|
||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||
Forums
Courses
Shop
Diseases
Articles
Journal
Directory|
|
||||
Cured Cases |
||||
|
|
||||
| Hpathy Ezine - October, 2006 | ||||
Revisiting: Mission: Impossible (Not!)-- Elaine Lewis, DHom |
 |
|||
| Did you vote in last month's quiz? If not, here it is again below, followed by the answer and an explanation:
Who in his right mind would cast Tom Cruise in the role of a CIA agent? He doesn't look a day out of grade school himself, not unlike...your son. Forget I said anything. Can I present my case now? Yes, before we lose what's left of
our audience! Ahem! So, as I was saying, my poor little son, Mr. Tom Cruise Phelps, had a headache in the morning a few days ago, and then later on the same day developed a fever. The headache was mostly in the forehead area. His face and ears were red and his skin very hot to the touch. He said he felt a little dizzy and his eyes hurt when he looked at bright lights. He was also chilly. Mr. phelps layed on the couch not wanting to do much of anything, which included talking! He wasn't particularily thirsty but would drink little sips of water when I reminded him. He said he was hungry but never got up to eat. I gave a remedy. His fever improved as did his appetite and energy. By evening however, things took a turn for the worse. His fever rose, he became lethargic, hot and red-faced again. I redosed with the same remedy, succussed, in the morning to no avail. Mr. Phelps at this point was dizzy, lethargic and spacey. He was very chilly and couldn't leave the couch without being wrapped in a blanket. I decided to try the next remedy, _______ 30c in water. My kids have had their share of colds/flu/fevers over the last several years and with Elaine's help, I have gotten pretty good at figuring out remedies and usually have a sequence of them in my head so I know which one to look at next if the first one fails. I gave 2 doses of _____ a half hour apart then needed to leave for a short while. My husband reported via phone that Mr. Phelps was feeling much better as i witnessed myself when i returned. No fever, minimal headache and no dizziness! His fever rose slightly before bedtime and I gave a third dose of_______30c in water, succussed. He slept peacefully, cool all night. The next morning Mr. Phelps was fever and headache free! No dizziness and no eye pain. Mission Homeopathy: Accomplished! Get it Elaine? "Mission: Accomplished"? I wonder if we should make Peter Graves our centerfold.... Isn't he, like, 90 years old? Shouldn't you and your son be out looking for Osama bin Laden? With pleasure, as this building is due to self-destruct in 5 seconds! ****************** So, how did we do this month? Apparently, homeopathy isn't easy! Remember my article last month about the hierarchy of symptoms? I believe it was called "Acute vs. Chronic Remedies, the Hierarchy of Symptoms, and the Kitchen Sink". Anyway, at the end of the article I gave a sample case showing how you might be tempted to pick a symptom from the bottom of the hierarchy and in so doing only palliate your case at best, while a remedy matching a symptom from the top of the hierarchy may not be well-known for the local complaint at all but will nonetheless cure! I think this case is a good example of that. Once again, here is the standard hierarchy: Etiology ("Ailments From" or "Never Well Since" a certain trauma or illnesss--the cause, in other words) The State the person is in (the diagnosis, for example; measles, stroke, cancer, sprained ankle, asthma, flu, etc.) Onset (sudden or gradual?) Delusions and Strange/Rare and Peculiar symptoms Mentals (symptoms like confusion, forgetfulness, dullness of the mind, poor comprehension.) Emotionals (irritability, clinginess, crying, silliness, anxiety, etc.) Physical Generals (the "I" symptoms) Local symptoms (the "My" symptoms) First, let's talk about why we have a hierarchy of symptoms. Why aren't they all equal? Why can't you just repertorize all the symptoms in your case, add them up and give the remedy? Our friend Rajiv did just that and came up with China (also known as Cinchona). I wrote back to him saying, "The first thing you did wrong was repertorize the case!" Don't get me wrong, sometimes you can and should repertorize. Maybe this should be the topic of a future article. But suffice it to say at this time that all symptoms are not created equal. If you have a clear etiology in your case--and Etiology (the cause) is the top of the hierarchy--you give the remedy that matches that and it may match nothing else in the case, and yet it will cure! So what happened to the totality of symptoms? Where is the repertorization? I'll give you an example, someone has headaches since a head injury. What's the remedy? Don't repertorize, it's Arnica! Ailments from blunt trauma, what more do we need to know? Are you seriously going to take the case of the headache? Left-sided, right-sided, sharp, pressing, dull...who cares! So, this is the top of the hierarchy, when the etiology is clear and recent and stated unambiguously. At the bottom of the hierarchy are the symptoms of the local complaint. These are all the "My" symptoms: My hand feels numb, my arm hurts--and by the way, my arm DID hurt yesterday in case anybody's interested! It was a very weird pain and I have no idea where it came from! It was kind of a shooting/radiating pain, a burning pain, and a kind of numbness....I didn't know what to make of it! I took Hypericum because it had kind of a neuralgic quality to it but that didn't work.... So I thought to myself, "I need a remedy that has more than one sensation going on at the same time;" so, thanks to all of Kelly's family's health debacles, I came to be quite familiar with Ruta! "I'll bet it's Ruta," I said; so, I tried it. In half an hour the pain was gone! It came back later on in the day, I repeated Ruta 30C and again, in half an hour, the pain was gone and never came back! Well, that's homeopathy for you, that's what it's all about, it's as if you just swat these troubles away with a hockey stick and keep on going! What would I have done if I had been a "regular" person? Take Tylenol? Does anyone seriously think that Tylenol would have made a difference? What about something stronger like Tylenol 3? That might have "worked" but would it have cured? And what would I have gotten in exchange for taking Tylenol 3? Constipation? Sleepiness? Dizziness? Loss of appetite? This is a bad trade. You go into the doctor with a local complaint, and he gives you a medicine that makes you sick (but if you're lucky, the local complaint is now gone). This is their idea of practicing medicine! In homeopathy, we call this, "The person going from bad to worse!" which brings me back to the hierarchy of symptoms: Why are the local symptoms at the bottom of the hierarchy? Because when you have a local complaint, you are not as sick as you are when you feel sick in GENERAL! This is a much more serious state and in homeopathy, we are always aiming our remedy at THE WORST THING in the case; "What's the worst thing?" we always ask. All your "I" symptoms are worse than your "my" symptoms. The "I's" are the "Generals". The Generals are higher up in the hierarchy than the locals. "I feel nauseous" is a worse symptom than "My arm hurts." If we give a remedy that lessens the arm pain but leads to nausea, we know we've made a big mistake! That remedy must be antidoted immediately. However, your doctor would be just fine with these results, in fact, they pretty much define their practice! Have you seen their shameless commercials? "Garbagine may cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, drowsiness and dizziness. Do not operate heavy machinery while under Garbagine , do not take Garbagine if you have liver, kidney, heart or lung disease as Garbagine may just push you right over the edge leading to your untimely demise. Be sure to ask your doctor about Garbagine!" You see? This is their business, turning "locals" into "generals"! We have more sense. Now, in last month's case, over half the voters saw the clear local symptoms of Belladonna--red face, hot skin-- and said, "This case has to be Belladonna!" And, in fact, don't feel bad because this is exactly what Kelly did! And Belladonna did have a fleeting positive effect on this case. But, as so often happens when you give a close remedy, it seems to potentiate or inflate the symptoms of the remedy you should have given, as if to say, "No! take a better look, I've turned it up for you!" So, interestingly, what happens the day after Belladonna? Mr. Phelps becomes lethargic, dizzy and chilly! You know what it is now, right? Well, three of our readers couldn't be fooled! Anonymous, of course! Then there was Slavica Peic from Serbia, and finally, Our Miss "Brooks" explained the situation so well that if I'm not careful, she'll have my job! Here she is: Kelly started Mr. Phelps with Belladonna - picking up on headache, fever, red face, hot skin, sensitivity to light, lack of thirst. However, that did not account for the dizziness, apathy, lethargy, extreme chilliness, better for lying down, and relatively slow onset/development all of which point more towards Gelsemium. Unless, of course, it was something totally different. I am getting on in years, after all. Signed, Peter Graves (the REAL Mr. Phelps). aka Brooks Thank you, "Peter Graves"! How do we know it's Gelsemium? Here was my clue, I saw the famous Gelsemium lethargy and indifference right away when Kelly said, "He'll drink if you remind him.... He said he was hungry, but he never got up to eat." That sums up the Gelsemium patient beautifully. If your case has a mental / emotional state, the remedy will have to match that. Eventhough Belladonna looked so good for the heat and fever and the redness, etc., this just isn't the Belladonna mental state. When you see a Belladonna child, you have the sense that something has to be done for him immediately! There's an urgency about the case. The mental state is excited. All the senses are acute. But we don't have this here; and that sudden onset, which is so typical of Belladonna acutes, doesn't match with the case either. So, Dr. B, what do we have for Slavica, Brooks/aka "Peter Graves" and, once again, Anonymous? ---------------------------------------- This month's winners will get a special 30% discount on one order of books from Hpathy Mall. Click Here for Prize Guidelines |
||||
|
Elaine Lewis, DHom, CHom. takes online cases. Visit her website at: www.hpathy.com/office/ElaineLewis.asp |
||||
|
||||
