5.5 Niobium, Case 1
A 33 year old woman has right sided sinus troubles with ineffectual hawking of mucus. She has also been very tired recently.
In the past two years she has been having painful menses, cramp in the uterus and profuse bleeding with clots and urging for stools. During the menses she gets irritable, emotional and occasionally very gloomy, especially on the third day. This is accompanied by a shooting pain in her head, just above the brows, < light, < noise and tension. The headache starts halfway during in the morning and gets worse during the course of the afternoon.
She frequently suffers from diarrhoea, especially when she has to undertake something new that frightens her. She also had diarrhoea or very loose stools in the past, sometimes lasting for 6 months.
She has studied musicology and has tried for seven years to get a job in this field. At the moment she works as a publicity agent for a theatre company, but she finds it very demanding having to absorb the feeling of the plays and the actors in order to produce the right publicity.
Her mother had wanted her to play music when she was little, but at the time she wasn’t very interested. It wasn’t until a friend took her to some concerts and shared her records with her that she became more enthusiastic. She had wanted to go abroad as well, because ‘music has no boundaries’. People had said to her she had a talent for music, but when she was younger she did little more than just playing notes, she did not create ‘a piece of music’. She hadn’t enjoyed her studies ‘because musicologists aren’t very educated people on the whole’.
She has received psychotherapy treatment for two years because she couldn’t eat or swallow anything. This had to do with problems with her mother.
She has recently got a new boyfriend, although her relationships in the past had not been very successful. Intimacy is something she finds very difficult. She can’t find a balance between dependency and independency, this goes for relationships as well as for life in general.
The worst thing that ever happened to her is when her mother died. They had always quarrelled, ‘therefore we loved each other’. They had shared the same interests: love and loneliness. They were so close that they often had the same disease symptoms. Her mother was demanding and distant, never hugged her or touched her. Her mother was a psychiatrist and was always explaining her own behaviour via astrology, hypnosis or Jungian psychology. Because of this intellectual approach by her mother ‘her childhood hadn’t been a great success’. Her mother had been impulsive in her actions and her punishments. ‘Whatever I wanted, she would not allow it’. Emotions and rational thinking were incompatible as far as her mother was concerned. She had always said: ‘I can’t give you love, only money’.
She herself never quarrelled, she would rather swallow her hurt: ’When people quarrel it means the end of their friendship’.
When asked to describe her character she says with a laconic smile: ‘I am sad, life is hard and I feel lonely’. Her sadness goes very deep, that is why she laughs about it. But she says she also has a lot of fun, lots of friends. Although friendships can be a bit of a problem because she tends to get chosen by others, she never decides for herself whom she would like to have as a friend. She is so glad that someone wants her that she doesn’t complain. ‘Whenever I showed my feelings it was used against me. Whatever I felt did not seem to be important, that is why I learned to hide my feelings’, she says with a smile.
Her mothers father had been a very strict person.
Physical: breathlessness < smells and crowds in a small space.
Fear: criticism, being told off.
Generals
Desires: cheese (2), milk (2), yogurt (2), custard (2), raw vegetables (2), chocolate (2), sweet (2), tea (2), port (2).
Aversion: meat, fruit.
Sleep: often doesn’t fall asleep until 4 in the morning, << worrying about work.
Physical: < stress.
Analysis
Music is an important theme in her life. She had been forced by her mother to learn to play the piano, which she did not want to initially, although she did enjoy it later on. Then she felt she wasn’t good enough, but went to study musicology anyway, after which she got a job as publicity agent for a musical theatre company. All this indicates that we should look for a remedy in the Silver series. Her hesitation to really make a go of it points to one of the initial stages, but not to the very first stage because she is already doing something in this field. If we take a look at the other remedies in the initial stages, Zirconium, Niobium, Molybdenum and Technetium, we see that Niobum is the most appropriate. She is not using her own talents, she does publicity work for other musicians, having doubted her own creative abilities for years.
DD: Magnesium phosphoricum, Magnesium sulphuricum, Niccolum.
Reaction
After Niobium 1M she got an aggravation with severe headaches, pressure in the sinuses and a discharge of great lumps of mucus. She felt tired behind her eyes, became more emotional, sensitive, < films and hearing frightening stories. She had a terrible row with her boyfriend, something she had never done in her life.
Afterwards she felt better, more enjoyment in life, did not feel ill anymore, although she kept having the post nasal discharge.
During the next menses she got her old symptoms again: a prolonged beginning and end, lasting ten days in all. But the cramping pain was less.
Three months later she felt that she was getting stuck again and she took a second dose of Niobium 1M. She got very angry with her brother who had neglected to represent her business. She hadn’t go angry with him for twenty years and she was very happy that she was able to express herself this time. Later on they had a good talk about it. She also sent a letter to 20 of her friends to ask them to help her look for a new house. She finds it much easier to ask for help, instead of trying to do everything on her own.
In spite of everything that is going on she feels much stronger and happier. The headache has gone. The menses don’t bother her and her energy is good. Her nose is still blocked on the right side.