5.8 Ruthenium, Case 1
A 48 year old man suffers from hyperventilation. He feels afraid wherever he goes, in tunnels, in cars, traffic jams, planes, shops and particularly when he is teaching. It feels as if the sky is falling down on top of him. The fears are accompanied by pain in his chest, cramp in his heart and shocks throughout his body. His hands and feet turn cold and he gasps for breath, his oesophagus feels as if it shoots to his back. He feels he will faint when he hears about accidents or when he sees blood. He feels as if he is floating, as if the tables and chairs are moving. It started 14 years ago when he collapsed one day when he was teaching and he thought ’I am going to die’. It feels as if his heart will pack up. The worst of it is that something is happening in his body that he can’t control, that his body seems to rule him, instead of the other way around. He also has fear of heights, a fear that the building will collapse or that he will get another attack.
He teaches first aid. It is a great hobby of his and he is very good at it. But he can’t handle it anymore at the moment so he has given up teaching. It all got too much for him, he felt he had to give his best performance at all times. He felt afraid that he would suddenly forget what to say and that people would think him a failure. He is afraid people will look through him and notice his fears. He feels like Cyrano without a nose. It also bothers him that other people in the group are talking about his ‘case’, that his breakdown is being discussed by others. It makes him feel that his shield is being pierced by a knife.
His hands feel tired and numb in the morning. When he cycles he gets cramp in his thighs.
From the age of 18 he has suffered from high blood pressure, but the medicine he takes for this gives him nightmares. He dreams that everything becomes very large or very small. It wakes him up and then for a moment he doesn’t know where he is. The room around him is either very huge or very small. He also dreams of a stranger or an animal lying in bed next to him.
He gets the occasional head cold, his head feels stuffed up in the morning, especially on the side he has laid on, < dust. It is accompanied by a raspy throat. He has had problems with his vocal cords before. Once he lost his voice altogether.
Sometimes he gets stitching pains and cramps in his stomach, with eructations and occasional vomiting of bile.
He gets itching pain under his dentures.
He comes across as a likable man who talks a lot. In fact he speaks so fast that he sometimes swallows his words. The first and last letters of every word don’t get articulated at all. He looks like Toon Hermans (a Dutch comedian).
He dreams about falling into a ravine. A typical dream (after Argentum nitricum 1M) was that he drove his motorbike up a mountain with someone sitting behind him. At the top he discovers that there is a sheer drop on the other side. Fortunately he discovers that he can fly. The feeling he gets in this dream is the same as the feeling when he is teaching: it all seems to be terribly heavy and difficult beforehand, but once he is doing it it turns out to be easy and light.
Generals
Weather: slightly cold, cold hands.
Perspiration: sometimes profuse at night.
Time: < morning (3).
Desires: salt, spices, sour (2), meat, fatty meat, skins, cheese.
Aversion: peanut butter (2), fat.
Food: headache from spicy food.
Sleep: difficulty getting asleep.
Analysis
The problems around teaching are quite remarkable. He feels he has to give his best, he is afraid of being a failure, that people will look through him and notice his fears. He feels like Cyrano without a nose. All these feelings are characteristic of the Silver series.
The feeling of having to give a top performance indicates Stage 8, the stage of force. The ride up the mountain is another indication of the beginning stages, the run up to the top. But he has obviously gone past the very first few stages (Zirconium or Niobium) because he has been teaching for quite a while. He knows he can do it and he doesn’t have to learn more (Technetium). His problem is more that he doesn’t know how to keep it up, and this is typical of the Ruthenium stage.
The aggravation at 11 in the morning is also a Ruthenium symptom.
The hoarseness and loss of voice also belong to the Silver series, while the rapid speech and swallowing of words indicate the running up stage, once again fitting with Ruthenium. It is a sign of pressure and haste, wanting to say a lot, having to get your ideas across.
Reaction
After Ruthenium 1M he feels much better on the whole. His mental problems don’t bother him anymore and he feels more at ease with his chosen profession. After a few weeks he starts to teach again and six months later he is in full swing again. His fears are more or less gone.
He had a dream in which his friends dived off a boat and sank to the bottom of the lake. He dived in to get them up to the surface again, but he was afraid of running out of breath. However, the water proved to be clear and shallow and it was easy to bring them up.
He generally finds solutions to his problems in his dreams.