I am not shy about telling people I’m not their doctor. My kids mistakenly attribute this title to me I suppose because they see patients come into my little make shift office, or come along as I bring remedies to sick people at their homes. In fact, they have never really known an actual doctor aside from our Homeopath who is also an MD and who is training me, so I suppose with the information available to them, they have ascertained correctly. However, I wish to point out here that, I am not your doctor, and I’m proud to say so. I am your Homeopath.
Why take the time to read this post? Because I’m not here to tell you simply the facts that make me NOT a doctor. I never went to medical school and I don’t have a degree, but my reason for drawing a contrast between being your doctor and being your homeopath goes beyond credentials. Let me tell you of two recent patients who demonstrate beautifully the difference between the kind of care you receive from your doctor vs. your homeopath.
Susan, a single woman in her 60’s sustained a bad fall on her way home from work late the night before, and broke her ankle badly. Alone in the ER, she had the bone set without any pain meds, and was sent home just 3 hours later (because you know, covid) *eye roll* Susan refused to fill her prescription for pain management drugs because she tends to have bad reactions to most of them, and is disinclined to take medication in general. When I came to see her, she was in a kind of hysterical state. She told me through indignant tears of how she was treated at the hospital. She felt the doctors were focused so much on rushing her out the door, that they had little regard for the fact that she had a difficult time getting a hold of someone to pick her up from the ER in the middle of the night. No one she called for a ride heard their phones ring. Eventually she got through to someone, and made it home. She told me between sobs how condescending the male nurse had been, talking to her in a calm tone as though she were a child.
The pain medication they did give her while she was in the hospital had made her dizzy and as it wore off the next morning she wanted to know what she could do homeopathically to manage the pain. Her doctor had “prescribed” that she buy some Tumeric to help with the swelling. (Don’t you love how they are starting to do things that seem like they are trying to care for you more naturally?) She dutifully ordered some.
So here I am, taking in the scene before me. A somewhat hysterical woman being cared for primarily by her frazzled, but holding-it-together, 30-something daughter. A puppy whimpers from the next room for attention. She had recently brought home a new puppy just after her long-time Pug companion died. I turned my attention to her and asked her about what her pain felt like. It was shooting and intense. However, she wept telling me of her inability to go back to the work she loved -a nurse’s aid- in a retirement home, not so much the physical pain in her leg. She questioned out loud- “will I ever be able to work again?”. One fear lead to another- how would she manage caring for her new puppy, and what about her garden in the spring? On that cold and damp day in December just weeks before Christmas the loss of Christmas gatherings in her children’s homes surrounded by grand-children added to her overwhelm.
As I analyzed her case, I knew that it really wasn’t the pain and the injury I needed to focus on primarily. This deep sense of loss and grief, and feelings of abandonment needed to be helped in order for the body to move forward. Though she was very well taken care of, she had felt slighted by the hospital workers, she also felt that they talked down to her, and there was a lot of anger present in her weeps and wails. In an instant she felt her whole life had changed and she could not see past the present situation. She was consumed by a deep, deep grief. Her pain was not limited to her ankle, that was obvious.
Frank, a 64 year old married man called me for help on the advice of his concerned daughters. He had been sick with some sort of flu, which his family was convinced was Covid but which he informed me, “probably wasn’t” and added “I didn’t get tested, I don’t believe in it”. He had had chills, and body aches for a little while, but then began to recover. The persistent problem he was still dealing with 3 weeks later, was his loss of appetite and extreme fatigue.
He had little to offer me in way of physical symptoms other than his overwhelming fatigue and lack of appetite. It was clear to me I needed to know more about this man’s life. I asked him if he had any other unrelated physical symptoms. It’s important to give liberty to the patient when relaying their symptoms-everything is fair game, and it’s all important to me, their homeopath. He mentioned then that his right foot was bothering him due to a work injury just 2 weeks ago, and that his dog unexpectedly died at the same time as well. He choked back tears as he mentioned his dog. I expressed my sorrow for his loss, but it was clear he didn’t want to dwell on it, I could sense the pain was still very fresh.
He had just returned from a weekend trip to a mountain cabin with his daughters and grandchildren, which he said he tried to enjoy as much as possible but he slept through most of it. His fatigue was so overwhelming that he would have to excuse himself often to take naps. He also tried to eat, but he had no real appetite and eating anything just upset his stomach. He was noticing he was drinking more water than usual. Although his chief concern was his appetite, and fatigue, I knew that what I really needed to give weight to was Frank, him, as a person, and his recent loss and grief. He was literally heart sick.
Back to Susan, while her ankle was an obvious problem, at this stage Arnica was still her best friend. Initially Aconite to address the shock of the injury was called for, but Arnica at regular intervals is indispensable with this type of injury. The swelling and pain from not only the break but also damage to the soft tissue surrounding it would benefit greatly from regular doses of Arnica. But the real thing in Susan which needed attention was her crushing sense of loss. We cannot separate a person from their body and treat them as though they are two things, when, while here on this earth they are joined together as one. When I say “the person” I mean what makes them up, their mind, their emotions, their thoughts- in homeopathic terms, together with their physical manifestations we call this a person’s ‘constitution’. When all this was taken into consideration, a remedy to address the person, not the diagnosis, was able to bring calm to her within minutes. Because I was unsure and torn between two remedies I called upon my mentor to help work through it with me.
About 30 minutes after her first dose of the remedy she became irresistibly sleepy, and her entire demeanor changed. Her body physically relaxed and her weeping ceased. I put a pellet of her remedy into a jar of water and instructed her to take a tsp of it as needed. Her daughter thanked me the next day and said that she calls it “her crying remedy” and added “as soon as she starts to feel overwhelmed again I make her take a sip, it’s like magic.” Susan reported that each time she took a sip of the water she was able to relax and didn’t feel so sad, and her ankle hurt, but the pain was manageable, even without the opioids her doctor prescribed for her. I call this a huge win, and it is only accomplished when a homeopath treats a patient, not a diagnosis.
Frank, with his quiet, understating way, hoped he could just get his appetite and energy back so that he could get back to work like normal. He didn’t like not being able to get his shoe on his injured foot, and that kept him form doing his very physical lumbar yard work. But as his homeopath, I knew that what really ailed him was the recent loss of his beloved dog. Though he didn’t want to show it, I heard in his voice the deep attachment to his four-legged friend. Frank couldn’t move past his recent illness because his heart was sick. Now, had I told Frank this, and suggested he see a counselor, do you think he would have done it? Probably not, but because I didn’t have to address this at all, only take the time to listen to him and notice that this was his real illness, I could treat the person, not the fatigue. Although his physical symptoms are important, the thing that really guided me to the correct remedy for him was his emotional state.
Too shy to reach out to me himself, Frank asked his daughter (who is a friend of mine) to let me know that 20 minutes after his first dose of remedy water, he got his appetite back. It was a couple of days and I didn’t hear any updates so I then called Frank to follow up. The Frank on the other end of the phone sounded very perky, he was back to work, feeling great, back to normal! He was very thankful for the help and equally thankful that I had taken the time to follow up with him.
So you see, I’m not your doctor, I don’t look just at the obvious, I look at YOU I see YOU, and I treat YOU. Doctors treat what they know, as do Homeopaths, we just know different things. I know that in order for you to be free of that chronic back pain which multiple surgeries only made worse, we need to look deeper than the physical.
Homeopathy never ceases to amaze me. I say that every time I have the privilege to see a person rally in response to a remedy. I love being a detective and caring for people on a level they just aren’t used to. People are dynamic, and separating physical from mental and emotional in medicine is just archaic, and should be obsolete. Hahnneman knew it, and I know it, do you?
