Case 2
Female 41 years.
Comes to me in 1999 with a skin eruption on her face. Small, hard nodules, under de skin, < chin, hairy parts of face. She weeps while telling me the symptoms and weeps on and off during the whole consultation. She has got this complaint since 1993 and despite Prednison the eruption comes back regularly. Easily emotional: weeps with some music styles or TV programmes, about persons who have disappeared or others who won huge prizes. Fears: accidents, thunder, ridicule herself.
She suffers with her complaint because she does not like to talk about it; does not want to be asked about it either. When anyone asks her she says she has an allergic reaction. She fears it will come back due to stress when she has some social event in perspective (Damocles’ sword hanging above her head). Desires: chocolate, sweets, banana, warm food and drinks. Aversion: bitter, bitter lemon, sour milk. She is a cold person. She is a very neat person, orderly. Arrived to the appointment 5 minutes early. She cannot cope with a too busy life so she avoids too many appointments and social obligations. After the anamnese I asked her the two questions:
The most happy event of her life: Meeting her husband and getting married, knowing she could trust, confide on someone (security).
The most distressful event of her life: The quarrels about money between her parents when she was a child. When her father threatened to leave them or hang himself. When her mother would hide outside the house –to tease her- and made her believe she would never come back. All these things made her very sad (weeping while telling).
Although this woman is very closed by nature and by custom -she is married to a farmer and usually they keep to themselves- the answer she gives to these questions told me more than listening to her for 1 hour. In her answers we see the origin of the problem: probably due to ignorance, her parents neglected to give her the necessary confidence in life, support and love, by threatening to leave her alone in the world. Only when she married a reliable man she could have the feeling that she was safe. But now her complaints are also a threat, a danger above her head. What will happen to her later? She cannot cope with the stress.
Analysis
Her sadness, vulnerability, being withdrawn and her closeness made me think of Natrium. The items of money and the memories of moments she thought she would be left alone in the world, without protection (mother leaving, father leaving or killing himself), like Damocles’ sword hanging above her head, brought me to Arsenicum.
Furthermore we find that this woman is restless and tremendously tidy. I gave her Natrium arsenicosum 200 and although she also feared to take the medicine (Ars.) her fear to get sick was worse.
It is now 1 year later and the eruption never recurred but she keeps taking the medicine whenever she feels the need for it in an LM potency. She feels that since the homeopathic medicine she’s more relaxed, less hurried (she did not tell this before) and has more pleasure in life. Also she dares to drive on the highway, this she didn’t do for years.