lump found - what's the next step?

[Priscilla Tan]

Hi folk,
Need to draw upon your wisdom..

I found a lump on my husband's back (along the spinal area). It's about 2cm in diameter and feels hard and painless. (not movabale)

The conventional wisdom is to ask him go see an allopathic doctor to have it checked, to make sure it's no pre-cancerous and have it treated/removed while it's early. (His family has history of cancer).

Is 'lump' a symptom according to homeopathy?

Please advise what to do next?

Thanks

Thanks

--
Priscilla

[Tanya Marquette]

a lump is a symptom.
a disease is a symptom
in homeopathy the vital force and an energy that can
express itself on physical, mental, emotional and spiritual levels.
symptoms are signs that there is dis-ease in the vital force.
you really need to do some reading on homeopathy to help you
understand the difference from allopathic thinking and working.
as the lump? you will have to do what you think works for you.
no one here will tell you what to do. we are not doing diagnosis on this list,
nor are we here to tell you what you should or should not do. we share our
experiences and interpretations of hahnemanian homeopathy. we share
some of our cases and questions and offer suggestions. we never tell
anyone what they should do.
tanya

[John Harvey]

It doesn't, as far as I'm aware, hurt to learn what it is, though, Priscilla! Your husband won't make his most informed choice by remaining ignorant of the lump's nature.

That said, it's worth asking whoever proposes to look at it more closely for a firm commitment that the method used to examine it will not and cannot do any harm.

Cheers --

John
--
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"Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it."

-- H.L. Mencken, A Little Book in C Major.

[J tikari]

I would suggest looking at Calc fluor for lumps, etc.
Someone had asked about numbness on one side of the nose.
Take Nat mur 200 tds for as long as reqd.
Jeff

[John Harvey]

Jeff, did you mean to suggest that the patient should take, on the basis of a single symptom, Nat. mur. 200, three times daily? And to do so until the symptom of interest disappears, even if that takes forever, and regardless of other responses to the medicine? Or did you assume that the first dose of this thrice-daily regimen would be the only dose required?

Would you mind outlining your reasoning for believing that Nat. mur. matched the totality of the patient's symptoms more closely than any other remedy? Was it merely the unusualness of one-sided nose numbness, or did other clues help you to rule out the remainder of the pharmacopœia as the most homoeopathic to the patient's state of health? Or did you find some usefulness in the insightful comments by Jean Doherty and Venkat concerning the possibility of a traumatic origin of the symptom, and work out a remedy on that basis?

I wonder too: has it occurred to you that, given the wholly unlikely offchance that your prescription may not be completely and certainly accurate, the thrice-daily repetition might make evaluation impossible of whether the medicine was doing the patient any good (i.e., stimulating a secondary action, the curative response) rather than doing something no homœopath would wish to do: to simply remove a symptom of inappropriate interest (i.e., to suppress the expression of illness)?

And does it occur to you that the patient may take your directions literally and repeat this remedy in unchanging potency (you did specify only 200) thrice daily, with a consequent likelihood of inducing and then aggravating Nat. mur. symptoms -- and that if this occurs, the patient may well not recognise that it is occurring?

Thanks, Jeff. Looking forward to understanding what you were thinking. Cheers --

John

[J tikari]

.One of the peculiar symptoms of Nat mur is numbness on one side of the nose.
Check Schussler.
On a homeopathic site I expect it would be a homeopath who asked for help and
so I think the person would have sense enough to know when to stop.
Dr. J Tikari

[John Harvey]

Jeff, it might be argued also that a homoeopath reading your reply would have enough sense to know that a single symptom is not a totality and is not a basis for any prescription unless it's very straigntforwardly of traumatic origin (e.g. a burning sensation due to being burnt -- the origin of the use of such remedies as Canth., Caust., and Ars. in burns). The fact is, however, that different practitioners have different degrees of exposure to the principles of homoeopathy -- and my strong impression is that most readers of this list would class themselves as interested, as patients, or as students, not as practitioners.

Priscilla in particular is, as I understand it -- correct me if I'm wrong, Priscilla -- interested but not at all trained in homoeopathy, and hasn't, I think, read all that much about it yet; and your reply sounded unfortunately like a prescription rather than like the idea you intended to suggest, including an abbreviated mention of three doses daily for as long as required -- which any person naive to homoeopathy would most likely interpret to mean "until the symptom ceases".

It's for those reasons and because too we remember that the ideal outcome of a homoeopathic prescription is not the removal of a symptom but cure of the patient's entire disease state that it may be more helpful to base answers to prescription questions -- and many others, for that matter -- carefully and even explicitly on the homoeopathic principle rather than even inadvertently suggest that a homoeopathic approach might forget the hundred and one other symptoms in the enthusiasm to prescribe for the one symptom that has roused our particular interest. That way, we help newcomers not only to find their feet in prescribing, but also to grasp increasing surely and to apply its sole guiding principle -- the one that keeps getting lost on this list even by practitioners.

Cheers!

John

[Tanya Marquette]

Never make assumptions. This list is open to all who wish to be here.
If you read questions and responses, you can see the different levels
of interest and background
tanya