Scandium

4.3 Scandium, Case 1A 24 year old woman comes with various complaints. She has a pain in her lower back, < lifting things, < digging, < in the morning; she often sits bent forward, > bending her lower back forward. One leg (the left one) is shorter than the other.
She gets a migraine type of headaches with nausea and pulsations. It starts in the back and spreads to the front, < worries, tension, being busy, < heat, < 1st day of menses, < light, < behind eyes and worse when she wonders: ’will I be able to cope?’.
> hard pressure on base of skull and eye sockets, > putting her head under the pillow, > holding her head.
She also has eczema with peeling on fingertips and palm of right hand. Accumulation of mucus and feeling of a lump in her throat, as if something is stuck and she has to keep swallowing, << talking about it, < thinking of sad things. Sneezing.
She has had Glandular fever and received some treatment for her liver from an iridologist.
She had some ‘luxury’ treatment from a psychotherapist in the past because she felt so unsure of herself.
She feels depressed since she had a few setbacks. She has been dismissed from a course in creative gardening with the message that she was negative in her approach. Things hadn’t gone well because she felt like a peasant between the ‘snobs’, whilst before she had been the snob between the peasants at agricultural college. She feels that everyone got the wrong impression of her. She felt like a beautiful flower buried under a heap of rubbish. Her teachers did not see it that way and said that she was ‘disturbed’. On the last day before the holidays they told her that she shouldn’t come back next year. This was a ’little bit’ of a blow for he: she felt a complete failure.
She went back home to live with her father and took on various jobs. She got sacked from a shoe shop after 5 weeks because she was ‘unsuitable’. She herself thought she was doing quite well, even though she had already decided that this wasn’t her kind of job because she did not agree with the hard-selling strategy. She had already thought of handing in her notice but they beat her to it. ‘So I was really having a sort of little dip, kind of’. She used this kind of expressions frequently during the consultation: ‘little this, little that, sort of, kind of’ etc.
She became more and more unsure of herself: ’Perhaps I wasn’t such a nice person when I was young’ and ‘I am not like that, am I?’
She can’t decide what to wear, she can’t decide what to put in her sandwich, she can’t decide which colour jumper to buy so she comes home empty handed. Suddenly everything seems a major obstacle.
She always feels caught between different people: in the past it was between her parents, who were divorced. Later on between friends when they were quarrelling. Whose side should she be on? Also between her mother and her grandparents. She was the one who had to tell the grandparents when it was discovered that her mother had cancer. She was always hanging somewhere in between. Whenever she was ill it was never a really severe illness: she only had seven little spots when she had chickenpox. ‘This is quite awful really, best not to think about it otherwise I could get quite depressed’.
She feels she has failed. Her parents were very happy when she was born, as they had been longing for a child. But she did not get top marks at school and her father was rather disappointed. In the beginning she did well and then she had good hopes for the future. ‘But now look at me, useless what is the point of being me at all?’
She doesn’t have any real ambition, like a job where she is appreciated or a nice house to live in or animals to care for. She is very disappointed with herself. She used to think ‘Later, when I am grown up I will..’. ‘But now I am grown up and what do I have to show for it? Nobody wants to be like me!’
She feels things just happen to her. In her relationship with boys she can never find a happy medium. One minute she is engaged in an innocent conversation and the next minute she is kissing, and then she thinks: ’Shit, it’s happened again, I can’t go back now, I should have said ‘no’ before’. She is very open and people like to share their problems with her, ‘but I don’t think you can see what I am like deep inside’.
She can be very enthusiastic, which can be wrongly interpreted by ‘male beings’.
So she has decided to be very plain and blunt towards them.
She likes to get compliments, but when someone says something nice she doesn’t trust it and tends to say something nasty in reply. She is indecisive and has broken up with her boyfriend twice. What should she do? Go out into the big wide world or stay at home with parents, boyfriend and job? She feels people have a wrong impression of her, that they think she is empty headed and without compassion for her fellow beings. They probably think this because she doesn’t make clear what she means and she often acts bluntly. She doesn’t feel well in herself. She used to do a lot of sports which she enjoyed very much, also for the company. Now she has lost interest. She has put on weight, ‘so I look like a sort of fat pig’. She hates herself, for her looks and for the fact that she just lolls in front of the telly eating crisps. ‘I never used to be like this’.GeneralsWeather: cold, cold hands.
Perspiration: under arms (2) and on hands < tension.
Time: < 3 pm.
Desires: Italian (3), spices (3), cheese (3), salt, milk (2).
Aversion: ginger (3), olives (2), fish, fried liver (2).
Menses: great loss of blood with back- and stomach pains.
Sleep: lovely.AnalysisShe tries all sorts of studies, has a taste and then gives up. Tries many things, succeeds in nothing, which is the theme of Scandium. It is definitely the Iron series because it concerns work and study. The creative gardening could point to the Silver series, but in this case it is just one in a long list of other studies. The indecision is another prominent aspect in this case. She simply can’t choose, not even what clothes to wear in the morning. This is further confirmation for Scandium being the right remedy.ReactionAfter Scandium 1M she becomes more cheerful and less susceptible to minor upsets. The headache has gone; the backache is there from time to time, but not so severe. Decisions are easier to make: she has chosen to stay with her boyfriend. ‘No point in putting off a decision forever, for the moment I have chosen to be with him’. ‘Now I can walk through town with my head high, I look around and feel good’. ‘I feel I am alive again’. She started to sort out her belongings, throwing away what is old, sorting out what she wants to keep, getting things in order. She painted her shed bright yellow. She has plans for a new course and a new job. ‘In the past everything happened by itself. Things sorted themselves out without me having to do anything. Now that I am grown up I realise that this can’t go on, it simply doesn’t happen like that, I will have to put in some effort myself. But now I really feel I want to do that’.
Three months later she suddenly got the offer of two jobs. She hesitated slightly which one to take, but eventually chose the one she liked best.