn’t cope with the rage/anger/confusion/grief that was underneath.

She now has her chronic obstructive airways disease back, an invalidity pension, a chair lift to get her upstairs provided by the social services, and she has made a bargain with her inner emotional state and her symptoms. She is coping with and leading her life as best she can. I lost this client because she couldn’t dig about in her inner emotional state as she couldn’t dea1 with it. Her own struggle with the reconciliation of this issue requires the symptoms to remain!

But what about clients who do want to continue, and is it possible to prescribe in such a way that these emotional states can be released safely and less painfully? Can we not dissipate them, this would be even better? This is what we are led to believe in college and when we go to seminars, the cases are just simply ‘better’ in the follow ups. I have never heard any mention of this problem before, not until I started to prescribe that is!

CASE
Client who suffered from a stomach ulcer, psoriasis and post divorce stress. Sepia 30c one split dose acted for ten months with steady amelioration throughout. Then an old infected cyst site under her arm pit discharged great volumes of old green pus, with an acute fever and then her psoriasis covered her from head to foot. Phosphorus 200c one dose, given as an acute, resulted in an initial flare up of her psoriasis and then continued steady amelioration of the whole physical condition.

However, this time it was accompanied by a release of deep childhood upsets and memories and emotional grief and trauma incurred during early adult life. By this time, she has no physical symptoms left at all.

However, imagine my shock when the client summoned me AT ONCE to tirade me with anger and fright about a memory of a totally suppressed rape that she had pushed so far out of consciousness that she had ‘totally forgotten it”. It had taken three days and nights to come up into consciousness, getting her out of bed at night, she sat downstairs in the dark alone, sweating and shaking and drinking tea as the whole sorry memory reformed in her conscious memory.

Her question to me was why? Why couldn’t it stay down and forgotten? Why did I bring it out with the remedy, what was the purpose of digging around in this stuff? Now she had to deal with it and examine all the issues around this awful experience and she hated it, me, the remedy, the process, everything!

Great! All the homeopaths cry, it has to come out, better out than in – the professional jargon falls onto the page! In this case, she was able to deal with it and of course, she is now fine. My first case example refused the ride.

The symptoms the two women were expressing must reflect the central disturbance state in an equal and an opposite reaction to the original disturbance of the central state. The strength with which these symptoms were somatised may give us an insight into the energy with which the central state had taken up it’s stance. The remedy will ameliorate this central disturbance and allow her to adopt another stance.

Is this not the moment that the underlying central disturbance will become exposed; the original reason for the Vital Force adopting this stance in the first place as a “really intelligent reaction” to this experience? An underlying central disturbance that resulted in such a violent and powerful reaction from the Vital Force that one client couldn’t breathe and the other was festering and covered in psoriasis? Limiting as these women’s symptoms were, they were serving a function.

I would like to believe that we will simply see amelioration. This is what Hahnemann wants in the first paragraph of the Organon. This is why Hahnemann was studying LM potencies in the last years of his life, to reduce aggravations (he had then too then!)

However, it seems to me that there will always be these aggravations if we come along and remove people’s defensive postures by affecting their symptom state with an energy medicine. This has very serious implications in cases of deeply buried trauma, and classical prescriptions can be quite cruel in these cases.

The fact is that some clients will have deeply suppressed emotional and mental issues, suppressed for a very good reason – they couldn’t dea1 with them! If we remove defensive postures (commonly known as the symptom picture) then as practitioners, we must be able to deal with the results honestly and appropriately.

The other important point is that we have the clients permission to “cure” their bunions and their mouth ulcers etc., but do we really have their permission to dig around in their inner emotional baggage? Do we make this clear in consultation?

The myth of amelioration without aggravation must be taken apart and looked at afresh. We have to face the fact that if we prescribe on the central disturbance, we are altering their energies. We will have removed a functional stance, altered the central state and opened Pandora’s Box. Like it or not, the client will then have to adopt another stance or face the consequences.

The altered state of the Vital Force (minus bunions, piles or mouth ulcers etc.) is not a static state. It is moving, evolving, interacting. Also it is a container of the sum total of all the impressions and experiences accumulated. Whatever is in will come out, but where is the bottom of the well?

To return to the young man given syphillinum, if he had not been surrounded by friends, he could have easily ended up in the cells with more negative experience and who knows where that would have lead him? If he hadn’t had a courageous sister and a steady reaction from me, it could have still gone bad.

We are responsible when we give a remedy. We can’t sit back, wash our hands and let karma take its path, or simply jump in with both feet either. Heisenberg has proved that by observing something, we alter it. Giving classical prescriptions every time may not be pertinent, it depends on the case. I would re-write Julian Winston’s comment to say ‘history will show that the practice of classical homoeopathy is not pertinent for every client’. It is not honest to criticise homeopaths who have understood this and seek to find gentler, more humane techniques. It is the client that is important, not fixed academic arguments. I wish Hahnemann was here to tell us what to do, but he is not. I, for one went straight off and learnt some ?eclectic?alternative?complimentary? techniques as fast as possible.

Sue Young RSHom
August 1996

Copyright© Sue Young