HomeoHouseCall 101 - Pilot

This has been something that I have wanted to do for years and finally sat down and did it. Yes, of course, I am doing this at way past your bedtime, but would you have it any other way? This will be a weekly post, I promise! I know quite a few of you (my lovely, amazing patients) have wondered and have asked me what happened to the blog and what will be happening with it in the future? Well, I revamped the website as you all know, got into full-time practice and have been spending a ton of time with all of you, so I did procrastinate on this quite a bit.

This particular section of the NEW blog will be called HomeoHousecall 101 and it will cover interesting cases that we can all solve together. Unfortunately, they aren't real cases, but they are taken from one of my FAVOURITE shows to watch, which shall rename nameless, but you may be able to guess from the name, wink wink! I want this to be something fun, that gets your juices flowing and does for you what watching this show (repeatedly) has done for me, think about things from a different angle.

So, here we go! Our first case together. If you feel so inclined, you can go ahead and watch Episode 1, Season 1, you may be able to pick up on symptoms that I missed, or didn't recognize, or you'll at least be able to get a better feel of the patient.

Patient One (Ep1, S1)

Kindergarten teacher, female, mid-twenties, dresses conservatively - her shirt is buttoned all the way up, snug to her neck, with a cardigan and bowler skirt over the knee.

She loves her job, generally joyful and is dating someone new, which she is excited about.

Out of nowhere one morning she started having trouble speaking at work, then became completely inaudible and collapsed, her vision was blurry and she began to convulse.

After this episode she was admitted to hospital and tested for everything, she was then treated with radiation therapy with no response or changes, although she continues to deteriorate.

All external factors and allergens have been checked and are not factors.

She has had an allergic reaction to contrast that was used during an MRI; anaphylaxis, where she lost consciousness in the MRI machine, had to be tracheid and revived manually.

She was then given a high dose of cortisone, where there was slight improvement and she could eat on her own for a short while. Not long after this she had loss of vision and began to seize again.

Since that seizure she has intermittent loss of vision, speech and cognitive function - sometimes she can talk and complete thought puzzles, a few minutes later she cannot complete the same thought puzzle.

She has now decided that she doesn’t want anymore treatment and wants to go home and die with dignity.

She has become mean, cannot walk at all and has lost complete control of her bowels.

Modalities:

Eats pork

Thirsty when well

Moderate appetite when well

So, of course, we can't ask any questions and what makes this show the most interesting to me is that this particular doctor believes that all people lie, or withhold information that if he had, would better enable him to solve the case. As a practitioner I haven't often found that people lie to me, quite the opposite, my patients have never withheld information from me, although it could be argued that I would probably never know. What I will say happens more often than not, is that the average patient doesn't know how important something is until I ask them the question and I have on rare occasions had a patient that just does not give much in a case taking, which is okay and could be a symptom in and of itself. Having said all of this, lets do a repertorization and a differential, I'll go first, but you should try and do this (if you're a student or learning how to find a remedy) before scrolling down.

Alright, lets look at a few of the Rubrics I decided on after watching this case, again there is very little to go on and this episode doesn't give us much of a case history. You can share with me which rubrics you decided on or which you think may have been a better rubric for a given symptom.

Rubrics Selected

Face, convulsions, spasms, extending from

Generalities, anesthesia, insensibility, convulsions, during

Generalities, food and drinks, pork, agg.

Generalities, food and drinks, pork, desires

Mind, death, desires

Mind, doubtful, recovery, of

Mind, doubtful, recovery, of, medicine is useless

Speech & voice, difficult speech

Vision, loss of vision, blindness, convulsions, after

Vision, loss of vision, blindness, convulsions, before

A Little Work

We are actually going to work through this together,

Share with me some of the rubrics you would have picked instead, once I get a few notes from you, we can work through all of this together.

An extra pair of eyes, a different mindset or viewpoint will see a case differently, even while being an unprejudiced observer.