Case 2: Lyme’s disease, woman, 70 years old.
Four years ago the left big toe started to hurt and then the thumbs. Later the whole body felt inflamed. She was incapable of doing anything at all and would lie in an chair or on the coach for months. She was very ill with fever and lots of sweat; the general physician told her that it looked like severe acute rheumatoid arthritis. He and the specialist in the local hospital treated her with several medicaments like anti-rheumatics and with prednison, many of the medicaments giving adverse reactions.
Then she was send to the university hospital and was diagnosed with Lyme disease. She was treated with antibiotics. She improved but her legs still hurt so she got a second round of antibiotics. She was rather well for 10 months.
But then she had repeating rheumatic attacks and regular treatment did not help much anymore.
She has been hindered very much in the last three years with the following set of symptoms. Pains in the big toes, hips, shoulders; weeks she can not walk more than five minutes because of the pain. When she feels well she can stroll for half an hour. The lower limbs are weak and they may give in while standing or walking.
The right thigh is swollen especially over the trochanter bone. During a bout of the inflammations she has an eruption, especially on the lower limbs. This returns with every relapse of the disease, together with anaemia and high sedimentation rate.
Five weeks before onset of the complaints she has had a tick bite; also five years before, then there was ‘only minor irritation’. Only five months later she remembers that the complaints where more severe: her legs had been jerking and were weak, her vision was much less and she had loud noises in the ears.
Eight years agoo her uterus and ovaries removed because of a large tumor. And a year later a mammectomie because of cancer; no chemo- or radiotherapy. She can not tell which circumstances influenced her health at that time.
Surprisingly she tells her story in an easy way. “Yes, that is our family. Even when we are really ill we are in a good mood; we do not try but really feel that way. We are like oak trees (my maiden name is ‘Oak’)”.
She has been pursued by someone of the choir, this has shocked her deeply especially since it reminded her of the war. She looked like Jew and lived in a Jewish neighbourhood. So she felt threatened, unsafe and saw several bad things happen to Jews. Her father hid in their own house for several months and later disappeared to find shelter from the Germans. All this was stirred by the man who followed her; even more because it was known that he disliked Jewish people. She felt bad and vulnerable, quit the choir; only two months later she had the first rheumatic complaints.
She has been very active all her life; gardening (‘I like wild gardens’), committee’s in village life and social clubs, for her choir. ‘And I want things perfect’. She paints and sells quite a lot of her paintings; and she writes.
She eats not much because it feels good and she needs no more. During party’s she can eat a bunch. She likes vegetables and fruit and yoghurt.
Cold wind and draft is not tolerated though during fever she dislikes much cover.
Ledum 200K was given. She had more complaints for a week than during consultation but she says that that was her normal way. After three weeks there was no real improvement. As I have seen a slow reaction on Ledum more often I repeated it (in a higher potency MK). After six more weeks she is much better. The lower limbs have improved greatly; the pain in the arms is slightly better but enough to sleep well. She has really more energy. Only her skin is problematic; the eruption is worse as after the prednisone. It burns, itches and there are some raw and rough spots.
So Ledum is repeated and helped well.
Ledum came on very prominent in repertorising: inflammation big toes (left), pain hip (right) and other joints from motion, the eruptions on the lower limbs, jerking, industriousness. So it supports the idea of Ericaceae for Lyme. The theme of the absent father is strong. Ledum has the delusion that someone is behind her; this happened shortly before the outbreak of the Lyme and also in war time. Half a year later she had a slight recurrence of the eruption and sudden pains in the joints. The old scars of the operations had sharp pains to. Argentum metallicum took away these problem; the Silver series match with her artistic qualities.