Severe hayfever - please help!!

Dear Brisbane Homeopath,

I hope you might be able to help me. I found your prescribing around Rhus Glabra for my other symptoms extremely helpful and I have great confidence in your expertise.

I'm struggling to function with the level of allergic reaction I have to grass pollen and would really appreciate some advice around remedies.

Here is my new patient intake form.

Many thanks,

Zoe

Gender: Female
Age: 36
Body Type: Average
Height: 5ft 2inches
Weight: 9.5 stones
General appearance: pear shaped, fair skin, brown hair and hazel eyes, dark eyebrows and eyelashes.
Have you used homeopathic medicines before? If so what, and what homeopathic potencies did you use?

Phosphorous 30c, 200c and 1m (ascending dose)
Thuja 30c, 200c and 1m (ascending dose)
Stramonium 1LM
Arsenicum 30C
Staphysagria 1LM
Tuberculinum 1LM
Hepar Sulph 30c
Nat Mur 1LM, 2LM
Rhus Glabra - 200C, 1M, 10M, 50M
Mixed grass pollens - 30C to 1M

Please answer the following questions in a descriptive manner after careful analysis and recollection of previous experiences and happenings.

1. Describe your main suffering? - severe hay fever including itchy eyes (they itch in corner of the eye near the tear duct) which sometimes results in water blisters on the eyes; it exacerbates my asthma and my chest feels constricted; my head feels congested as if stuffed with cotton wool and my nose runs clear liquid. Frequent uncontrollable sneezing at times.

2. What other physical sufferings do you have in your body? - tension headaches, candida, chronic fatigue.

3. What mental sufferings / feelings do you have associated with your physical sufferings? - fuzzy headed, disorientated, very lethargic, feel as if I have been sedated.

4. What exactly do you feel when you are at your worst? Worse when I go outside, in the morning on waking and sometimes lying down at night. Worse when I am tired.

5. When did it all start? Started when I was 16 years old, I had a job working in a grave yard mowing the lawns and it triggered an allergic reaction. The hayfever has got progressively worse over the years.

6. Which time of the day you are worst? Mornings and mid afternoon.

7. What are the things which aggravate your suffering and which are those which ameliorate the same? - worse for being outside, drinking alcohol and caffeine, worse when I am tired, worse lying down, worse for heat. Better = rest, cool applications on eyes, washing face, drinking water with freshly squeezed lemon, staying indoors.

8. Do your think your sufferings have relation to any external stimuli (like, change of place) or any internal biological changes in the body, like, menses (in females)? - Change of season when the grass pollen starts to grow.

9. When do you feel better, during hot weather or cold weather, humid or dry weather? Cold wet weather ameliorates symptoms.

10. Describe your general mental set up? Are you Moody, Arrogant, Mild, Agreeable Changeable, Nervous, Suspicious, Easily offended, Quiet, Arguing, Irritating, Lazy etc. - mild and agreeable, affectionate. I also suffer from anxiety and depression.

- How do you feel before or during a thunderstorm? Sometimes suffer from tension headache and build up of pressure, but I generally love thunderstorms and find them exhilarating and refreshing.

- Do you like being consoled during your tough times? Yes
- Are you sensitive to external stimuli like smell, noise, light etc? Highly sensitive.

- Do you have any typical habit or gesture like nail biting, causeless weeping, talking to one self etc? Nail biting.

- How do you feel about your friends, family, your children and especially your husband / wife? Family and friends are very important to me.

11. What are your fears and do you dream of any situation repeatedly? Fears of abandonment; fears for health of my mother (currently suffering from nocturnal epileptic seizures); fear of poverty.

12. What do you crave for in food items and what are your aversions? - crave sugar, bread, lemons, salad, tea.

13. How is your thirst: Less, Normal or Excessive? Excessive

14. How is your hunger: Less, Normal or Excessive? Normal.

15. Is there any kind of food which your body can’t stand? No

16. Is your sweat normal or less or more? Where does it sweat more: Head, Trunk or Limbs? Sweat normal.

17. How is your bowel movement and stool type? Loose regular bowel movements every morning.

18. How well do you sleep? Do you have a particular posture of sleeping? Light sleeper, generally sleep well, vivid dreams, sleep in foetal position on left or right side. Sleep unrefreshing and generally anxious. Wake several times a night.

19. Do you think you are able to satisfy your sexual desires in general? No - low sex drive but not currently in a relationship.

20. Do you have any strange, peculiar or unusual symptom or feelings? How are you different from others? - feel that my body and spirit aren't properly connected and often feel as if I'm floating off the ground.

21. What medications have been taken earlier by you to treat the diseases and do you have any particular symptom surfacing after the medication? - I take anti-hystamines on a PRN basis when I have the symptoms, it only takes the edge off it.

22. What major diseases are running in your family? Heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure, depression.

23. Describe, how do you look like? Describe your overall appearance. - pear shaped with long brown hair, hazel eyes, dark eyebrows and eyelashes, pale skin (very fair), freckles (come out in the sun), dainty hands and feet, well proportioned.

(For Females)
24. If your menstrual cycles are not normal, please describe the irregularities, like pains, moods, flow type, clots etc. - menses used to last for up to 7 days with heavy flow. In past 4 years flow much lighter, bright red on first couple of day - lasts only a total of around 4 days. Pain during first couple of days of menses and I have to take painkillers frequently.

25. What major diseases have you had in your life and when. Please write them in a chronological manner.
- quinsey x 3 in mid twenties (then had tonsilectomy)
- kidney infection aged 35

Thank you for your email but I dont have a virus infection and I don't have catarrh. From reading about homeopathy I would also question your suggestion of taking 3 remedies at the same time. I thought it was generally advised to take a single remedy at time to see what works.

Zoe

Dear Joe de Livera,

Thanks again for your advice on remedies. I'm sorry that you felt that you had wasted your time prescribing for me; just that I'm not familiar with taking 3 remedies simultaneously. Good to hear that your patients have had relief from their symptoms this way. I will give it a go.

Kind regards,

Zoe

I took 6 doses of the 50M over a period of a month as my symptoms are so chronic I found that the remedy started losing its action fairly quickly. I have seen something of an amelioration but may need to go even higher. It still feels as if my body is separate from my spirit, i cannot breathe properly, the chronic fatigue symptoms persist and all the emotion feels as if its stored in my spinal column in tight knots. My chest feels as if its held under water. These are the symptoms I've always had, the 50M has just taken the edge off it. Like I said before, it feels as if the origin of this is not connected to my life time as the grief and emotion runs so deep.

Hi Brisbane Homeopath,

Thanks for your email. Here's the response to your questions:

- My spirit feels separate from my body, my mind is fine. It feels as if my spirit is not properly grounded or connected to my body. When I was younger I often had the sensation that I was leaving my body, which was terrifying, though this doesn't tend to happen so much now. It feels as if my spirit has no centre or resting place. Feels as if there is a black hole in my chest and solar plexus. The black hole is the centre of all the emotional turbulance and it doesn't feel as if the emotion is mine; it feels as if it belongs to an ancestor. My mother nearly lost me when she was pregnant with me aged 7 months, she started bleeding heavily. A close friend of the family who has a psychic gift and knew nothing about this said that I temporarily died in the womb at 7 months and the silver chord that connects life and death was temporarily severed, allowing ancestral spirits in. It doesn't make sense rationally but intuitively it makes a lot of sense. I feel like I'm trying to ward off that sense of death as it tries to encroach itself on me all the time and struggling to breathe/ survive.

- The breath (breath of life) is all connected. My breath is stiffled and I feel I can't get enough oxygen in to my lungs. Feels as if they won't expand properly and it feels as if there is a trap door to the base of my throat not allowing me to breathe properly or express all this stuff. At night time my breathing slows right down (previous partners have commented that they were worried that I had stopped breathing as my breathing had slowed down so much).

- The knots in my spinal column feel tight as if the energy can't pass through my spine properly. Its connected to the breathing and the other symptoms. The friend that had the psychic gift said that when I was in the womb and the silver chord was severed, I was trying to protect my spirit but my back was exposed and the ancestral spirits took root in my spinal column. Yet again this sounds nonsensical to rational ears and I probably wouldn't have believed him apart from the fact that I didn't share any detail with him about where in my body these symptoms manifest, other than telling him that I experience emotions/ sensations that feels as if they belong to someone else. He managed to identify exactly where in my body I was affected without me telling him and its not clearly observable from any outward signs.

- the held under water sensation relates back to not being able to breathe properly and feeling as if my chest is very heavy, my lungs often feel full of water or lead. This sensation relates to the black hole feeling in the chest, which feels like a bottomless dark chasm.

The struggle between life and death and trying to breathe are very much the themes here. I originally thought Strammonium was well indicated but it didn't help.

I was thinking of trying a CM dose of Rhus Glabra as the symptoms go so deep and I did benefit from the 50M dose. Let me know what you think.

Kind regards,

Zoe

I'll try to expand as much as I can on these points though some of the sensations are difficult to describe. There is restriction in the picture but its more one of feeling dead and suffocated rather than restricted.

Re. Connected - to do with feeling disconnected at the core of my being, manifests in my chest and solar plexus. That's where the black hole is and it manifests in not being able to breathe properly.

Re. Black hole - feels connected to death and the spirit world, like a dark bottomless well. Extremely frightening. As a child I often had experiences of feeling I was on the edge of a precipice spiritually and if I fell in to that well I would never recover myself. It has always felt like there was terrifying and horrible things in that black hole related to ancestral abuse, incest and death. I used to have very graphic sexual images of violence, abuse, murder spring up from nowhere as a child and I had never been exposed to any pornography or abuse in my childhood and had never seen such images. Have no idea where these images/ sensations came from.

Re. Severed - my connection to life feels as if it was severed/ cut when my mother was carrying me. Its like I've always been struggling to live and breathe and remain connected to life.

Re. Expand - air flow to lungs feels restricted as if they can only take in a certain amount of oxygen. My breath tends to be very slow and shallow, I have to often remind myself to breathe properly. My breath slows down so much often that I'm just totally exhausted and just want to lie down all the time.

Re. Belong to someone else - some of the emotions/ sensations I experience don't feel as if they're connected to my life experiences or life time. I used to feel as a child that I had been horrendously sexually abused, beaten and experienced tremendous grief, panic attacks, fear of men etc. I can't relate this to anything that occurred in my own life time. Its as if an ancestral spirit or entity latched on to me. I used to feel something was haunting me when I was a child, it was very eerie. All my life I have felt as if I belonged not in this time or era but in the Victorian era. I have often been to Victorian museums/ seen programmes connected to this era and been so overwhelmed with a sense of deja-vu and feeling that I belonged to that time, it nearly knocked my sideways. I know this sounds extremely odd and may sound as if I have a personality disorder, so I have been selective with who I share this with. I'm very level headed and have managed to cope with this through developing my own sense of self and also through spiritual discernment and prayer counselling. At best you could describe it as a past life connection, but unfortunately not a very nice one.

Re. Bottomless dark chasm - as described above. Sensation of black hole leading to bottomless dark chasm. Its a spiritual experience rather than a mental/ emotional one.

Re. Struggle of life and death - this is ultimately part of the essence of the symptoms. Feels as if I'm struggling to live, struggling to breathe, feel as if I'm half dead. Feels like I was still born when I entered the world but then resussictated and somehow have managed to survive. My speech and actions are slow and subdued as life and oxygen don't feel that they're circulating round my body properly. Feel suffocated. I often lose the thread of what I'm saying as can't breathe and brain feels dead often through fatigue.

Sorry its difficult to expand on this further.

Thanks,

Zoe

Thought I should also mention that sometimes I feel extremely hurried, but there is also a sensation as if life and time are standing still inside me - everything goes on around me externally at a very fast rate, but its as if I've been frozen (life and time have been suspended internally). Even though I'm moving, functioning, breathing etc, there a part of me that feels still born and is just static. However much I try to overcome that sensation and try to get in touch with it, it won't relent. It reminds me of cryogenics - waiting to be resuscitated/ resurrected.

Hi Brisbane Homeopath,

I know you must be extremely busy but I wondered if you could pass on any advice re. hayfever remedies. I'm really struggling at the moment and my symptoms are dreadful.

Thanks,

Zoe

I'm very grateful for your response and your efforts in looking in to a remedy for me. I will order the Rx and let you know how it goes.

Thanks,

Zoe

I have ordered the new remedy. Wondered whether two remedies can work alongside each other concurrently or does taking one cut out the action of the other? I diluted the 50M dose of Rhus Glabra down and have been seeing some shifting of symptoms, though no positive change yet. If I take a dose of Sarracenia will it cancel out the Rhus Glabra dose I took?

Also I'm wondering dose chronic fatigue feature in Sarracenia Purpurea?

Thanks,

Zoe

I was questioning this because some of the sensations/ symptoms I have do seem to fit with Rhus Glabra.... particularly a tremendous feeling of being hurried (feels as if there's not enough time to do everything), body feeling separate from my spirit, not able to stand up for myself (or take a firm stance in life), severe tension headaches, guilt/ self blame and over developed sense of conscience - feeling that when things go wrong in relationships its my fault. I thought that the remedy will address these issues as it does seem to be centring me more. Since I took the last high dose I have just left it to roll and it still working (though slowly) after 2 weeks.

I thought perhaps to leave it another two weeks before starting on Sarracenia but if you're certain that Rhus Glabra is wrongly indicated I'll take the Sarracenia when it arrives.

Thanks,

Zoe

I just re-read your email and your comment about avoiding partial similars. It makes more sense now, as I didn't fully absorb this before. I think your email has already answered my question.... I'll start with the Sarracenia when it arrives.

Thanks,

Zoe

I haven't started with the Sarracenia yet as I had some pain in my kidneys so took a low dose of Nat Mur as recommended by my homeopath (i've had kidney problems in the past and this Nat Mur was well suited to this). However new symptoms are beginning to emerge and I wonder if I'm proving the Rhus Glabra even though i changed remedy.

I've started to have menstrual bleeding on day 14 of my period which is completely out of the norm as my periods normally always run like clockwork on a 28 day cycle and I've never experienced a cycle that has come this early and never bleed between periods. This is accompanied by lower back pain and contracting pain in my uterus. I've also started developing really constrictive headaches, not like the ones i used to get. My body feels tight and I'm finding it difficult to breathe easily.

I bought the book by Peter Tumminello about the proving of the remedy and one of the provers experienced bleeding inbetween periods as well as constrictive headaches, so it makes me think I'm still proving it.

I've read that Strammonium antidotes Rhus Glabra but all I had was some 1LM left over from when I took it previously. Please advise what I need to do to antidote it. Do I need to go to a higher potency of strammonium to antidote it? It was foolish of me to go to such a high level without seeking advice and I'm starting to worry a great deal.

Would a low dose of Camphor antidote it?

Kind regards,

Zoe

Thanks for this advice. I took some Camphor 30C last night to antidote and it really did help. The uterine contractions stopped and so did the headache. I think I was proving it as I seem to be particularly sensitive to remedies. A few nights ago I had a sensation that I was going through a tunnel, which I've never had before and which was a bit scary.

The Sarr has arrived. Shall I start taking it now or wait a day or two.

Thanks,

Zoe

I waited 2 days after the Camphor and started the Sarr on Sunday. It has ben two day so far and its making me feel quite unwell. I feel quite suffocated, finding it difficult to breathe, congested head, dull headache and have lost my appetite (stomach feels full all time). Its also making me feel very depressed. Its difficult to tell if this is part of the healing crisis or whether I'm proving the remedy? If its the right remedy should it lift my energies rather than making me feel worse?

Could you advise.

Many thanks,

Zoe