Thanks for your comment. I guess the reason why I'm hesitant to change homeopaths is that I've invested a lot of time/energy/money and am reluctant to just walk away and start again anew with someone else (which could mean repeating the whole process over again just as frustratingly). As well, the homeopath in question is a friend of the family, so to speak, and has treated other family members. I don't know if they would see it as an insult if I were to see someone else.

As well, I have to confess that I don't really buy into the whole homeopathy process. I mean that I am very logically oriented and it hasn't escaped me that homeopathy itself is a very controversial medicinal practice which is not on unimpeacheable footing. Fortunately, I've been told that 'believing' is not necessary. Still, I do feel silly in some deep down part of me, when I ingest dropplets of something which no scientist has ever been able to differentiate with plain old H2O.

sorry if this offends anyone but if you disagree and can prove it there is a cool $1Million prize waiting for you. Anyway, I digress.

What bothers me is the whole attitude of shots in the dark. Everytime I take a remedy its a lottery (that I seem to have not won so far). This sort of hit and miss thing is not very conducive to confidence. Neither is the popular belief that you just have to stick with it or keep going, etc. as someone said above.

Stick with it until when? for how long? and why? I'm not getting good answers to these questions and it bothers me.

And the option of switching homeopaths also bothers me because it will not really address any of the above issues.

If there was a really good, competent homeopath I would beat a path to her/his door. But I feel drained when I think of the requirement to just keep plugging away in the dark and hope against hope for the best. The best years of my life are ticking by.....tick...tock and it is really FRUSTRAITING.

As a homeopath it is very EASY to tell someone to just hang on or wait or see someone else, etc... It is NOT you suffering. You are simply gaining experience and money as you do something which you probably enjoy.

From the patients point of view it is hellish. I sincerely hope more homeopaths turn the tables and think like patients once in a while.

Must confess, I do share many of these thoughts. I waver from day to day and it's hard to feel as though I'm on solid ground.

On one level, it is very frustrating not to make much progress as regards my chief complaint (which incidentally, if it remains unchecked is likely to lead to a liver resection or transplant, just to make things tolerable for me - I'm postponing this for as long as possible, but time is running out).

On another I have made considerable progress when I think about where I am spiritually and mentally today, as compared with 3 - 4 years ago.

These remedies (& I live with a science teacher who won't shy away from pointing out the impossibility of extremely diluted substances having any effect whatsoever) are undoubtably acting on me - or would it be more accurate to say that I am reacting to them?

2 examples - Silica LM1 at one point produced a stabbing pain in my uterus, followed by passing a clot of stale fibrous material with my next period. I'm guessing this was a fibroid which I didn't even know was there but which it's probably better to be rid of.

Ignatia 1M. Was in a very emotional tearful state & basically couldn't get over the loss of my brother in law (& close friend). This state had persisted on and off for some considerable time. Shortly after taking the remedy I felt unusually calm and as though something had lifted. A rash appeared around my mouth and chin, then after a few days disappeared. (I thought, "I don't believe it, that's my grief!") Of course, I still feel sad about the loss, but am not now so excessively emotional or tearful about it.

I suppose the thing I find difficult to accept is that it seems as though my body is choosing to respond on minor things, which my rational mind tells me aren't really such a bother, yet it fails to react when it comes to a disease process which is slowly killing me.

Choosing another homeopath is certainly an option. However, I've not been with my current homeopath for even a year yet and it probably takes that long to get a real handle on my situation. The last time I changed homeopaths I didn't get the impression that much information was tranferred over. And although my previous homeopath suggested that it might be a good thing to start anew (& I also could see the benefits of that) I did feel that some useful information (not to mention hard work) had been lost. It is also very difficult to begin again from scratch and explain, as openly as I can, all of my problems in all of their sometimes embarrassing and upsetting detail. So I'll probably defer for a while.

I think I fall into the category of patient who just takes a very long time. But as Ruffles says, no one has actually defined what "a long time" means. When I first started out the priority was to get well so that I could complete my family - I now think I'll have hit the menopause before this happens!

Actually I do think that somebody said that it might take a month of treatment for each year that a patient has had a disease. And I'm about at that stage now (if you consider that this gene mutated just for me, it's been there from conception, and I'm now 42, then 3 - 4 years is about the length of time you'd expect to wait). Or is this just an unrealistic yardstick, given that we're all so individual?

Anyway, will be going for another kidney function test in the near future. I'm hoping that this will have held ground or improved over the past year. Desperate for the numbers to corroborate what I'm feeling inside!

Hello again to both of you.
You must remember all homeopaths were or are at one time or another also in a 'patient' mode,we are not made perfect we also get ill and need homeopathics,we do understand from the patient perspective.
In these times it is difficult to do homeopathics on oneself we need others help,perhaps ask your homeopath who he goes to?
And no it's not the great amounts of money why we do this,homeopaths do not make much for the lenthy cases they get tangled up in,and the many phonecalls and emails that need to be replied to daily with no compensation.
One must look at the healing that has been done already via your homeopathics ,then allow patients for the rest of the healing to happen.
(yes it was me who said that" one month for every year of chronic illness".....it's a general gues not a rule.)There are other factors to consider as mentioned in previous posts all over this forum,no neeed to go into it again.
(like change of diet/drink,deletion of allopathics,avoidance of environmental toxins...........................etc etc...........................)
I have a patient who is my utmost difficult patient ever! She mentioned over and over the remedies are not working,then next email i am better,next email i'm in pain.......and so on,she is a chronic alcohol drinker a bottle of wine daily! i told her many times please dont drink it will compromise the homeopathic remedy..................she flat out said yesterday "NO'' I'm going to drink "do something for my illness .I'm going round and round with her!
When she abstains from drinking she sends happy emails"i'm getting better",This i'm telling you out of frustration from the point of a homeopath.

Gina TYler

Hello again,

To an extent I do feel my expectations are impossibly high. I am seeking to undo within a couple of years a disease process which has been very slowly progressing over probably 2 or 3 decades (although I wasn't tuned in enough to realise it and not knowledgeable enough in the past to turn to homeopathy in any case). My case is so highly individual that I know I can't really apply a rule of thumb - I think I'm just looking for straws to clutch at so I will all too readily latch onto any snippets of info.

The "other factors" element is a difficult one for me. Whilst I certainly don't drink alcohol there are possibly other things with which I am compromising the results I might otherwise obtain (again, all listed in another thread). I find it hard to distinguish which of these could be important. I guess any or all of them. Some of them (for example my paid employment or my difficult relationship with my partner which could be seen as "maintaining causes") would take an enormous effort to avoid. I suspect I would have to be already cured, or nearly cured, to have the strength of character and confidence in the future to radically change my life at this point. So it seems like a vicious circle - if only I felt well enough to make major changes I'd be at a point where homeopathy could be of more help to me. At times the advice given seems to be tantamount to saying, "Stop being you! Then you'll be free of the problems you're causing yourself!" My partner, paraphrasing a UK politician speaking about crime, said jokingly that he was rather pleased about this approach - "Tough on you; tough on the causes of you!" (My, how I laughed!)

That said, I am willing to follow any advice given by my homeopath on diet, environment, exercise etc. I just don't know whether my disease is amenable to this (if anyone knows of any cured PKD cases please, please post them here). I'm also on an "alternative" PKD support group and there are many people on there trying to slow things down via an alkaline ash forming diet. I've not been able to discern any difference as yet. But again, in a slowly progressing disorder, it will probably take decades to find out whether the people on this group fare any better than the rest of the PKD population.

When I asked, my first homeopath advised me against stopping my blood pressure drug (Atenolol). I'm on the lowest possible dose and even then tend to take only about half the recommended dosage. I'm hoping that homeopathy will be able to meet me halfway on this one and every so often (usually when I'm not at work) I stop taking it for a couple of weeks, just to see what will happen. It just rises and rises but I keep trying to break the pattern and will ditch the Atenolol as soon as possible. In the meantime I avoid taking painkillers and other OTC "medicines" perferring (inexplicably in my partners eyes) to just wait it out.

Generally I seem to be in a strange half way house here, and I'm just waiting for something to tip the scales in favour of homeopathy. Possibly, this does lie in my own hands but I am hoping that the changes I've already made - meditation, yoga, tai chi plus a bit of artwork - are also gradually helping me. Again, time will tell.

I can well understand the frustrations from the homeopath's point of view. I know my first homeopath worked very hard on my case and definitely put in a lot of hours for what probably turned out to be a very low hourly rate.

Sadly, upon re-reading Vithoulkas' book I still suspect I may be incurable. I just refuse to let go of what has turned out to be my biggest hope.

Jennilee, I sent you a couple of pm's last year -- one with a referral and contact details for two very competent homeopaths. If you're seriously not having any progress of sorts with your current homeopath, then why not just give one of them a ring?

Ruffles, I don't know where your location is - to recommend a good homeopath to you. Personally, I wouldn't stick with a homeopath just because they were my friend. In fact, I don't treat friends as such. I send them to another homeopath; otherwise the friendship can become strained. Good luck.

Best wishes to you both,
Lisa

__________________
"The significance of a fact is measured by the capacity of the observer."
Carroll Dunham

OK. Thanks Lisa. I have to admit that I am making some progress with my current homeopath so am reluctant to change right now. Deep down, I know which side my bread's buttered, after all.

The thing is, I don't actually know that's it's possible to do anything about my main physical complaint, so am reluctant to keep changing homeopaths simply because I am chasing an impossible dream, even though I am making steady gains in other ways and this enables me to cope better with my genetic problems. If someone were to contact me to say that they'd been successfully treated for polycystic liver and kidney disease, I might view things differently (this might seem unfair from a homeopathic point of view as I know that the homeopath is treating the totality of the case rather than just the specific disease, but I think it would help me to know whether what I am looking for is actually achievable). Also, if in another 6 months or so things don't appear to be moving on, I might well change then. My previous homeopath did consider referring me on to someone else, but basically we jointly decided against it as we felt that my case was moving on, and where there was movement, there was hope. So I stayed with her until she decided not to practice any more.

Ruffles, can I ask whether the other members of your family have been successfully treated by your current homeopath? If they have seem some results this would seem to me to be very encouraging. If not then maybe you really do need to consider changing. Also if you feel there is a risk of offending, is this person someone you can be entirely honest and open with? Plus I know that if I were being seen by a friend of the family there are certainly at least some details I would be holding back, and I would feel that this could very well alter the picture that the homeopath is using to select an appropriate remedy.

My own position is that, as far as my family are concerned, I am the "test case" for homeopathy. No one else had tried it before me so I can't really look to them for advice or guidance in choosing a homeopath. It tends to be the other way round & so I'm really hoping that this will come up trumps in the near future.

I'm not really sure what you mean here as I have never pestered my homeopath in this way. I make an appointment, I go in, sit down and we have our time together. I come out and I take the remedy. Rinse and repeat. I have never contacted, phoned, emailed my homeopath outside of pre-arranged visits.

Anyway, I would submit that what I bring up is the 'dirty' little secret of homeopathy. We all love to hear about the successes. Patients who have been cured, for obvious reasons, other patients, because it gives hope, homeopath involved, due to glory and experience, other homeopaths, due to experience and in general homeopathy gains as the anecdotal evidence grows.

You've no doubt heard of the experiments involving animals were they were rewarded with food or other 'prizes' at random times. Soon these animals start to exhibit strange behaviors as they seem to be trying to replicate the situation which gave rise to the reward. Little do they surmize that there was no situation and that it was completely random. This conditioning is much stronger than continuous conditioning (ala Pavlov) and it takes much, much longer to erase. Even when the random rewards are stopped the animals go on for a very long time exhibiting these strange rituals or inventing new ones.

I wonder if that is what homeopathy is all about. Take my case. A little improvement was experienced. Was it as a result of homeopathy? Maybe. Can I prove that it was homeopathy and not something else? No, not really. Interestingly enough, this little improvement is grasped at blindly while my much larger frustration is ignored or poo-poo'ed with such banal arguments like mercury fillings. After all, I have had the fillings when this little improvement came along. If somehow there is a 'blockage' then why is homeopathy responsible for the little improvement?

There are many like me (those who have stuck with homeopathy for a very long time and devoted time/energy/money to not see any significant results). This is homeopathy's dirty little secret. We are never talked about. Our plight is never trumpeted like the success testimonials. But I dare say we outnumber those by a good 10:1 ratio (if my own anecdotal research is correct).

And if homeopathy is to truly establish itself beyond reproach, then the scientific process must be followed to either topple it or to ground it. Until attention is paid to the vast, silent majority of homeopathic patients who do not find healing homeopathy will continue to be considered of dubious credibility.

I know many here won't like reading the above as they have devoted their whole lives to this field. But it isn't asking much to make this request. The scientific process is what separates us and pigeons who devote their whole day to elaborate and sophisticated loop dances in the hopes of getting a pinch of seeds. And after all, humanity has seen such dubious attempts at medical science before. It wasn't long ago when many sincere men of medicine and science devoted their whole lives to studying the shape of the human skull.

And to answer your q Jennilee, sort of. The homeopath in question has seen other family members. Some for a long time and others for short, intermittent series of sessions. One claims to have been drastically helped but I, personally can not see the change. This family member is a bit naive, IMHO as they believe in all sorts of crazy stuff like crystals healing powers, reiki, feng-shui and other pseudosciences. I have not seen the sort of change that is featured here in anyone that I have spoken to, inside or outside my family:

http://www.homeopathy2health.com/testimonial.htm

(don't misunderstand me, I am truly happy that those and others did find healing and were helped - I'm not convinced however that it is possible to say accurately that homeopathy was responsible)

Dear ruffles

Dont worry we as homeopaths are used to this type of interaction (meaning the disbelief in homeopathy) Its to be expected,it does all sound a bit bizarre,and many 'sceptic forums ' are dedicated to this type of interaction.
My own husband is of this type,he is mr. science minded"show me the facts",does not consider healing can happen via 'other' means besides allopathics.
Yet in the lenthy time we have been married i have helped /treated/cured him over and over and over with homeopathy and nothing else,no one in my house takes allopathics even with 'serious illness'.
He knows the work i do and seeing the results is still sceptic,that does not matter to each their own. You dont have to use homeopathy,no one is forcing you. Most of the patients i see use homeopathy as the last resort,'nothing else works',by this time they have been dumped full of toxic meds,suppression of all original symptoms expecting miracles to happen with one visit.
There are no 'dirty little secrets',yes there are some that get no results or not what they want,this does not mean homeopathy does not work ,it always works.............in past discussions we have covered what can be obsticles regards the prevention of a cure. ( I did post something regards the cobra venom bite and homeopathics but this has not been answered yet......so we leave it at that)
Here is a 'dirty little secret for you ruffles'.................................
in the usa every year 300,000 people suffer adverse reactions to allopathic meds,this includes.........death.
Vaccines alone cause a` major portion of these adverse effects to babies/children/teens.
Regards your reply to my post ,you are a considerate patient not to bother your homeopath untill your follow up appt. Not all patients are like this,at least not the ones i see...................

Gina Tyler

I don't want to engage in an argument between homeopathy and 'traditional' or chemical medicine. What you say is correct, a lot of people die while taking meds. Sure, it happens. For a number of reasons, mixing meds, wrong meds prescribed, meds mixed up by the pharmacist, overdose, etc...

You can say anything and everything you want. I will stick with one thing:


R E S U L T S

That is the only thing that makes any damn difference. I don't care if you get it by chasing squirrels through the city park, through chemical molucules artificially constructed in a lab, through water with 'imprinted images' of compounds, etc...

At the end of the day its all about results.

I know someone who can help smokers stop smoking after 45 minutes. Are people skeptical? do they call him a quack? are 'traditional' practitioners up in arms? Sure, sure, sure.

But you know what? HE GETS THE JOB DONE!

He doesn't say come see me and pay me session after session after session and pumping people with excuses. He says give me 45 minutes and some money and I will give you a you that doesn't smoke.

No excuses, no mercury filling or other 'blockages'. He gives results. And because of that not only is he doing very well financially, he is performing a service for mankind but his detractors are all falling silent and becoming fans.

Now the doctors are not only sending patients to him but they are going to him themselves!

That is what I'm talking about.

As Jerry Maguire said "SHOW ME THE MOOOONEEEEEEY!"

(everything else is total, complete and utter BS)


Oh and by the way, feel free to knock allopathic medicine all you want but they not only follow a scientific process (no dancing pigeons) but they have been responsible for giving us a longer and healthier life. Some stats say that for every year they have added a month. Or look at the cancer treatments available today that were not available 20 years ago.

Sure, go ahead mock them, make fun of them and feel good because you are using a 'natural' process or 'not doing any harm', whatever you need to feel superior.

But at the end of the day, don't forget to look for the most important point:


R E S U L T S


Otherwise you are not only deluding yourself but attempting to delude others.

Hello Ruffles,
Please stop taking or trying homeopathy. It does NOT work for you.
MAybe allopathy is more worth all your investment/time/money to get your RESULTS. SO make your choice with courage and dont' DELUDE yourself.
We are all human beings, not Gods.

Lisa we need to be careful that this is not another troll trick. TO me its beginning to look suspiciously like one.

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