A calm woman of 58 years old comes for headache complaints. The first impression she makes is friendly, gentle and stable. On coming in she remarks, observing and enjoying, how calm and beautiful it is that day in nature and in the practice. During the conversation she knows very well and quite naturally how to capture the attention, because she uses gestures while telling, with which she gives the story much colour and clarity. By pointing to her body she supports the story as soon as it is about the complaints (“I’ll just point it out”), and you also see that she brings the pain and the sensations to mind, calls up the feeling in her memory before she describes it, when asked about it, her eyes then often close briefly, and everything she describes comes across as exact and reliable. Her expression does not come across as hurried or restless; the non-verbal confirmation is very subtle but also very direct in the intent of her words. While answering and telling about her life she sits firmly leaning back with her arms and legs crossed, and looks much into the distance when she thinks, as if she is ‘searching’ for the information and the right words. When I ask a question, she on the contrary looks at me sharply and piercingly, but not unkindly, and leans forward or onto the desk as if to read the meaning of the question from my face.
She has had headache on the right side for years, it is a nasty pain that comes in attacks and can last very long, a whole day up to several days. The pain sits behind the eye and “under it”. Painkillers have no effect whatsoever. The neck is involved up to the shoulder. In addition the eyes are often dry, painful and red, especially the right eye. The eye complaint can also, in an intensified form, precede the pain. The sense of touch of the palate is different, touching it gives a strange feeling that radiates to the sinus. Lying on the right when sleeping regularly gives trouble, the nasal cavity feels full and the cheek feels as if it is being pressed on terribly hard.
Often there is a cold feeling on the right, without her really having a cold; straightening the nasal septum did not improve this last year. Around the same time there was a root canal treatment, since then she feels less well, but the treatments have not changed the headache. For a year she has had a ‘cracking jaw’ on the right, together with a squeaking ear. This has lessened with physiotherapy.
The GP diagnosed trigeminal neuralgia, and prescribed Carmazepine (an anti-epileptic). She used this for a week, with which the pain was reduced to a nagging feeling. Now and then she has pain in the left hip, which radiates to the leg. In the past a diagnosis of morbus Besnier-Boeck, with spots on the lungs and lumps on the legs, gallbladder has been removed, as a child asthmatic bronchitis and many dental problems, many teeth have been pulled and root canal treatments undergone.
Fifteen years ago her husband died unexpectedly. Seven years later she met a new love. Her child had great problems with this, could not accept him and in that period developed an auto-immune disease. A year later the complaints began with her eye, quickly followed by the pains. It was at the same time a beautiful and difficult time, it was all so double: the loss of her husband still played a part, the new relationship was ‘ideal’, and along with that the problems with her child, with the diagnosis that it would never go away. Her sleep is very good.
Dreams are usually not nice; someone dies, this can be the children, they are then still very small. Another recurring dream was that her husband came back but left again, she was then very angry at him in the dream. In another dream she is likewise angry at him. She calls herself someone who does not show herself. When she expresses her grief to her daughter, the daughter becomes very angry, this has been so ever since the death of the father. “With emotions she withdraws so into herself, locks the door, she resembles me in that, I can do that too. I also cannot express my feelings so well. Sometimes it is as if I have no feeling, I can become very cold at intense things that would normally evoke a lot of emotion, only later does it come out”. As an example she names the death of her father, shortly after her husband died. “I am never angry, not even inside”. She has specific preferences for music, which are based on atmosphere. Her work too was chosen for dealing with people and the good atmosphere, only later did she come to appreciate the kind of work.
Analysis Malvales: The gentleness, probing and perceiving in communication, the conscious opening and closing of oneself, sensitivity to atmosphere and art, the not expressing and not being able to express emotions, a softness in her dealings, knowing very clearly the boundary and probably also determining up to where she herself goes and where the outside world does. The loyalty conflict between her new love and her child, an emotional paralysis, not speaking out emotions, the holding in of anger (which is there unconsciously, see the dreams, and also to be expected as a normal part of the grieving process) which strikes inward, to the vegetative system. Characteristics of
Malvales according to Jan Scholten.
The causa may be the shock, fitting with Cistus, which also has the ‘petrification of feeling’.
Tilia: nerve pains are known, an attitude of having it all under control, but still searching for confirmation and above all for appreciation or appreciative or confirming attention. The whole vulnerability of the Malvaceae is absent.
The self-assurance in combination with the sensitivity I had seen before in Tilia indications, as well as trigeminal complaints in combination with dental problems; Clarke mentions nightmares and pain at the right eye, face and jaw.
Follow upThe first day it seemed to get worse, the pain, after that followed “three lovely weeks”, without pain, only “a feeling that something is there”. After that comes a day with pain from getting up until the afternoon, together with the pressure feeling on the palate and the nose. She has less trouble with the dry eyes, the cracking jaw is still the same. The kind of pain has changed, previously the pain sat much more on the inside, now that the pain has come back it sits more on the outside, especially touching the skin hurt. Her eyes now look cautious, but more assured and clearer than before. She notes that she feels lighter inside, just like in the past, this is difficult to explain, but a part of it is that she is more cheerful and again really “feels like” doing nice things. The contact with her children has improved. In the years after this she continues to do well.