4.1.2 Kalium arsenicosum, Case 2A 65 year old woman has had rheumatic pains for the last 8 years, with positive rheumatism test results. She has burning pains in her hands and neck after exertion and often at night. She was the only child of an already elderly mother. She spent 3 years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp with her mother. She was always afraid that her sickly mother would die [
Stage 15,
Arsenicum]. In the camp she always looked after her mother [duty,
Iron series], afraid that she would lose her [stage 15,
Arsenicum]. She accepted the fact that she had to do this as a matter of course [stage 1]. Once they were freed the situation got worse because they never knew what the Indonesian people would do with them, and they were threatened all the time. She continually had to control [
Iron series] her fear [
Arsenicum] so as not to attract the attention. When they were finally back in Holland nobody in the family understood what they had gone through and she couldn't talk about it with anyone. She never sleeps well, usually waking up at 4 am.[Kali]. It is best when she goes to bed at the same time every night [punctual,
Arsenicum]. She is slightly obsessive about work. Work [
Iron series] has to be{Kali] finished, in case I suddenly get ill or die [
Stage 15,
Arsenicum].
She used to worry that something would happen to the children. She doesn’t like to waste time [
Iron series]. Every week she makes a schedule [
Iron series] about what to eat on which day and she always buys enough food to last a week, afraid there won’t be enough [
Arsenicum]. She always cooks too much, but never throws anything away.
After Kali arsenicosum the rheumatic complaints gradually disappear and the test results become negative. She sleeps better, she dreams about suppressed feelings of guilt. She decides to do something abut this in her daily life. She has phoned some old friends whom she had lost contact with after a quarrel a long time ago. Later on she got a bout of cystitis, an old symptom she had had before the war.