4.7.2 Manganum aceticum, Case 1A 34 year old woman complains of chronic tiredness, ear infections and cystitis.
Her job is very demanding, both mentally and physically. She does video home training for families with mentally handicapped children. She travels on trains and buses with a rucksack full of video apparatus and toys. She tries to do her very best for each family and when the advice she gives isn’t immediately accepted she feels she has done it wrong.
The complaints started during a walking holiday in the mountains in Nepal. She was still very tired when she started off and at 5000 metres she got a strong, cold, wet wind blowing straight in her ear. She wasn’t wearing a hat, which was unusual, and she got a sharp pain in her left ear with a feeling as if a cork had been stuck inside. She developed a high fever and she felt as if she was in a film. She could hardly walk, but ‘you have to go on’. It took 5 days before they reached the next valley. Since then she hasn’t felt right. She was given some antibiotics and then she got cystitis and then more antibiotics, but even after 4 courses of antibiotics the cystitis wasn’t cured. She got diarrhoea and lost a lot of weight. She feels paralysed, can’t do anything, just lies in bed all the time, feeling as if she has got flu with constant pressure in her ears.
Social services are constantly checking on her and pressurising her to start work again, which she hates ‘I feel guilty enough anyway’.
She loves walking, it clears her head.
As a child she used to dream that she was being chased by lots of people, but she was glued to the ground and couldn’t get away.
She also dreamt that she was buying a lot of furniture in a large shop.
She has had headaches and earaches from the wind all her life. She always wears a hat in the winter. As a child she used to get cystitis if she walked barefoot on the cold floor.
GeneralsType: very thin.
Weather: warm, cold feet; headache << sun.
Perspiration: profuse.
Desires: chocolate, cheese, fish, vegetables, fruit; drinking.
Aversion: sweet, sour, meat, coffee.
Sleep: difficulty sleeping after 3 am.
AnalysisThe ear infections caused by wind and better from wearing a hat are typical of
Manganum. The video home training, i.e. teaching, fits too. Other
Manganum symptoms: feeling she is not doing it right, sensation of a cork in her ear, dream that she was glued to the ground and couldn’t get away.
But which
Manganum should we choose? She teaches handicapped people, a theme that belongs to the
Aceticums. Further confirmations for Aceticum: she is extremely tired and has to lie down, she is thin, has profuse perspiration, diarrhoea, < mountains, not rested, has to carry on, feeling paralysed. This leads us to Manganum aceticum.
The dream in which she was buying lots of furniture is the opposite of the general theme of deprivation. Perhaps an unconscious compensation?
Other possibilities are: Coca,
Manganum, Carcinosin and Dulcamara.
ReactionAfter
Manganum aceticum she felt as if she got flu and her ears started to burn and became red hot. Two weeks later she started to work part time again. She has decided to decrease the amount of home visits per day. She stops and thinks before she says ‘yes’. She has given some of the responsibility back to the parents.
She doesn’t come back until a year later, when she has a slight return of earache with tiredness, but she tells me that her attitude of having to be helpful is not so extreme anymore. One dose of
Manganum aceticum 1M soon solves the problems again.