Case Quizes Clinical Cases

Revisiting: A Horrifying Headachy Hoo-hah!

Written by Elaine Lewis

Elaine gives the answer to last month’s quiz! Revisiting: A Horrifying Headachy Hoo-hah!

 

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Shana, don’t look now but it’s that time of the month again….

Mom, I thought you were menopausal?

That’s post-menopausal, isn’t it?  And I’m talking about giving the answer to last month’s Quiz!!!!!

Oops!  Sorry. I got confused. S’alright?

S’alright!

So, which quiz are we revisiting?

First of all, let’s not forget the good example we set for our readers each month by posting a picture of what we ate for dinner.

But Mom, I ate in the cafeteria.

Are you still in college?  When are you graduating?  What’s taking so long?  Here’s what I ate for dinner:

Mom, you ate half the potato salad, again, before you took the picture!

Did I do that again?  I apparently make the world’s best potato salad!  Shana, remind me to give myself a potato salad award.

Is there any chance we’ll be presenting the quiz answer before the end of my first semester?

Which reminds me, Shana, the quiz gang might want to see this picture of you leaving your 8:00 class.

I don’t think so!  I think the quiz gang just wants to see you start the quiz!

Yeesh!  Well, fine, if that’s what everyone wants!  So this is Claire again.

Didn’t Claire have the Halloween hoo-hah from last month?

Yes, and now she’s having the headachy hoo-hah!

Well whoooooo kneeeeeew!

Here’s how it happened:

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Ai yi yi. We went to a park yesterday for three hours, 80 degrees, summery sunny weather; the kids had a blast; but we left there coughing and I had a headache!

I’m getting a headache just thinking about it!

Uneventful evening, except for the coughing and my headache and the sneezing all around.

Well, if that’s what you call uneventful….here it’s called a disaster!

I put everyone to bed.

Maybe sometime between 3-5 a.m., I awoke to AB’s sobs! (P.S. I had been kept awake from midnight until that point anyway, off and on, by the twins’ restless sleep). She was writhing and sobbing and holding her head as though the pain was unbearable!

OMG!

I think it was another one of those big headaches of hers. At first I did not know what was wrong, but when I tried to console her, she just barked, “NO! NO! NO!” The rejecting consolation made me consider Nat-mur, though the anger made me think it was something else; I wasn’t sure what to do! I went through a few things unsuccessfully (Nat-mur, Nux Vomica) while she writhed and gnashed her teeth and sobbed; then I tried _________________30C which of course I wish I had tried first!  A headache like this in the past was abated by Pulsatilla but the emotionals were so different this time, I guess I can’t expect to have a “go-to” remedy for a big headache every time one comes along.

No, you can’t.  It’s not like allopathy where every headache is Ibuprofen!  If a case has a mental concomitant, the remedy has to match that, and the etiology has to be taken into account too.

I gave her a dry dose of ___________________ and within a minute, she was asleep!

Get out!!!!!

But the relief wore off in about 2 hours

You know, I’m really not surprised. For a presentation that intense, I think I would have given a 200C.

She woke up to the same writhing, sobbing tune; she said something like, “It’s no use”–

which is a typical “Eeyore” thing for her to say, but with a crazed, panicked expression from the excruciating pain.  As a mother, it makes you want to shake your fist at the heavens!

I ran downstairs and grabbed an old small honey jar and filled it with water, dropped a couple pellets of ___________________ in, shook it like crazy, didn’t wait for it to melt

FYI: You never have to wait for pellets to melt!  The medicine is on the outside of the pellets, not on the inside!

(her over-the-top misery could not be put off!) I gave her 1 tsp. Asleep in two minutes!

Wow!!!!! Good going, Claire!  Putting the remedy in water and shaking does raise the potency!

Slept ’til 11 this morning, woke up and soon after waking, her head hurt again; I succussed and gave another tsp and so far, so good!

Amazing!

I feel clunky when it comes to getting the picture right “quickly”, but I sure am glad _____________________ worked!!!!  She was miserable!

I don’t know what mothers do in the middle of the night without homeopathy, I really don’t!

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So, listen everybody, if you know what remedy Claire used, write to me at [email protected] and let me know.  The answer will be in next month’s ezine.  Bye-bye!

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Votes

Nat-carb.

Ignatia

Glonoine

Bryonia

Kali carb.

Well, guess what?  Nobody won!!!!  I see a lot of people got that it was “ailments from the sun”, that’s good, because that’s what it was!  But, that’s a pretty big rubric, apparently. Here’s my repertorization:

Belladonna is the clear winner!  Do you know how you can tell it’s Belladonna?  Belladonna complaints are violent, sudden, desperate and often the clue lies in how you, the parent, feel! Look at how Claire felt: she reports running downstairs, grabbing things, shaking the bottle frantically, not waiting for the remedy pellets to melt (even though they didn’t really need to; but, she thought they did!); what does this show?  That in a Belladonna case, the care-giver is often in a panic reacting to the illness!  Clearly, Claire was!  When your child has a Belladonna event, you’re going to feel like you have to do something FAST!  Notice the words she used: Crazed, Panicked, Excruciating, Writhing, Teeth-Gnashing, Unbearable…. You get the idea.  You’re going to feel desperate to help, to find a solution immediately!   So, pay attention to how YOU feel when taking someone else’s case; clearly, you’re not going to feel this way with a stuporous Gelsemium patient or a prostrated Arsenicum patient; and, some patients, though they may also be in pain and screaming, will NOT make you feel desperate to help, but, rather, angry and fed up, as you might feel with the Chamomilla child. I should add that Belladonna is in bold for “Headaches from the Sun” and also, Belladonna is in the rubric “Headaches: touch, pain from”.  So, I think this was the context in which the child was rejecting “consolation”–she did not want to be touched; it wasn’t so much the Nat-mur “consolation aggravates”, it was more of a physical thing.  Belladonna has hyperesthesia of all senses; in other words, all stimulation seems too intense.

So, there you have it Dr. B, no winners this month. Maybe we’ll have better luck in January! See you in 2012, everybody!

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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