Swede, a lovely, bright and effusive woman, has been a patient of mine for 15 years. She weathered her share of acute illness and some brushes with more serious pathology, but in the last number of years she enjoyed good health as she entered her middle years and now braces -- with equal portions of trepidation and enthusiasm -- for the transition to an empty nest. The youngest of her four children is preparing to be fledged, off to a far-away college this fall.
Swede calls me one morning at the crack of dawn as I putter in the fall garden, gathering in the last of the raspberries and inhaling the bittersweet end of summer as it marches across my yard to fall. She apologizes profusely for calling early, calling me at home, calling at all, but she has the worst case of poison ivy, and it was either calling me or going to the emergency room. My office appointments begin a few hours later; I ask her to come in at lunchtime, when I would have a few minutes. Emboldened by pain and anxiety, she pushes: Maybe she could come in before my first patient?
As have many naturopathic doctors, I see effects of poison ivy that truly take the breath away. I have observed large, excoriated tracts of skin weeping and crusting. I have seen faces blow up to be unrecognizable and limbs grotesquely distorted by swelling. I have been privy to genital exfoliation and plantar disintegration, all from the effects of this ubiquitous and pesky weed.
Swede presents none of the above. Instead, what I see when she gingerly rolls back her gauzy cotton sleeve, is a small strand of pearly vesicles, no more than two inches long. There was an even smaller satellite lesion with perhaps three tapioca-like dots. With unadulterated urgency she describes the intense pain she has, the sleeplessness and pure agony. It is, I am sorry to say, difficult to believe. She says she knows it doesn't look that bad, but it really is horrible and she cannot go another minute. She had self-prescribed the homeopathic remedy Rhus toxicodendron, a medicine made from poison ivy leaves, that morning and reported feeling somewhat better, so I send her home with instructions to call later in the day.
Between patients, reviewing charts, I receive her teary call. It is much worse, she is much worse; incapable of sitting still and unable to get a grip, she is scurrying around the house, hot and breathless. I ask her to go do me a favor: Try a cold compress to the area, and let me know how it feels. She reports that it gives a little temporary relief. I ask her to do the same with a hot compress. She lays the hot cloth upon the area in question and I hear a screeching yelp, like she placed her full arm on a sizzling hot wood stove. She begins to cry in earnest, wracking sobs, which I listen to as empathetically as telephone technology allows.
I ask a few more questions. She describes searing pain, like someone torturing her, dragging a not-quite-extinguished match along the soft, tender flank of her wrist. She says she had to keep moving, literally without stop. If she stops, the pain is exacerbated.
I have seen people who need this remedy get to such a point, with arthritis, with burns, with insect bites and yes, with poison ivy. I tell her to take the homeopathic remedy Apis mellifica, made from the honeybee, and to call me in the morning.
Swede did call the next day, bright and early, to say she was all better. NO pain. I asked if the eruption was gone and she said it was not, but it no longer hurt. She was planning on going to work -- and oh yeah, thanks!
I think about Apis mellifica when a symptom is both better from cold and worse from heat. You could expect to see swelling of the part in question in a restless, irritable person who seems oversensitive to pain or discomfort. The symptoms are often worse at night.
And with a patient needing Apis, there is often tremendous stress on the home front. In Swede's case, she was helping her youngest pack and get ready to take a giant step away from home. I believe that what should have been a small first-aid kind of situation took on larger proportion -- this was the way Swede somatosized her sad and mixed emotions. Once the poison ivy was gone, she jumped into that experience without the tremendous emotional upheaval that sometimes accompanies such transitions. Though the poison ivy caused an unpleasant few days, in a sense it seemed to me that she took much of the angst and worry and stress of the family transition and compressed it into this finite pathology. With Apis, it is not uncommon to see some sort of shift in the home life and attendant anxiety, as a precursor to the Apis state.
I enjoy treating acute problems with homeopathy in the context of my naturopathic medical practice. More commonly I see patients with more chronic ailments, and homeopathy will be only one aspect of our work together. The chronically ill improve, too, but seldom as dramatically and completely. In this of back-to-school time for families we often see the stress of transitions manifesting in physical ailments for both adults and children. It is helpful to remember that stress is frequently part of the etiology for all kinds of pathology, both acute and chronic.
For more by Amy Rothenberg, ND, click here.
For more on natural health, click here.
Dr. Denise Nagel: Lessons Learned Through Chronic Illness
I've been a victim of poison ivy and oak on many occasions over the course of my life. On every occasion before finding homeopathy I'd suffer from intense, interminal itching that couldn't be scratched and blisters oozing what seemed like buckets of watery material. When it was finally over I'd be left with discolored marks on my skin where each and every blister had been.
The last attack was two months ago......repayment for weeding out an area overrun by ivy, oak and summac. It produced an ugly, itching red rash and a hugely swollen eye making me look and feel miserable. I took a couple of doses of the appropriate remedy and the swelling and rash were 85% resolved within several days. Another dose or two cleared it completely.
A friend of mine whose son suffers terribly with poison oak was so impressed with how quickly I recovered that she demanded urgently to know what I'd used. Needless to say, she is as impressed with how effective and how quickly homeopathy worked as I have always been.
Thanks you for sharing that! It's a shame that time outside doing something that improves the yard and can be so satisfying can give back like that!
All the best,
Amy Rothenberg ND
Thanks for sharing that!
Right back atcha!
AMY
Homeopathy is taught at all the naturopathic medical schools and there are many naturopathic doctors who utilize homeopathy to one degree or another in practice. It can be noted here that all four year, full time, in-residence ND schools are recognized by the Federal Department of Education.
There are numerous examples worth review for both in vitro and in vivo studies. You can find meta-analyses and reviews of clinical research as well as basic science trials published in peer-reviewed medical and scientific journals. For at least a partial selection, see the National Center of Homeopathy website which keeps a running list of such titles alongside the full articles for review:
http://nationalcenterforhomeopathy.org/articles-research
It may not be the easiest of the natural medicines to explain, but for many patients homeopathy has been a key component to their naturopathic medicine experience and to their overall healing.
It turns out that the documentary "repeating" and "refuting" her classic experiment, which demonstrated a high dilution causing a biological effect, even after all molecules of the stimulant substance had been diluted away, actually was NOT a repetition because Ennis' test protocol was altered by the researcher in the "documentary" and the Royal Society test proctor was NOT informed of this change. Also, Ennis' experiment WAS PUBLISHED in a scientific journal (Inflammation Research Vol 53, p181) but the "documentary" experiment was NOT.
I began researching classical Homeopathy literature and was stunned to discover similar cures, ameliorations and relief of hundreds of sometimes even life threatening illnesses and diseases, many of which occurred after all other modalities of treatment had failed. The results could not possibly be placebo effect and therefore it became obvious to me that, whatever the scientific explanation, as yet unknown, was, a POWERFUL Homeopathic curative effect exists, it is real and well documented.
It's use in skin condition is, again, well documented and obvious to even the casual researcher.
Uninformed attempts at denialism or placeboism rationalizations against Homeopathy must fail in the light of this reality.
Did not see that last part of your post coming and I am sorry that cancer seems to find you. I wish you health & healing as you find your way on this life's path.