Thulium iodatum

This case seems to me a good illustration of the reality of a homeopathic practice: in the beginning our prescriptions may not be close enough. And gradually, by giving one or two other remedies we are led to a better prescription because the given remedies are creating more focus in the case. Especially when we observe what the given remedies are doing.
In this case I have given 2 remedies which led me to a prescription I could not have found before that. Moreover, the case suggests a question about what we are treating, individual symptoms or symptoms which have a ‘collective connection’.


Here comes the story.
A French woman of 55 (she’s an artist) comes for a first consultation with severe migraines. She always had them, but lately they’re terrible. She uses Maxalt for the migraines. Normal painkillers are of no use. Her menopause aggravated her migraines and she uses also hormones (Femoston) for some relief, because when she stops with the hormones (she tried) the migraines become unbearable.


She continues with her story:
“I’m in a confusing period, totally confusing. It is a comedy of errors, not tragic though. It makes me tired. What am I heading at? No matter how hard I try, things work against me. I have to hold on, really hold on to what I believe in. There are all kinds of obstacles in my work as an artist. You need motivation, give extra and that’s hard. You need double energy, but I am also patient enough and my energy is not too bad.
I have a kind of survival feeling. I was born with an entwinement of the umbilical cord. I was black, in a state of death and was plunged in hot and cold water alternately in order to be brought back to life. In the family I was the second daughter and it was not a good sign for my parents: boys would have been better.
My parents divorced when I was 11 years old.
My mother’s attitude was to portray him to us as a monster, a repulsive man. My experience of that time was that he was obsessive, depressive and jealous. He thought he was pursued by his wife.
In our family I have an older sister, and 2 younger brothers and 2 younger twin sisters. After they were born my father left the family. All of us were blamed by my mother of being my father’s children.

My migraines started on the day I went for the first time to boarding-school when I was 14. I left home early in the morning at 6 o’ clock. My mother still was asleep and I had to to everything on my own. In fact there was no support whatever from my mother. I had to find out every connection with the bus and when I arrived there in the evening I first got the migraine. The feeling I had when I arrived at the boarding school was ‘I made it!’, it was quite something for me as a girl at that age.

The migraines now are coming irregularly, sometimes once a week and sometimes periodically. Like at boarding school, on a monday-evening, the evening I arrived at boarding-school. It is located on the left side, especially the left temple and behind the left eye. Sometimes also at the root of the nose. My nose is also sensitive to inhaling cold air.
During the headache I’m so sensitive to noise. Sounds come to me like people are screaming at me. The pains I have are throbbing, especially in the left temple. I feel in a bad state during the migraines, it is a sort of floating, my eyes do not want to focus. It is a kind of desire to withdraw from reality. A bit dissociated, unfocused, not sharp.
In dreams I feel like wanting to wake up, but I don’t succeed. It feels like a kind of emergency in my head as if there is a danger. It makes me think of the age of 19 or 20. In that period I had a strong feeling of impending danger during sleep or in the dark. The danger is something like an explosion, robots, earthquakes, imaginary animals or atomic bombs.
Still I have a fear of horror-movies and of skeletons.”


I ask her about the seasons and she expresses that she hates winter-time. She feels like doomed then. Autumn is good and summer also. She likes warmth and the sun.
There are no special desires and aversions.
In the past she had to eat quite a lof of things she disliked. Had to hide her vomiting and go through that (at home and boarding school).


In my analysis I thought to have found a special cause which was her effort to have made it on her own at that age, in that circumstance, to have no support whatsoever. And repertorizing the main symptoms I chose Spigelia C200 because a remedy from the Loganiaceae seemed to me a good match.


After 2 weeks she called me and said that the remedy didn’t offer her any relief, but yet there was an ‘emotional experience’ which was important to her. And she would tell me more later.
Still I had this feeling in mind how it must have been for her at the time she got the migraines and decided to chose a remedy in the Periodic System in Stage 8 (heavy duty, endurance, to go through something) and because migraines belong to the Gold Series and especially Lanthanides I gave her Samarium muriaticum C200. The Muriaticum choice fit for me the attitude of the mother offering her no help or support whatsoever.


The Samarium muriaticum gave a strong reaction, she said. She came to me for a visit to express her feelings.
She tells me that her life feels spoiled, that something bad is hanging over her. She is feeling a pain which is not hers.
She confesses also to have worked with different personalities with a pen-name. One of these was a Jewish girl of 13. She started with it when she was 23, without anybody knowing it. It was out of a feeling that she had to hide.


We decided to wait another week, but then her feelings became quite intense in the form of a vivid dream. In that dream-state she felt the sounds of millions of dead people screaming, a kind of silent scream. She saw a pool of dark water and was anxious to lose herself, to drown with them. She was drawn to the pool and it felt like a deadly experience.
In the struggle against this silent scream she woke up. They wanted to take her with them.

The idea of this dream is so strongly Stage 15 that I thought Thulium to be a better remedy for her than Samarium. But what kind of Thulium?


During this consultation I realized she had told me she was Jewish. And because she also told me after the Samarium muriaticum that she felt a pain which was not hers.
As far as I understood she most evidently was connected to something, what we call the ‘collective’, of the Jewish race.
Therefore I asked her some other things about any diseases of her family members. It came out that her mother had thyroid problems of long standing and that she herself is rather warm-blooded, which brought me to the choice of Thulium iodatum.

After taking the Thulium iodatum C30, she felt relieved. Very soon the black cloud, which she felt for a long time, went away and also the strong feeling of doom disappeared. She even had a strong confidence that everything will be all right in the end. No worry anymore. It was a general worry she had, it felt like a worry hanging above her, of the Jewish race. She goes on: “Therefore one has to go ‘undercover’, because people don’t help, you have to hide it. That’s the doomed feeling.”
Her headaches gradually become less and less. In the first 2 months there is an improvement of 30% and 2 months thereafter up to 60%. The intensity of the migraines is not there anymore.


Now in september 2009 the improvement is still going on and she stopped taking the hormones. Some flushes came back at first, but these are also decreasing already.
In the meantime we went to a higher potency of Thulium iodatum.
We started with 4 doses of C30 over 3 months. Then she had 3 doses of Thulium iodatum C200 over 6 months and lately she had one dose of 1MK.


Somehow the case illustrates also that we are treating individual expressions of collective burdens. It’s difficult to really know how this all comes about, theorizing about it is interesting, but will not give any definite answer.
Remarkable is how her ‘quest’ to reach the boarding school completely on her own must somehow have a connection to a special kind of Jewish autonomy. A way of living where you keep silent and you hide and one can’t expect any help from others.
At first I estimated it to be a Muriaticum situation because her mother had left her completely on her own, but it’s turned out to be deeper. The Iodatum part might therefore be indicated in situations where we also see a ‘collective’ connection in generations or in a cultural way. Moreover, it’s quite particular that she offers me a dream-state from which we can find leading symptoms for a good remedy.


Pieter Kuiper
wingerd@euronet.nl