Ben:

Arsenicum was the very first remedy she was placed on. She never gave it much of a chance. She was on a huge, quick, downward spiral. She took it two or three times twice, but to no avail. Then she wouldn't put anything in her mouth at all. So that was that. It was hard to tell if anything happened. She was determined to starve herself at the time.

So we could try that again. This time on the road to recovery.

Her stools ARE very dark and offensive. What potency would you suggest.


JOHN:

Here are your answers:

She got in trouble with binge eating about 3 years ago, getting progressively more out of control til March 98. Never throwing up. Her binges however, were not really big like lots of other people. Just enough to hurt her stomach - make her uncomfortable. To other people, her meals were small. Then March of 98, she found a way to stop bingeing, by eating only bread. Then she reduced this when she realized she had more control and then the rest was history til she was eating only 1 thing a day and no drinking, then hospitalization for anorexia, and dangerously low blood pressure.

I think she wants to be off her medication, but my feeling is it's too soon. She's still working on getting her OCD under control with it.

Jack came right along with the anorexia. Same time. And along with the anorexia came the OCD. Some say Jack is the voice of the anorexia, some say it's the voice of OCD. The OCD and anorexia are two separate disorders I am told, but very closely related. She named the voice Jack because it was so evil and Jack was the name of the guy in the movie, The Shining, who was SO evil. This was before she was put on medication. She was started on medication around the end of June 98. She was highly resistant to the idea at first, then gradually she wanted whatever help she could get re the OCD and negative thoughts. That took a good 7 months before the right medication mix was found and her OCD started to calm down.

We feel there were many causes for her condition. The boyfriend thing, the many pressures on her to be perfect - mainly by herself, schoolwork was getting harder - yet she wanted to maintain her excellent grades- she was sacrificing fun for work, many friends wanting all of her time. She had stopped eating all junk food (to be good) several months before the bingeing began. This "deprivation" inevitably leads to eating disorders of one sort or another. The household and extended family including grandparents was always very "low fat" conscious. I look back on that and shudder.

The LAC-C was prescribed for her very severe contamination thoughts at the time and for her very fragile and divided mental state.

Right now her pain is mainly emotional. However, she has a "full stomach" state that causes some pain quite easily.

She does look in peoples' eyes when talking to them.

She gets upset very easily by very innocent questions. (About what she ate, about how she's feeling at a certain time - she doesn't like to be asked how she is and about other things too.)

When you ask if she openly speaks, I don't know if you mean about personal things or about anything. About personal things, she openly speaks to me only at just the right time - she'll have to be in her pajamas on her bed - comfortable - after a shower. She has to be clean. She speaks to friends about other things all the time. Some, she talks about her feelings to.

She sometimes gets angry very easily - again usually about touchy things and calls me bitch and other horrible things she would never, ever say to me before. She tells me that she doesn't mean it and she would never normally say these things to me, but that she has to say these horrible things, with this voice inside her. You'll also hear her say from time to time "shutup you f'ing bitch" or something like that, but she's trying to get the voice to shutup and she's not talking to anyone else. She never swore in her life before this condition - she'd reprimand others for swearing. She'd reprimand others for smoking or drinking too. Her friends would all take this in stride because she was totally sweet and funny about it. Now she can't stand this about herself.

She cannot stand to be alone AT ALL. She's been diagnosed with separation anxiety twice in the last year. She won't eat alone and she can't stand to just be alone for more than a few minutes. She never did like to be alone, but she would. Now she won't unless she's absolutely forced to by the circumstances - and then only for maybe an hour or a little more if it has to be.

She was in the hospital day program which is why I was only seeing her on weekends. She hasn't been there since the end of April, when she decided she had to leave there in order to start to get her life back her way. Now I see her all the time - of course I work during the day. I saw her on weeknights then too, but she had already eaten everything for the day at the program, so it was only that I didn't have access to her for meals during the week.

She is not menstruating. She hasn't ever regularly. She did maybe three times, six months apart, before she got sick.

She's not the suspicious type at all. Sometimes if it has to do with measuring the right quantity of food, or encouraging her to have something she doesn't think she's supposed to have - so it's only around food. She never was before.

She and her boyfriend broke up mutually when the anorexia started. The relationship became ridiculously strained by it.

She complains about her weight. She complains about her feeling like a victim and a follower now when she used to be a real leader and a totally un-self-conscious person. She hates that and talks about that a lot. She can't stand that. She also feels like she is very selfish and thinks only about herself and she doesn't like that about herself. She feels like she has to get herself back.

She also needs someone to tell her she has to eat because she doesn't want the responsbility of the thought that she's eating voluntarily. But that's going away a little. But aside from that, she doesn't know when she feels hungry and can't tell when she's full.

She was hysterical at me in the worst times (before the remedy)and before she started "turning around" and before the medication really kicked in. She'd kick me and hit at my arms, at one point she kicked the walls. She'd prick her skin with her fingernails and she liked the feeling - because she would feel something. She hasn't done any of those things in the past few months. Before the anorexia - nothing like this EVER happened.

The only other remedy besides the lac-c was arsenicum as described to Ben at the beginning of this post. It was before the anorexia was in full force and only two or three doses of 12 I think. Then Lac 12 started on weekends from February to April, then daily from May to July. That's it!

Hope that helps.

Suzi