Ricky, I can't take anything that boosts my immune system without getting a thyroiditis attack. I need something that will calm the autoimmune response. Also, I just remembered that the way you prescribe the carc is exactly how my homeopath gave it to me. She also said it would minimize the aggravations.

Snoopy, I haven't yet given up on my homeopath. More on homeopathy in general unless there's more to this than meets the eye. All I know is that I took a remedy 4 months ago and now I have thyroiditis all the time. Just what I didn't want to happen. But I guess the jury's still out on what's going on as I have yet to see if lowering my thyroid dose will alleviate the thyroiditis without leaving me more hypothyroid. So I will probably try that before deciding whether or not to continue treatment and with whom.

Chris, I'm not sure what you mean about compliance between patient and practitioner, but I have done my best to be compliant and have waited months and months for the improvement I was told to expect early in the course of treatment. And for the most part, I have gotten worse rather than better since beginning treatment. Other people have noticed it as well. So if I'm questioning things at this stage of the game, I think it's perfectly understandable.

Shirl

Shirl,

On a quick read, I agree with Divina and I'm inclined to believe that your thyroid supplement needs to be adjusted. The sooner you do that the better. I don't think its wise for you to be adjusting doses without any monitoring.

IF your homeopath thought (on retaking your history) that Carc was your remedy, I'll go with that first. Your anxious reaction fits in with that remedy.
Definitely the potency should be adjusted if it is ever used again.

BUt for the present, if you're not going to check out your thyroid levels, I think an iatrogenic (caused by thyroid supplement) set of symptoms is not going to respond to any remedy, which may basically need to be dealth with.

The present thyroiditis is often viral in origin, like getting any viral infection. An acute remedy could help you out, but I'm not sure we're getting the whole picture of your problem/progress here.

All the best,
doctorleela

[ 07. March 2003, 12:09: Message edited by: doctorleela ]

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Shirl, By compliance I meant that you, your practitioner, and your allopatic medico all work together to reach an outcome that benefits. You don't all have to agree completely, but noone should deny pathological assessments that clearly say the thyroid function is contrary to what you, or the "alternative practitioner" want to believe it should be.
I've only had experience with treating people diagnosed with Grave's Disease (successfully) - so I may out of my depth here. But I couldn't imagine myself disregarding pathological test results in these cases. And in the end (thankfully) these reports confirmed the potential of homoeopathy as opposed to the "God-endocrinologist-specialist" who prophesised otherwise.

Good luck.

At this stage I would go for a MT (Mother Tincture ) to boost the immune system and the one I am thinking of is Ceanothus. Are you taking Echinacea which is another immune boosting herb. I once had a patient that had an agg with Carc and I cured it by giving a remedy that the symptoms now matched and in that case it was Caust. I prefer to give Carc.in a 30. 200. 1M over 24 hours to prevent aggravations. BTW I was told once that Silica is an antidote to Carc agg but have never tried it out!!

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Doctorleela, I went ahead and cut back my thyroid dose a bit and requested labs from my dr but haven't heard back from her yet. I'll be very surprised if she agrees to the labs since I just had them done a couple of months ago. I've had to learn over the years to adjust my thyroid meds on my own as I rarely get the monitoring I need and can't afford to pay out of pocket for it. But I know what I'm doing with it and achieved a total recovery 2 years ago without any monitoring at all. The problem at the time was that I had to take a high dose of medication to achieve recovery and it was putting me into premature menopause, which is undesirable as my husband and I are trying to conceive.

What's freaking me out now is that my body is no longer handling the medication the way it normally does so I'm not clear on what's happening or what to do about it. All I know is that I'm having thyroiditis, which usually means I need to drop down the dose of medication.

Chris, I'm encouraged that you had success in treating Graves disease. That must mean that autoimmune disease responds well to homeopathy, which is what I'm hoping will be the case for me.

I'm having a particular symptom which is bothering me from an aethetic standpoint and I'm wondering if anyone knows what it means. My face is swollen all the time now, regardless of the dose of medication I'm on. It used to swell if I was hypothyroid and that was one of the symptoms I would go by to tell if I needed to raise my dose or not. But now I'm swollen all the time and I have terrible puffy bags under my eyes and a very tired look. That's one of the reasons I thought I was hypo and needed to raise my dose, but now I'm not sure. Anyone know what could be causing that?

Here's what I thought I would do after considering all the suggestions offered here. I thought I would first lower my dose of medication and see if the thyroiditis abates. If I can get stabilized on a dose of medication that's more comfortable, then I would go back to my homeopath and let her retake my case and see where she thinks we should go from there. Does that sound like a sensible way to proceed?

Thanks,
Shirl

Chris,

I'm waiting, but so far I haven't heard a word from you about the "rote prescription"
of Carc. 30C, 200C and 1M in a 24 hour period! Such a prescription makes no sense to me, since neither consideration of the patient, nor patient response played any role in it, hence it is applied regardless of who the patient is; which I think is what you've been complaining about vociferously of late, so why stop now?

Shirl, if you want to stay with the practitioner, then I can't give you a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on your plan; maybe someone with more experience like Dr. Leela will come back and give you an opinion; but if you really trust your homeopath and want to stay with her, then surely you must believe that she knows the right thing to do at this point. Do you have doubts?

Snoopy

Snoopy, I don't really have doubts about my homeopath. Especially now that I have a better understanding of the possible reason why I'm having trouble tolerating my medication. But I do have doubts about homeopathy. I'm afraid it will leave me in a worse state than I was in before. I'm afraid I will be left with marginal thyroid function but unable to tolerate my medication any longer. That's a very scary prospect for someone who has been dependent on thyroid medication for 15 years and was told they'd have to be on it for life. I started homeopathic treatment thinking it would cure the autoimmune problem so that at least I wouldn't be reactive to my meds or my own thyroid function, but now I'm more so. Was that caused by a mistake in treatment, or is this a normal part of the process by which the remedy is freeing me of medication? How am I to know? So I thought by lowering my thyroid dose (as someone here suggested), I would be able to tell if the remedy was doing what it's supposed to do or is the whole thing so out of control that nothing I do at this point will help short of antidoting this remedy and starting over with some other treatment modality. Makes sense to me anyway.

Shirl

[ 08. March 2003, 02:29: Message edited by: Shirl ]

Shirl,

Really, the thing is, a practitioner should be so knowledgable in cases like this that a patient should never have to wonder what she should do next in terms of her treatment. As Divina aka ChaChaHeels pointed out, we can't do homeopathy without doctors. We need their cooperation, we need to know test results so we can adjust our remedies, potencies, frequency of repetitions, etc. and in turn, the doctors have to be of a mind that they're willing to adjust their prescriptions because they accept that their patient is on alternative treatment that might make test results change. A homeopath not working with an MD in a case of autoimmune disease, and an MD who may be unaware of or unsympathetic to alternative medicine makes me nervous--I can't see a good outcome if these are the circumstances.

In answer to your question, I think you already know that homeopathy can cause harm; but so can conventional medicine; and the idea in both systems is to find a competent practitioner. I know you're thinking, How can I judge whose competent? We can help you with that. There are certain practitioners whom we can all agree on, as they have reputations, authored many books and run schools; for example, we could all recommend Roger Morrison, and Nancy Herrick at the Hahnemann Clinic which I think is in Albany, California--check "Directory" on the homepage; again with Timothy Dooley, Luc De Schepper and there are others, if you check the directory and see who's near you, we could be of help in that way.

Snoopy

Snoopy wrote:

First of all, Shirl, please know this post is nothing to do with you or your case. Ok?

Snoopy, I agree with you about this type of rote prescribing. It sounds like nonsense to me, I have expressed that sentiment before on this BB. If I felt I had to resort to prescribing Carcinosin in that schedule, I would admit personal lack and defeat and give up practising or search truer methods. (There now, feel better ) It's my impression that when neo-Kentian constitutional prescribers have a heavy usage and reliance on Carcinosin it is because there is a problem with percieving the case accurately. As you'd know Carcinosin is a remedy that, whilst having its individual features, does really tend to look like a lot of other polychrests - so it conveniently fills gaps in proper casetaking and this is a trap into which inadequate or inexperienced homoeopaths are in danger of falling.

This Carcinosin schedule has been criticised on the Minutus e-list on numerous occasions. The advice and cautions given by several different experienced practitioners have fallen on deaf ears it seems. The rationale given is that it was taught in a particular homeopathic college, therefore it must be OK.

I don't have personal experience with this schedule, and frankly, do not read many of Ricky's posts as her homoeopathic experiences seem so vastly different and contrary to my own practice, I find them largely uneducational and irrelevant. On the other hand, I do have real life experience with the overuse of low potency prescribing and I feel that what I have to say in this regard does matter. I am about as tired of repeating these cautions and sounding negative and critical, as no doubt you are reading them. Anyway, this is a discussion forum so let's continue to share our mutual passion for homoeopathy and continue to develop our knowledge and skills.

Chris

Hi Shirl, as far as I know the homeoapthy could not make you sensitive to the Thyroid medication.

BUt an abnormal thyroid function could make you sensitive to the homeopathic remedies and we'll be blaming the remedies.

Autoimmune thyroiditis can cause either hypothyroidism (Hashimotos) or hyperthyroidism (Graves) and various in between conditions, depending on patient symptomatology.
I really don't think making your own dosage adjustments is a good idea. I do agree the strange HEalth care System in the US (endless waiting for appointments, etc) leaves one trying to work things out onself.
But these are not medications that should be altered without medical supervision, though waiting 2 months for a lab test or doctors appointment does not help either.

All in all, a complicated case like yours needs supervision regularly, both on the homeopathic front as well as a cooperation from an MD to have your labwork and clinical evaluation regularly, as you are actively symptomatic.

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