Case Quizes Clinical Cases

Revisiting: Shana Sneezes

Written by Elaine Lewis

This was a tricky one, I know! Did you get the right answer?

Mom, it’s time for the quiz.

I know I have to talk about seeing Paul McCartney at Citizens Bank Park (the Phillies stadium)…

but I just have to point out real quick that July 15th was the 20th Anniversary of “Kenan and Kel”!

No one cares, Shana!

It’s a hilarious old Nickelodeon comedy about two best friends named Kenan Rockmore and Kel Kimble played by Kenan Thompson currently of “Saturday Night Live” and Kel Mitchell who is currently on some modern Nickelodeon sitcom I never watch.

Heaven knows this is interesting (zzzzzzzzz) but could we possibly move on to your feature announcement?

Anyway, on the show….

Apparently not.

Mom!  This is for the edification of our readers from India and Pakistan!

You mean the people who are leaving right now?

Mom….if you could possibly be quiet for 5 seconds.  They’re always getting into trouble.

Who, the people from India and Pakistan?

No, Mom, Kenan and Kel.

As I may have mentioned previously, no one cares!

Mom, I’m just going to forge ahead.  And I’m sure it is mostly always Kel’s fault.

What is?

I’m ignoring you!  They were also in a hilarious 1997 movie called “Good Burger”.  Do NOT ask me who!!!!!

I just assumed it was the people from India and Pakistan.

I’m still ignoring you.  In fact, I think this video will best explain…

I knew it!

…the hilarity that is “Kenan and Kel”.  So get ready to laugh, ezine readers!!!!

WHAT ezine readers?  They left hours ago!

 

I gotta admit, that clip was pretty funny!

And now on to Paul McCartney!!!!!

Finally!

I felt very grown up going to the concert all by myself.  I had no trouble finding my seat either.  I guess it helped, though, that there were signs for each section.

Shana, without signs, there would be pandemonium!

So I just looked for the sign that said “Section 137”.

See?  I was right.  You ARE a genius!

Who said I wasn’t?  Apparently the rows are numbered too.

Oy vey!  Rick!!!!!!!!

Do you have to call Daddy for everything????  Who knew seat 8 was the last one in the row?

Shana, that’s the aisle seat.  People WANT the aisle seat!

They do?

Yes!!!!  It enables you to get out without stepping over other people and making a nuisance out of yourself.

Well excuse me!!!  I am so sorry for not being in-the-know!  Anyway the guy I talked to when I said I was looking for my seat was very nice.

What guy?

I don’t know what they’re called.  I guess he was an usher or event organizer?

Oh, well that’s different.  Never mind!

There was also some very good pizza at one of the ballpark’s food stands.

I knew if there was pizza, you’d find it!

I want to point out something funny I noticed while I was waiting for the show to start.

If you can, please do!

I was watching people go to their seats and among the people wearing Beatles or Paul McCartney tour shirts, I saw at least two people wearing shirts from the Rolling Stones 50th Anniversary Tour.

Again with the Rolling Stones?????  How is it we always wind up talking about the Rolling Stones!!!????

Also there was a guy in front of me wearing an Elvis shirt.  Anyway, the show was amazing.

Are you going to say nothing about Andre Gardner of WMGK?  Andre was broadcasting his show live from the stadium.

I was getting to that!  But now that you mention it, where’s the picture? 

Where are your pictures of Paul?

Here it is:

That’s it????  You took a picture of his back????

It was the only one that turned out!

Good grief!

If he tours again I will try to go to the show and get a better picture.

How many times were you expecting to see Paul McCartney, anyway?

There were these really cool fireworks in the sky during “Live and Let Die.”  There was one point where Paul said, “Let’s hear it for John!”

and people cheered loudly.  Apparently two years after John Lennon was killed, Paul wrote a song called “Here Today”.  He also said “Let’s hear it for Georgie!”

and mentioned how George Harrison knew how to play the ukulele.  Did you know that?

What, that George could play that thing that I can’t spell?

Yes!  Now you made me forget what I was gonna say!  Anyway, then Paul played George’s biggest hit, “Something” on the ukulele in George’s honor.

I’m totally in awe that you know how to spell … what is it again?

Ukulele!  It’s not a hard word to spell!  He also asked the crowd, “How many people here are actually from Philadelphia?” and I was one of the people who clapped.

You knew where you were from!  Yay!!!!

After the show the guy who was sitting behind me asked me my age.  For some reason his reaction when I said 24 amused me.  I guess it’s not everyday you see someone my age at a Paul McCartney concert but it’s been known to happen.  There was a boy in the same row as me wearing a Beatles shirt.  I said to him “Believe it or not, this is my first time seeing Paul.”  I can’t remember his exact words but I think he said something like, “Paul is amazing.”  I didn’t think to ask his name because I was caught up in everything that was happening.  For all I know I could have been talking to my future husband that night.

For what we paid for your ticket, you could have at least gotten engaged!

All I know is that he looked like a teenager.  If he was, then I’m kind of too old for him.

Trust me, Shana; you’re not too old for anybody!

And now, to end my report, here is Paul McCartney with “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five” live from Citizen’s Bank Park.  I’m having Post-Concert Depression.  I miss Paul!

OMG!  It’s 1964 all over again!!!!

No, Mom, “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five”!

Oh yeah, as it turned out, I did know that song.

Who’s in the quiz this time?

You!

Mom!!!

Shana, I’m too tired to look for another case!  We’ve been here for hours!  We’ve watched videos of the concert, we’ve heard uninteresting stories about the Rolling Stones, and we’ve watched a Kenan and Kel episode, and now it’s past my bed time!  OK, so I’m calling this case “Shana Sneezes”.

Mom, that’s really lame.

Well, isn’t that what this case is all about?  It was all about SNEEZING!  Very LOUD sneezing!!!!!

And a runny nose that was occasionally stuffy.

Right.  So now I have to ask you our secret homeopathy questions.  

Why are they a secret? 

I have to assume they are, since no one knows what to ask for in an acute case!

1. Sensation: What was the sensation?

I don’t know.

2. Location:

My nose.

3. What were the modalities?

The what?

Things that make the complaint better or worse!

I don’t know.

4. What about the concomitants–things that came along with the chief complaint?

My rash.  You know, the rash we thought was prickly heat?  On my legs?  Behind my knees that I was always scratching?  The one that comes every summer that you got rid of with Histaminum 30C?

So you’re saying you all of a sudden got that itchy rash back again?

Yes!

____________________________

OK, everybody, believe it or not, that’s all I had to go on!

Well I’m so sorry that I’m not a wealth of information!

If you know the remedy, write to me at [email protected] .  The answer will be in next month’s ezine. Should we play a Beatles record to say good-bye?  What should we play?

“Hello Goodbye”.

Hello Goodbye?  Isn’t that a little predictable?  OK, here are, the Beatles, with, “Hello Goodbye”.

I’m just saying, we said hello, now we’re saying good-bye.

Don’t over-explain.

____________________________________

Votes

Nat-mur-2

Rhus tox

Histaminum

*****************

Well, it looks like this case caused everyone to go screaming out of the room!  Maybe someone’s on the phone.  Is the caller there?  Hello!!!  You’re on the air at Hpathy.com!

Hi Elaine, these are the rubrics I choose:

Extremities; eruptions; itching; knees; hollow of

Skin; eruptions; summer; agg.

Skin; eruptions; urticaria, nettle-rash; recurring

I never said it was urticaria.

Generalities; summer; agg.

Too general. “Skin, eruptions, summer” is better.

Generalities; sneezing; agg.

No, not Generalities; go to the Nose chapter; “Nose: sneezing”–and in this case, “Nose: sneezing, violent”.

Now listen, there’s a trick I have to share with you!  Very often the key to finding the right remedy is in the concomitant.  The concomitant is the “along with” symptom.  For example, any case with nausea or vomiting as the concomitant is usually Ipecac!  Menstrual cramps with nausea and vomiting–Ipecac.  Asthma with nausea and vomiting–Ipecac.  Headache with nausea and vomiting–Ipecac.

In Shana’s case, we really don’t have much to go on–except for her concomitant, which is the rash, and luckily, we already know what the remedy is for that–Histaminum 30C!  It always works!  So there’s no need to repertorize her rash symptoms because we already know the remedy; so, Shana’s sneezing remedy, is–drum roll please: Histaminum 30C!

The way I understood it is that Histaminum didn’t work and that is why the rash came back.  So there is no connection between the sneezing and the rash, is it?

A remedy can work, and then after some time the case relapses and you have to repeat the remedy–whether it’s a day, a week or a year later.  The fact that a complaint comes back doesn’t mean that the remedy you gave for it didn’t work or was the wrong remedy.  Relapsing is common.  It’s very rare (except in acutes) that you give a remedy one time and you never have to give it again.

As for your question, “So there is no connection between the sneezing and the rash, is it?”  The concomitant in a case very often has no connection to the complaint at all.  That’s what makes it all the more compelling to prescribe on it, because it’s so peculiar!  For example: menstrual cramps with burping.  Why should someone be burping with menstrual cramps?  It makes no sense.  All the more reason to give our big-time burping remedy, Carbo veg!

Yes, I was thinking about it.  The prescribing on concomitant symptom is basically prescribing on a peculiar symptom.  I have to keep it in mind.

Right!

Thanks,

Teodora

**************************************

Oh look, it’s the gang from Slovakia!

Hello Elaine and Shana!

Hello Miroslav and Jitka!

Here are our answers to Shana’s sneezing remedy:

Miroslav thinks Rhus-t: because it is in rubrics sneezing and itchy rash.

“Itchy rash” is too general.  You could at least confine it to “rash on legs”.   That would make for a smaller rubric, right?  “Skin: eruptions, itching” has 169 remedies.  “Legs: eruptions, itching” has 34 remedies.  Big difference, wouldn’t you say?

Jitka votes Natrum mur:

Loud sneezing

I couldn’t find “loud”.  I found “violent sneezing”, maybe that’s the same thing.

Nose – running or blocked nose (coryza); annual (hay fever);

The rubric is “Nose: obstruction, discharge, with”.  She doesn’t have hay fever.  She has a cold with a concomitant rash on her legs which has always responded to Histaminum 30C.

Nose -running or blocked nose (coryza); blocked;

Rash in the bends of limbs

Best regards

Your “quiz mascots” … 🙂

I thought Shana was the quiz mascot!  Anyway, Rhus tox and Nat-mur, two reasonable answers.  So, absent the rash, this case would be hard to prescribe on.  She’s got a runny nose with sneezing–very common, am I right?  What’s peculiar about this case?  It’s got a concomitant rash!  Why do we ask about the concomitant?  Because that’s often the peculiar symptom!  Very often, the concomitant is what decides the remedy!  Take a look at this:

Menstrual cramps with crying–Pulsatilla

Childbirth with crying–Pulsatilla

Chill with crying–Pulsatilla

Fever with crying–Pulsatilla

Now, just as a clarification, we know that Pulsatilla has a certain kind of crying.  It’s soft, pitiful and makes you want to help; unlike Chamomilla which is an angry cry and makes you want to yell “Stop that screaming!!!!”  There’s all kinds of crying and you have to determine which kind it is.  The crying of Ignatia is convulsive and spasmodic, sobbing.  So here, in this case, we have a common cold with a rash that we KNOW from past experience is a HISTAMINUM rash!  Therefore, the remedy is….  Histaminum 30C!

Why even ask about the concomitant if we’re going to ignore it?  We ask because we may be prescribing on it!

Ouch!  You mentioned Histaminum, but we thought it worked only palliatively and the girl needed still something more similar…. 🙁

Sorry if I wasn’t clear that I hadn’t given Histaminum in a year.  The point is, I prescribed for the rash and it cured the cold!  Why?  Because it was the concomitant.  Why Histaminum?  It’s her rash remedy.  The point being that this is why we ask for the concomitant in a case!  It’s not just idle curiosity, it’s often the thing the remedy is based on!  Yes, it may have nothing to do with the cold as it’s not a common cold symptom; but, homeopathically speaking, it was the PECULIAR symptom in the cold, and according to Hahnemann, in aphorism 153 of THE ORGANON, we’re supposed to base our prescription on what’s peculiar in the case–striking/strange/rare and peculiar.  Thanks for voting!

************************************

Hi Elaine and Shana!

Oh look, it’s Maria from Greece!

it seems too easy to be true, but, I’ll vote for Histaminum.
If I am wrong i will try again 🙂

Maria, you are a genius!!!!!  Yes, it was easy, and it was Histaminum!

***

All of you might want to see the “Case-Solving Strategies” section on my website, which is here:

Case-Solving Strategies

And be sure to try and solve this month’s quiz too!  Bye, see you again next time!


Elaine Lewis, D.Hom., C.Hom.

Elaine takes online cases!  Write to her at [email protected]

Visit her website: elaineLewis.hpathy.com

About the author

Elaine Lewis

Elaine Lewis, D.Hom., C.Hom.
Elaine is a passionate homeopath, helping people offline as well as online. Contact her at [email protected]
Elaine is a graduate of Robin Murphy's Hahnemann Academy of North America and author of many articles on homeopathy including her monthly feature in the Hpathy ezine, "The Quiz". Visit her website at:
https://elainelewis.hpathy.com/ and TheSilhouettes.org

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