Mom, it’s time for the quiz!
Again????
Let’s begin by reporting on Christmas. We went to my sister Sherri’s house and followed her car to her sister-in-law Toni’s house for Christmas dinner. I think Sherri is a better cook, but, YOU still ate like a pig anyway! Also this picture shows everything I got for Christmas:
Hmm… you apparently got some sort of large pink thing, a book and two pieces of paper.
Mom! For your information, those are two pull-overs, one pink and one purple; Season 7 of “The Big Bang Theory”, and two concert tickets to see:
Lloyd Price
Gene Chandler, the Duke of Earl
Chuck Jackson
and Maxine Brown
at the Kimmel Center, January 24th!
Oh right, I forgot! Concert-Goers Hall of Fame President, Shana Lewis!
Mom, it was your present!
That explains the $200 missing from my checking account!
Now, if we can possibly get back to the quiz, it’s time for the Death Report!
Shouldn’t I be sitting down for this?
It’s going to be very hard watching reruns of “Gilmore Girls” now, because the actor who played Richard Gilmore died.
OMG! You mean Edward Herrmann died? He was so young!
Mom! He was 71!
Like I said, young!
Can we please move on to our second death? It’s really sad.
Excuse me, but we’re still talking about Edward Herrmann!!!! He was a very famous actor, you know. He played President Roosevelt in “Eleanor and Franklin”, and he had roles in many famous movies and TV shows, but, he will best be remembered as Richard Gilmore (there aren’t too many worthwhile shows on television, God knows, but “Gilmore Girls” is one of them!)
One of the best shows ever! OK, who else died? RIP, Edward! We’ll miss you!
There’s no easy way to say this, but the most famous voice actress from my childhood, Christine Cavanaugh, died at age 51.
No way!
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t see “Rugrats” or “Dexter’s Laboratory” on tv. “Rugrats” is now on TeenNick late at night but “Dexter’s Lab” is nowhere to be found. Personally, I think that is an insult to Christine’s memory. Anyway, she was famous for being the original voices of Chuckie Finster and Dexter (Boy-Genius) until her retirement from voice acting. She also had roles on an episode of “the Powerpuff Girls” as a one-time character, so again, she was pretty much there for my whole childhood. Anyway, “Rugrats” was one of the cartoons from my childhood I still love even in my twenties. I really wish I still had my entire “Rugrats” VHS Collection.
Where is it?
I guess it just disappeared over the years…
You threw it out!!!!
OK!!! But I didn’t know what I was doing! I’m starting to buy them back now!
Aaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!
Anyway, “Rugrats” was a show about babies and they all went on adventures led by Tommy Pickles, the bravest baby who ever lived.
No one cares, Shana!!!!! Except they might possibly remember the Rugrats Quiz we did where you had to guess the remedy for Tommy and Chuckie:
https://hpathy.com/clinical-cases/revisiting-the-odd-couple-another-completely-different-quiz/
Well, Mom, here is a tribute to Christine Cavanaugh as the voice of Dexter in “Dexter’s Laboratory”. Dexter is a genius with a very annoying older sister named Dee Dee:
I always found it funny how Dexter’s parents had no idea what was going on. I guess they were modeled after 50’s sitcom parents.
Exactly, they were modeled after June and Ward Cleaver!
Anyway, Don’t you love Christine’s Russian accent? It can’t have been easy! Christine also had guest roles on non-cartoon shows like “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “the X-Files” but I never saw that episode. That’s my New Year’s resolution–to finish watching the “X-Files”.
Nice that you’re aiming high this year!
Anyway, I guess that’s all for the Death Report. If you’ll excuse me I’ll be off watching childhood cartoons and crying like a baby. Let me know when someone invents a time machine. It’s 2015. We should have one by now! This is the year that Marty McFly traveled forward to the future in the movie, “Back to the Future Part 2”! NOW I will be off to mourn my favorite voice actress.
See ya! Well, speaking of ants…. it brings us to tonight’s quiz! You will really like this quiz! I give you now, our patient from somewhere in Asia with the Creepy-Crawlies… Antoine Fragnack!
What? Antoine Fragnack from Asia?????
Is there something wrong with that?
*****
Questionnaire
Name: Antoine Fragnack (not his real name)
Age: 43
Male or Female: Male
Weight: 58kg
Height:1.65cm
Date:31/12/14
Email Address: _________________
- Describe the complaint.
I have dry skin. I am not sure whether it is because of low blood count or low WBC. Since last three weeks after getting a common virus, I have sensation on my skin like crawling or creeping. It gets worse when I go to bed before getting to sleep or when I am sitting in knee posture. My WBC & platelets became lower.
- Etiology–
It is because of change of weather I think. I am sensitive to cold as well as hot. Also due to long travel maybe.
- Sensation–
Yes when I have a pain in stomach it shoots to the knees at the same time.
- Appearance– anything remarkable? Red skin, droopy eyes, bruising, etc.?
Yes I have itchy skin of hands and legs mostly and on right side of stomach
- Location–where on the body is your complaint located?
The current complaint of crawling is all over the body over skin.
- Modalities–
I feel better after massage. During sleep, I do not feel crawling, but when I am sitting and lying on bed I feel it. After having sensation I have to rub the skin, it disappears for that part and appears in another part.
- Concomitants
I feel anxiety. I also had sneezing but not at the same time.
- Discharges–
When I got the cold, I mostly had runny nose that was clear and mostly watery and burned my nose. During runny nose I also had runny eyes but no burn.
- Generals–
I generally feel hot. I do not feel thirsty. I’m weak too and get angry easily. I become stressed easily.
- The mentals
Yes self pity, sometimes weepiness, indifference
- What have you been saying?
Turn the TV off. I want to go home, ask for massage, and want to take rest.
- What are you doing?
Check for medicine that helps in my condition, browse internet to look for the cause and remedies.
- Describe your thirst and appetite–
Generally do not feel thirsty. I like normal water at this time of year in winter I mean. In summer generally cold water. I used to like cold but currently normal water but not hot. Avoiding meat, greasy food, fatty foods. Like bread but cannot digest, like salty foods, any drink I generally gulp. Appetite is good, eating well but only digestible foods like rice soup, boiled vegetables, etc.
- Fever?
Currently no fever. I had a mild fever during the cold I took in November but it goes. Felt cold want to cover the body but sometimes felt hot and also perspiration.
- Sweating?
I used to have sweat during sleep but not now.
- Odors?
Yes generally bad breath, foul breath from mouth
- What is most striking, peculiar or identifying about your condition?
Spleen, liver enlarged, liver side hard, low blood count, decay of teeth at gum, hole in the teeth, loose teeth, white coating of tongue generally, mark of teeth on tongue
- Is there a diagnosis?
Yes the diagnosis is spleen problem, due to pancytopenia
- Describe your energy–
Quiet, worried, thinking a lot about future, this will happen, that will happen, what I will do or my children will do if bad things happen. Feel weak, sexually weak, used get so weak after sex mostly on the back. In the morning when I woke up sometimes felt weak not fresh.
- What does your tongue look like?
Tongue is coated white generally, thick coated at the back and thin in front. Imprint of teeth on tongue, moist & flabby, line of left side of tongue or sometimes middle, large
- If you have a cough, please tell what it sounds like; for example, “It’s a dry cough that sounds like a saw sawing through a pine board!” or, “It sounds like a seal barking!” or, “It’s loose and rattling and yet, raising phlegm is very difficult.” or, “It’s dry, it’s a very sharp sound, and it’s very painful, it makes my head hurt, I have to grab my head.”
Generally dry cough, have phlegm but hard to expel it. The color of phlegm is white but sometimes yellow.
- This question only applies to complaints of a more chronic nature: I need to know what you eat, drink and “take”. I need to know how long you wait between meals
For breakfast, I used of bread & egg, fruits. Cereal, yogurt & fruits. Juice orange or mix like apple, beets, carrot. Kitchdi a type of boiled rice with lentil, mix veggie. In the morning its burning in stomach before breakfast. After breakfast it disappeared.
I usually eat lunch around noon; have boiled veggie, brown rice, spinach or other mix veggie soup, fish sometimes.
I used to have mix fruits and veg juice for drink during the day after breakfast.
For dinner, I used to have light meal, soup, fruits like papaya, a chapatti sometimes or beet and carrot boiled soup, sometimes spinach soup.
Avoid having raw food due to low WBC and loose tooth. Also sweets due to toothache.
Poor digestion, felt the taste of food even after few hours sometimes. Gastric mostly and loose stool sometimes.
_________________________________
Antoine, I repertorized your case, and ________________ comes out on top. So, take a dose of ________________30C and tell me tomorrow if anything has changed.
***
Dear Elaine,
80% of crawling is gone. It seems like it’s working. Should I continue taking it?
No, I wouldn’t take it again unless all improvement stops. Has anything else gotten better? What about worrying and burning in stomach, etc.?
So far I did not feel burning in my stomach today. No worrying today. I think it is helping overall. Yes, the level of energy is better, had good sleep, even during the day I was sleepy today.
Regards,
Antoine
Sent from my iPhone
***
Next day.…
Dear Elaine,
Crawling is 95% gone, toothache is mild now, no burning in stomach, energy level is much better than yesterday.
Regards,
Antoine
Sent from my iPhone
***************************
So listen, everybody, what do you think the remedy is? Write to me at [email protected] and let me know. The answer will be in next month’s ezine. And now to take us out, because Shana and I are seeing Lloyd Price on the 24th of January, here are are Lloyd Price and Little Richard from 1994 singing Lloyd Price’s hit from 1951, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”:
—————————–
Votes
Pulsatilla
Phosphorus
Mezerium
Tuberculinum
Arsenicum
Rhus tox
____________________
Where is everybody??? I guess everyone was traumatized by this case! Luckily, Natalie is here.
Hi, Elaine; another one where there seems to be an obvious answer…with the weepiness, weather change affecting, and wanting to be massaged (caressed) being my main clues.
I will guess Pulsatilla. :0)
Enjoy that concert!!
Thanks Natalie, I’m sure I will! OK, first of all, he doesn’t want to be caressed. When the formication starts, rubbing is essential to make it stop–temporarily. So, I took the rubric, “Generals: rubbing amel.” Secondly, the “crying” rubric is huge–over 200 remedies, you’d have to use the subrubrics. But you were right, the crying is very significant. Why? He’s a man and men tend not to cry; so, if a man is crying, it’s very characteristic. It’s peculiar–strange, rare and peculiar, and as you know, we give a lot of weight to that in homeopathy. But think about Pulsatilla’s kind of crying. They make you feel very sorry for them and you just want to rush in and help them. This patient, however, is very angry. He’s crying because he feels sorry for himself and out of fear; plus, he says he angers easily. Pulsatilla’s not in that rubric. And what else does he tell us about his mental state? He says he’s anxiety-ridden, full of worries, he has anxiety about health, and he’s spending his time combing the internet for cures (“Mind: anxiety, mania to read medical books”), and then you have the issue of the pathology. What is it? He has enlargement of the liver and spleen. Does that go for Pulsatilla? No. So, what do you think now?
Well, using the rep software, I come up with Arsenicum and Nux Vomica..
Nux would come to mind for someone easily angered, (vexed by trifles) but the ‘better by rubbing’ made me think not, as they are worse by touch; on closer reading, maybe the better by ‘hard strong pressure’ is where the rubbing comes in.
No, I don’t think we can substitute “better pressure” for “rubbing amel.”
I was taking the word ‘massage’ word to mean something different.. :0)
Nux does wake unrefreshed and has the liver area engorgement..but I did not picture a Nux crying, but more angry; so, the ‘weeping’ would really seem contradictory to me, but as you said, if he is ‘weeping’ out of self pity, I can see it.
There’s an important sub-rubric under “Mind: crying” for this case: “Crying, with progressive disease” and there are only 3 remedies with only one being relevant to us–Arsenicum. Clearly, with hardened and enlarged liver and spleen, this person has advanced pathology. We would want a remedy to cover the pathology of both organs, as “crawling” is often a liver symptom–meaning if we could help the liver, the crawling would stop, then we would want the remedy also to cover the mentals. So when we look at the mentals, we see anxiety about health, fear of death and worrying. Nux isn’t much for worrying, apparently. In the final analysis, I did decide that I had to repertorize, and it came out, as I suspected it might, to Arsenicum:
Thanks so much for these quizzes! They are helping me greatly with the thought process needed to help solve cases. I tend to rely too much on my own ‘picture’ of what each remedy is and sometimes the ‘words just get in my way’ (especially if I interpret a word to mean something other than it does in the case) 🙁 In this case, I was looking at the cause and figured it to be a liver/spleen issue which confined me to the three remedies mentioned above.
You were right, it was a liver spleen issue, but, then you missed all the anxiety in the case.
I will just keep trying.
At times, I feel like I will never be able to master this, (and at my age I am running out of time) but know full well how awesome it is and am determined to keep at it until I get it– and my daughter is following along and learning the ropes as well.
You’re lucky! My daughter is following the tour schedules of rock stars!
Stay warm and well!
Thanks!
Who else do we have here? Oh look! It’s Wayne Butcher from Australia!
Hi Elaine,
Here is my attempt regarding Antoine’s case:
My Rubrics are as Follows
Itching; skin; crawling
I would have picked “Skin: formication” since that’s what that crawling feeling is.
Dry; skin
Anxiety; future about the
Anxiety; health about their
White; tongue
Swelling; glands,
Salt, general; desires
Itching ;hands
Itching; legs
Highest scoring remedy was Phosphorus, followed by Sulphur, then Nit – ac, Calc, and Arsenic
Tongue signs and enlarged spleen seem to indicate a spleen problem as given in the diagnosis caused by bone marrow problems.
Phosphorus and Calcium are two remedies particularly relavent to bones. Sulphur is one of the first remedies thought of when there are skin problems. There seems to be some abnormal problem with the teeth.
Considering this my first remedy would be Phosphorus, particularly because of his desire for salt.
As usual I will be interested to see your repertorisation.
There’s a great rubric “Mind: crying, progressive disease, with”. There are only 3 remedies in it and Arsenicum is the only one worth considering–the other two being Aethusa and Caladium. Then looking at the case, you see that Arsenicum seems to cover just about every rubric, including “Skin: formication”. You can see the case is full of anxiety and worry. Arsenicum is a 4 under “tendency to worry”, Phosphorus only a 1. Phosphorus didn’t have the indented tongue, flabby tongue or self-pity. The thirstlessness also makes you wonder about Phosphorus. Phosphorus also isn’t in the rubric “desires to go home”. So, the mentals here are much more Arsenicum than Phosphorus, though Phosphorus did come up in my repertorization, Arsenicum was #1; so, needless to say, I picked Arsenicum.
Oh look! It’s Miroslav and Jitka!
Hello Elaine
Hello!
I have forwarded your message to Miroslav, that you would like to know our answers what we think the elements of the case are.
OK!
This is what Miroslav wrote:
If I should even comment on the quiz, I would try to use the Dr.Sehgal´s method
and I would choose symptoms: – “he craves after light”
I don’t remember that at all. Where does it say he craves light?
– “muscles are not subject of the will”- Gelsemium
Where does it say his muscles aren’t obeying his will?
In the present case would match the following symptoms:
– the current state of virus precedes – absence of thirst
– Fatigue – desires to be at rest, relax…..
I want to try this version:
Symptoms:
– craves for light (he is interested in what he is looking for, looking for information about his health…)
And what is the rubric for that, looking for information about his health? “Mind: anxiety, hypochondriacal, mania to read medical books”.
– Muscles are not subject to the will (he has to scratch himself…)
No, he has “formication”. It’s a “crawling” sensation on his skin, like bugs are crawling and he doesn’t have to scratch, he has to rub. So, the rubric is “Generals: rubbing amel.”
Another symptom that I had mentioned, match to Gelsemium.
Why can it not be Gelsemium? Does this case have mentals? Yes. Are they the Gelsemium mentals? No. What are his mentals? Anxiety about health. Fear of death. Worry. Easy to anger. Wants to go home. Crying with the disease. What remedy has these things? Arsenicum!
In this case, there are really a mixture of symptoms and a stage after the virus brought me to this remedy.
Once I saw on Sehgal´s seminar a video case about 3-year old child, mother carried him on her hands and he was scratching himself all the time (ugly eczema), a doctor came to him and wanted to stop him but the child continued with scratching, did not help no admonition….nothing … On the basis of this single symptom – muscles are not subject of the will – the child was given Gelsemium, that cured the child…“
I don’t know…this is not a case of itching although there is some itching in the case. It is a case of formication with clear mental concomitants and we all know that if a case has “mentals” the remedy has to cover them, right?
As for me (Jitka), I tried to take into account almost all the elements of the case and I tried to repertorize them. Because I do not have any Repertory SW. I had to write down manually remedies and rubrics for evaluating, but in my language. Now I’ll try and pick something from my notes which remedies and symptoms I tried to repertorize. But I’ve completely lost in this case and therefore I’m not going to guess another remedy. I send you only the list of rubrics and remedies that seemed like the most similar to this case. The most similar seems Merc, but Mercurius is thirsty. Then I thought about Sulphur, but Sulph. is thirsty mostly too, though they say Sulphur is thirstless in acutes. If I’d written whatever else, it would be just mere speculation. I send this just so you could not think, that besides, I’m not very smart, I’m also lazy …: )
Well, again, if a case has mentals, and there’s no clear etiology, we have to match the mentals to a remedy; plus, we want our remedy to cover the organ pathology of liver and spleen enlargement and hardening of the liver. That’s important because this is what has to be cured. We need a liver/spleen pathology remedy that has anxiety, fear of death, worry. What else can it be but Arsenicum? Anyway, thanks for your input and participation as always!
****************
So…to all our participants today… it appears that… Lady Luck turned her back on you… (Lloyd Price):
See you again next time!
Mom, wait! You’re not going to believe this! Peter Dunseith, your soul brother from Wales, just wrote in with the right answer! Look!
Hi Elaine, greetings from Wales, and thanks for another entertaining homeo-musical-comedy-quiz!
I repertorised the case and Arsenicum covers every symptom, including the crawling sensation (formication), the loose teeth and bad breath, the white coated tongue indented by the teeth, the swollen spleen and liver, the burning in the stomach, and the anxiety. Mercury is also a front runner, but what clinches Arsenicum for me is the patient’s anxiety over his own health, to the extent that he is spending his time on the internet researching his symptoms and looking for remedies. So that is one vote from me for Ars-alb.
Wow! I couldn’t have said it better!!!!!!! Thanks, Peter!!!!! You get the Hpathy Gold Star!
_________________________
Elaine Lewis, D.Hom., C.Hom.
Elaine takes online cases! Write to her at [email protected]
Visit her website: elaineLewis.hpathy.com
