online case RH/Jan.01

[Joy Lucas]

Dear All, here is our first online case for January. Please send your
advice, ideas etc to the group so we can all share them. Thanks in advance.
Best wishes, Joy Lucas
From Rosemary Hyde

[Joy Lucas]

Dear Rosemary - just a quick note re: your case.

Themes =

ANXIETIES of health, life, religion, fixed appointments (rubric, anxiety if
a time is set);

IRRESOLUTION - paper work

APPREHENSIVE OF SERIOUS DISEASE

ERRORS OF PERCEPTION - all his 'small' ailments appear big

FEARFUL AND NERVOUS - PECULIAR MENTAL IMPULSES

AILMENTS = bowels, loss of control, mucous membranes effected, stomach

I think this is ARGENTUM NITRICUM.

What is quite funny is that Argent Nit. has a fear of tall buildings falling
on them and my first 'image' of this person was the high towers of papers in
his apartment.

If I get time I will repertorise more

Hope useful, best wishes, Joy Lucas

[Sheila Parks]

hi dear rosemary, thanks for posting this interesting case. i did a quick
reading and here are a few comments, without any repertorizing. 1) i don't
know what you mean when you say this patient has a need to be sick. i see
nothing here like that. 2) sepia comes to my mind, even though it is thought
of a woman's remedy (another one of the sexist homeopathy things i hate)with
all his over busyness. 3) also for over responsibility and maybe guilt
aurum and naja come to my mind 4) when you say he goes to minyans and prays
for dead people he doesn't even know... if those are his words, fine. but,
if they are yours, as a jew, i have problems with them. minyans require a
certain amount of people and going to them is a good deed and is helping
others. certainly for him it is part of his workaholism, i would say,
keeping busy and not dealing with his feelings. sheila
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[Joy Lucas]

Dear Rosemary, now I have a bit more time to say more on your case.

You ask "what remedy have I missed in the midst of all this chaos and
proliferation?"

I think you are seeing beyond the person a bit too much and losing sight of
remedies. Making a decision about the person but not about their remedy can
take you down the wrong path I feel.

When I finished reading your case I did what I always do after every case -
I try to summarise, encapsulate, get the themes and the essence of the case
and I ALWAYS ASK "WHAT NEEDS TO BE CURED HERE?" So at the end of your case
all I could see was ANXIETY in every aspect of his life; great APPREHENSION
about his health; driven by NERVOUS IMPULSES/frenetic activities =
workaholic; IRRESOLUTION - spends 3 hours looking for an unpaid bill,
unfinished work; STOMACH problems, all foods seem to disagree, crave sweets,
gastric problems with alcohol; ERRORS OF PERCEPTION - trivial things seem
huge to him.

You mention CALC; and SULPH; I really don't think a Calcarea would have such
frenetic energy and would never spend 3 hours looking for an unpaid bill and
a sulphur wouldn't either - too lazy. Natrum Mur, I can see some aspects in
this case but they internalise their problems much more and hang on to them,
retention being the theme.

At the very beginning of your case you told us what his first words were -
always very useful to make a note of these words or actions - they will tell
you a lot. So, "constitution of a horse" - we must take his word for that
and I get the impression he has been very strong, he is desperately trying
to be strong or wants to be. But somehow you have turned that into
pessimism. This is a contradiction and I think this has arisen because you
have decided that he is - he has not actually told you this, you have gone
beyond what needs to be cured.

Anyway, as I said before, I think this ARGENTUM NITRICUM. The central idea
of this Rx is a weakness in one sphere accompanied by excitement and
nervousness in another = weakness AND overly strong which upsets the balance
so much hence the impulsive working almost non stop - an obsession you could
say, a fear of losing control. Tormented by strange ideas, IMPULSIVE YET
TIMID AND ANXIOUS. Suddenly goes off on holiday but all his physical
symptoms re-establish themselves. Wants to be spontaneous, cannot tolerate a
time being set or planned.

The remedy is also despondent and melancholy - he has held this in for a
long time. You said he was an agitated depressive. This describes ARG. NIT.
very well. The most trivial of things will agitate him a great deal.

The physicals are well known in this Rx - so much gastric disturbance.
There is always conjoined mental and digestive symptoms with this Rx - again
the balance is out of control. So many cravings and so many aggravations,
the most important being the craving for 'something sweet', but this too
aggravates. There is also alcoholic gastralgia, and of course the nervous
diarrhoea.

It would be quite easy to home in on the death of his partner as being the
cause of all this - he says it himself - but he also says he suppressed his
need to reveal many of his illness to his partner, not wanting to jeopardise
the relationship. So really his ailments go way beyond and before the loss
of this person.

The sexual aspect of this case is also interesting. Impotence dominates and
they have dreams of sexual gratification. You say he admits to sexual
compulsion - the compulsive nature I can understand but it would be useful
to have more specific info. on his actual sexual tendencies.

Of course there is so much more one can read about this Rx but at the end of
a long hard day I still think this is his Rx.

Hope this isn't too incoherent. Let me know what you think. Best wishes, Joy

[Jasbir Kaur Villaschi]

Hi All,
The things that stuck out for me was 'el doctor' is using his so-called
tragic illnesses to compete...

with other family members with genuine chronic afflictions e.g. his
siblings' arthritis, parent's cancer etc.
it's almost as if he feels left out ... and needs to 'trump' them

with healthy bods at work...look at me i'm so dedicated ....

I suspect he's taking on others grief, problems because he senses that
in truth he will be healed and there
is nothing drastically wrong or unfixable....

needs to be thought well of
needs to be indispensible
hides from real tradjedy (mother's probable demise) as reminds him that
there is nothings wrong really with him (SELFISHNESS)
needs to act the matyr
Hypochrondriac
needs to be centre of attention (definite aspects of the drama queen at
work) possibilty that this stems from familial behaviour and his
method of getting attention learned in childhood
contradictory (says hates medications but knows all about them)

there is a Punjabi word for what he's doing.... 'kayken' it encompasses
the competitiveness for personal problems, self-centredness,
exaggeration and attention-seeking I can see here

Good luck , he sounds like a wily one

Jas

Sheila Parks wrote:

[Rochelle]

>

I reckon that by going to a minyan so often what he is really doing is
saying kaddish (prayer for the dead ) for Robert and therefore the essence
of the case here is ailments from grief but then you know that. If his
mother has died in the last year he will also be obliged to say kaddish for
a year every day and therefore at the moment there is a legitimate reason
for him going to the synagogue every day.!!

Just thoughts,
Rochelle

www.rochellemarsden.co.uk
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[Wendy Howard]

Joy wrote:
case -
case
APPREHENSION
sweets,

I read through this post and thought "Yes!" - and then, to cap it all, she
said:

tell

and I was muttering "Yes! Yes! That's it, that's the one!" ... until I came
to the remedy (Arg nit), whereupon I burst out laughing. Why? Because the
whole case was literally howling Arsenicum album at me from the very first
description of him!! I never cease to be amazed at how we can focus on the
same things and see a different picture.

So here's my view ...

The patient says:
Basically, I have the constitution of a horse, although I notice my
endurance isn't as good as before [...]

**Arsenicum has a strong affinity with horses - it was frequently used to
doctor their feed before a race to improve their stamina and endurance.**

He also has the fastidiousness in dress - the "thoroughbred" appearance, the
anxiety to make a good impression (at work, socially, with partner),
business to the point of fruitlessness, the dependency issues, the
resentment and sensitivity to offence, the fear of death, the
gastro-intestinal complaints with *burning* ("I have heartburn to die
from"), the constant anxiety about his health. Ars is in all his food
cravings (alcohol, fatty meat, spices, pickles, coffee), and Knerrs
repertory gives it as producing pain in the "Inner Head" after eating ice
cream. It's in aggravation from drafts of cold air, involuntary stool,
morning diarrhoea after rising, periodicity of complaints (back), spasms in
the back - in fact, it's in almost all of his characterising symptoms that I
looked up.

From another perspective, we have the fact that he responded very well to
Sulphur. Ars alb is the oxide of arsenic. In the Periodic Table, Arsenic is
the next series/period up from Sulphur in the group immediately before it
(Ferrum series - work-focused in Scholten's schema: Arsenic's great fear is
that they are redundant, past it, no longer needed, bankrupt), and Oxygen is
in the same group as Sulphur in the period below it - ie. it's pretty close.

OK, so his apartment's a mess, but fastidiousness is amply evident in all
the other areas of his life described.

Regards
Wendy

[Soroush Ebrahimi]

Dear Rosemary

I have only had chance to read this interesting case just now.

I have not done a detailed repertorisation. But it smacks of Carcin to me.

Your para that he was the eldest of 4 siblings, Very demanding father and
that he had to assume adult responsibilty is the exact description of a
Carc. Add to it of course that both parents had cancer.

I was surprised that at the end of the article you then started to mention
cancer!!

Please consider this in the light of your first hand exp of the patient.

All the best
Soroush

[Joy Lucas]

Dear Rosemary, just a few notes and observations about your case.

I am very pleased that your client has been able to address what appears to
be deep seated emotional disharmonies. I have to say though that I am very
cautious of people who are partaking of more than one healing process at a
time. It makes it very difficult to assess 'what' has done the good work.

You say " and he had literally moved deeper into a whole new layer that
looks very different from before."

Well yes, this appears to be part of the healing process and not necessarily
a new layer - this isn't the definition of a layered case.

He has opened up about problems with his father. His gastric state is now
only flatulence. He has had an acute illness. He still has ongoing Sx of
dull headaches. He has a new Sx - a cough - this is all healing and not
necessarily a state to prescribe on. He appears to have presented with a
more than good reaction to the Rx (although we don't know it is the Rx it
could be psychotherapy). He was/is a rabbi and a professor when he first
came to you - no change there or to the other Sx you include etc. So why
prescribe anything else???? I, personally, would have waited and waited to
see what might have happened for much longer. I would also say that if you
can see Lycopodium now he might well have been this remedy before. Having
patience after the prescription is one of the hardest things to do.

I also think for the dream of being too big/displacement of water and the
sense of being made to feel small by his father you can use DELUSIONS and
again for the sense of feeling small, the rubric DWARFISHNESS (awful word
but there you go).

I hope this continues to go well for you and of course for your client.
Thanks for sharing your hard work with us and again these are just thoughts
from a distance.

Best wishes, Joy Lucas

[Rosemary Hyde]

Hi, Joy.

I guess I could use some enlightenment on this point of "layers." I always
thought that it was important to prescribe on the central nature of the case
before us. With this case, up to this time, we've been dealing with the
same central issue and its consequences -- the grief from the death of the
patient's partner, and the physical and emotional barriers that developed as
a consequence. Although I knew about some of the problems he'd had with his
father and I agree and see now that basically he's undoubtedly a lycopodium
individual, this was not the first presentation at all. At first, the focus
was grief and his inability to let go of events and circumstances and things
and grudges that had happened 20 years in the past. Once the presenting case
dissipates and, rather than seeing cure one is dealing with a different,
earlier emotional trauma serving as etiology for a different set of
symptoms, I always thought that this constituted a deeper layer of the case.

Obviously, I had no idea that his presentation would dramatically shift its
focus or his way of responding to the central emotional trauma. Now, he no
longer resembles Nat-m as he did before, and the central issues are no
longer Nat-m issues. Should I, nevertheless, continue expecting Nat-m to
resolve the whole case? Obviously, it's possible that had I seen through the
presenting surface to what lay underneath and known that this would resolve
into a Lycopodium picture, perhaps the resolution would have come more
quickly. But I've always been taught to prescribe based on what's there,
what presents, now, in the present and that potential underlying remedies
would not work if they're not on the surface.

Anyway, I'll look forward to learning from your wise comments.

Thank you. Rosemary C. Hyde