Sometimes it takes years before we get solid feedback about one of our clients. Tom was such a case. He requested a consultation six years ago.
Tom was a hardworking farmer. He looked robust, well-muscled and craggy. However, it was also quite obvious that he felt far from well. “Look here,” he began. “You’re the last ray of hope. The b—-y medics have got nowhere despite suckin’ half the blood out of me veins. I’m that crook I’m useless.” Tom was obviously a very unhappy and frustrated man.
Tom was able to provide an excellent and detailed history. Several weeks earlier he had woken with an excruciating incapacitating pain in his head. Both eyes looked like poached eggs in tomato juice. Every muscle in his body screamed pain and he was “that bug—-d” he couldn’t put one foot in front of the other. He felt nauseated and feverish. A temperature reading showed 39°C. When his wife helped him change his sweaty pyjamas, they discovered a red rash on his skin. “Looked as if I’d been pricked all over with a pin,” Tom supplied.
“I threw up buckets” he continued. “The pain in the back of me legs was agony and I couldn’t straighten me back.”
Tom’s wife chimed in, “He became a changed man. He was depressed, aggressive, confused — it was like he’d had a personality change.”
“Everything seemed to settle down after about three days, so we thought it was one of those viruses that come and go,” Tom sighed. “But then the headaches came back and I kept getting feverish again. Then I got pains in me chest and kidneys. I’m still gettin’ all that and me throat’s that sore I don’t want to eat.” Tom coughed loudly — a dry hacking sound. He thumped his chest and slumped back in his chair.
“Sometimes he coughs up a bit of blood,” his wife took over. “He went to the doctor after I nagged him enough. I was worried he could have lung cancer — he did smoke for a long time, though he’s given up in recent years. The chest pain was also worrying in case it was his heart.”
When I checked him over, Tom still had a bit of a rash on the front of his legs. As he’d described, it looked like little pinpricks and the lesions were non-blanching when I pressed on them. The spleen felt a little enlarged and there was marked tenderness over the hepatic region on palpation.
“I suspect you’ve picked up a bacterial infection, Tom,” I concluded. “Being on the land, surrounded by animals, your dogs and an unavoidable population of rodents such as rats and mice, it would fit all the signs and symptoms. The trouble is that the bacterium is difficult to pin down once the initial signs of infection have settled down. Initially, while the bugs were active in your bloodstream, they could have been detected in the lab tests. However, if that phase is missed, then the bacteria really only remain active in your tissues and that makes it very difficult to find any trace in the bloodstream, making lab tests problematic.”
Our own tests showed that Tom was deficient in a number of important minerals and trace elements, including copper, manganese, boron, magnesium, potassium and phosphorus.
There were marked indications of adrenal cortical insufficiency, pH imbalances in a number of fluid compartments and inadequate natural killer cell and macrophage immune responses.
Orotate and aspartate levels were also inadequate, reducing the proactive capacity of Tom’s central nervous system structures.
The cure
Tom’s diet was not the best. There was far too great an emphasis on commercial foods. “I tend to snack on the run,” he admitted. “Don’t have time for breakfast and I always carry a thermos of coffee and some chocolate bars round with me.”
Fortunately, he was happy to substitute a pocketful of fresh, raw nuts and seeds for the chocolate bars and, instead of coffee, a tasty brew of dandelion roots and chicory proved acceptable. Tom’s wife was very inventive. She experimented with various spices and eventually came up with a dandelion chai that became a big hit with both of them.
Tom also promised he would definitely become a salad-a-day man and that he’d eat more of his homegrown vegetables. “Funny that,” he laughed. “I grow ‘em but we give most away to family and friends. I’m a bit of a pie and sausage and mash fancier meself.”
A herbal blend was prepared for Tom, favouring Ayurvedic ingredients: Picrorhiza kurroa, Phyllanthus niruri, Andrographis paniculata, Tephrosia purpurea, Asparagus racemosus and, one of my very favourite plants, Ocimum sanctum.
Homœopathics are regularly and frequently” knocked” in media reports. However, as Prince Charles pointed out, animals on his Home Farm have always been treated homœopathically and they are not influenced by “placebo effects”.
Tom was given two consecutive homœopathic formulations. The first was based on Aconitum napellus (to limit the progress of a disease), baptisia (helps with muscular pains and depression), Berberis vulgaris (supports the liver and relieves back pain), lycopodium (for its long-term beneficial effect on the liver) and Leptospirosis nosode (the bacterial “culprit” I suspected.)
The second formula contained Combretum raimbaultii, Lycopodium clavatum, Peumus boldus and Podophyllum peltatum. I also recommended Tom take a course of olive leaf (Olea europaea), bacteriostatic silver, organic colostrum and a comprehensive, plant-derived mineral and trace element complex.
At our two consultations, Tom proved to be open-minded, interested, amenable to new ideas and co-operative. His wife was entirely supportive. Then I never heard another word from either of them.
That is, until just before last Christmas (some six years later). The clinic received a request for an appointment from a Mr Brent T. When questioned regarding his source of referral, he answered very cheerily, “You cured my cousin Tom a long time ago when no one else was able to help him. He’s never looked back.”
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Karin Cutter runs a naturopathic clinic in Port Macquarie, NSW, Australia. T: +61 2 6582 4435
