In the interests of balance & openness, the day after my last 'day-in-the-life-of-a-homeopath' post was NOT such a joyous day. Lots of frustrations.
It was one of those days.
I started my day with a cerebral palsy patient. It is not simple to treat him as he has no way to communicate & has limited comprehension. It's more complex than treating a baby [which entails similar communication issues] as he has symptoms that are clinical manifestations of brain damage, which are very likely irreversible ... and it is hard to know what I can do for him & whether his remaining problems are caused mainly by a maintaining cause such as immobility. We've done well with him. He had cyclical vomiting which previously hospitalised him every 3 1/2 months. It always coincides with a bug going round our community (which has been round like clockwork 4 times in a row) ... but he would get a very severe version of it. Now, with the help of arsenicum, he sees it off fast, at home, without any other medical intervention. I don't feel like we are making the headway I want to be helping him make. It frustrates me and I have to try not to feel both disappointed and as if I'm failing.
Next case was a great follow up with Helen, who has recovered from Hashimotos. She's peeling back the layers ... getting very close to the very earliest problems she suffered in life. Doing the last small bits of healing she needs. Great, clear remedy standing out ... calc carb. :-) Satisfying case all round! And she is a great patient to work with. She takes notes! And she is observant of her own symptoms. Joyous!
Then I had no-show, which I was kinda expecting as the family are travelling Europe. Followed by a second no-show. I was starting to feel a bit grumpy about it because I'm so booked up through January that I can't afford wasted appointment slots. It turned out he couldn't get through because Skype was down in the USA. I managed some appointments with USA folk that day, as they had messenger but then had to fit in his appointment late after I should have stopped working. I have no other appointment to give him before next year.
My next case was a hard one. The parents are anxious and in a hurry. It doesn't make for easy case management. They need to see results over night, on a condition that will not resolve over night ... so they put pressure on me to prescribe, prescribe, prescribe [very pleasantly, but it is pressure]. And I have to resist as this is a sure way to spoil a case.
This child has become very much worse after treatment with turpentine [PANDAS symptoms arrived].
So, I feel hurried. Frustrated. Somewhat at sea. I prescribed a CEASE-style detox of turpentine [terebinthina] and liver support via nux vomica 12c daily. In honesty, it's a shot in the dark ... with the key directing factor being that turps was a 'cause' of the symptoms that are most difficult.
He needs daily enemas to clear his bowels, so it is hard to detox him with homeopathic or tautopathic remedies [terebinthina] without aggravations. In his case we've seen, after arsenicum, a return of old symptoms [a good sign in itself], but unpleasant old symptoms.
Hard, hard case on all fronts. I was not in the best place after this appointment, especially as they turned up late and I had to try to do a lot in the time left.
Sometimes I have cases where I can't help but feel somewhat horrified, frustrated and a bit judgy [if I'm being truly open] about some of the things which have been given as 'medicine', particularly to children, and the after effects. These may be given as part of conventional medicine, or as part of bio-med. I'm asked to treat extremely distressed, self-harming children suffering with violent regressions & other horrid symptoms, which the parent tells me started after turpentine treatment [this case], or chlorine dioxide protocols [2 similar cases] [and on occasion as part of 'homeopathic protocols'. This term is a kind of oxymoron to me. Protocols that give the same remedies to each person in the same order cannot be homeopathic except by accident. It's non-homeopathic use of potentised remedies. Lately I'm receiving new patients who did very poorly on these 'protocols'.]
Straight after this I went into an enquiry call, but I'd had an acute request from the same person regarding their child's wheezing. As a result, I didn't treat it like an enquiry as I should have ... and went straight into trying to find a remedy for the child. In the process I completed her first consultation ... which was fairly pressing in terms of need [and I was aware I had not other time to offer her]. My enquiries are usually appointment requests because my calendar is closed and I'm on waiting list only. They nearly always come through referral ... so I have got unused to people enquiring to 'check me out' before deciding if they are going to use me or the other 2 homeopaths they are considering. I think I had mixed messages too in this case. So, that was a bit embarrassing. I felt like I'd gone ahead and given her a service to pay for before she'd decided she wanted that service! Eek. Nice, clear prescription though, and should be deep acting. :-) I wrote to her to say don't pay me unless you decide to come on board and apologies I'd messed that up a bit, going on to autopilot.
By this point I was feeling decidedly icky!
Then the man who delivers my oil popped his head in.
The first time he came to deliver oil he asked me, bold as brass:
"Who's checking you are not abusing your children, down here in this isolated farm? I'm part of the local school parent and teacher's association and we heard you are home educating."
That happened to be the day they reported on the news that 45 5-year-old children had been being abused by their teacher! I pointed that out to him and, in a friendly manner, filled him in on the law and the data that shows home educated children in the UK are 50% more likely to be getting support from social services [for a multitude of reasons] and yet have 1/6 of the welfare care plans of the general population of children in the UK. That collates to about 1/12 the likelihood of needing a welfare care plan. This is no surprise to me. People generally home educate to protect their children and ensure good outcomes for them.
This day he said to me:
"You do that thing that I like, don't you?"
"Homeopathy?" I replied.
"Yep. That's it." and he sauntered off.
Did the school run.
Ran back to do the acute call with the man with the chest infection. He was skyping me from Chatsworth House :-) The Christmas lights were beautiful. He was so excited about homeopathy! He'd seen his daughter's eczema get so much better this month. His wife had just had arnica for the long term effects of a head injury and she was able to continue the same story she'd been telling after he interrupted her. He was VERY hopeful of some good outcomes for her.
His chest seemed to me to be already on the mend, having got worse again after stopping antibiotics ... then rallying in the last day. Clear pulsatilla cough, worse in the evening, with thick, yellow sputum and he was feeling so much better being out in the open, cool air. Prescribed him some pulsatilla to be sure it cleared off [and didn't just feel bad again once he got indoors]. Nice high level of health generally. He produced a good fever with the start of this cough, but then it lingered.
I noticed then that I was feeling great. I only have to come into a new appointment for the frustration of the previous one to lift.
It's a great job. The rewards are in hearing thanks every day ... each and every day I'm working.
My last appointment was the man from the USA who had now got Skype back up. His is a good example of the thanks I hear. He thanks me so thoroughly every time I follow up with him. He still cannot BELIEVE the overnight effects of Aconite 10M on the terrible trauma/anxiety/PTSD/panic he suffered. He says each time "My world has become so much larger". He used to shop at night to avoid people. He went to work but if he went out of his personal office into a communal area he had to look at the floor to ensure he never made contact with the other people he worked with, especially in the times when the business would have to bring in seasonal help.
He wanted to talk for a long time. I over ran by quite some time. I'm usually a good time keeper in appointments and I usually I have my next patient coming in. This time I didn't and I let him speak until he was done.