The Outspoken Lady

This is a case of a young lady aged 27 years, married with one daughter aged 22 months. She complained of sore throat with hoarseness of voice since the past 5 months. She had a high pitch voice, so talking a lot or having cold drinks would aggravate her complaints. The hoarseness would be more in the morning, on waking up. She had various courses of antibiotics which would temporarily lessen the severity of her complaints. A visit to the throat specialist had shown bilateral vocal cord thickening with nodules. Her husband is a computer engineer. He was in US and she was supposed to be joining him very soon along with her daughter. She seemed to have stayed back in India in order to attend her brother’s wedding and her pregnant sister-in-laws delivery.

It appeared that she was very duty conscious and was liked for her caring and jovial nature. She had a tendency to develop headaches and sinusitis in a closed air- conditioned room. As she was due to travel by air with her daughter, this was one more anxiety as she was prone to headache and nausea during air travel. She said she needed fresh air. She is very sensitive to a tense atmosphere at home, “if people are troubled or sad I feel it too”.

She generally feels sorry for people. She does not like it when there is no communication between the household members. If she is the cause of disharmony, she generally makes the first move to make up and apologize. She said everything is affected in a tense household. Till the atmosphere does not lighten up there is no incentive for people to cook new food items, or to invite people over or to go for outings and obviously all this would affect her adversely. She is very outspoken, cannot keep secrets and finds it difficult to be manipulative.

She expects the same sort of behaviour from others too. When this is not reciprocated she feels very offended and hurt. She tries her best not to be bad with anyone. She is very sensitive to what people have said to her. There was one episode where there was an untrue accusation from some family members. This affected her so badly that she cried for days and felt better only once the matter was clarified.

On further probing about the exact time that she developed the hoarseness; she put it down to a recent visit to her mother’s home which was a family reunion after a long lapse, and as she was very excited there had been an overuse of voice, resulting as hoarseness. She was also prone to acne, which would leave scars. There was a history of a big pustule on the face, which had resulted in cellulitis and had left a big scar by the time it got resolved.

She had a recurrent dream of a dark big ocean and she is drowning in it. She did not know how to swim.

On trying to understand this young lady, and the situation she is in, one gets the impression that she is very outspoken to the point of being naive and this often gets her into trouble. She also related to me very intimate happenings of her life and household without holding anything back even though I was a stranger to her. She was very expressive and elaborate while relating these incidences. This is typical of her remedy which is Bovista of which she was given a 200 potency on the following indications and rubrics.

— Truth, tell the plain

— Loquacity, open hearted

— Dreams, of drowning

— History of acne

The response to the dose was instantaneous, and within two weeks her sore throat and hoarseness cleared completely. She could even tolerate the occasional ice cream without any discomfort.

She left for the US after two months along with her daughter, and continues to do well since the last eight months. She was happy to inform me that she did not have too much of discomfort during her air travel.