Page 5 - Autumn 15

original veterinarian. She was still sleeping excessively but her foot was completely better and she was on a prescription commercial diet.
Lesson: Don’t assume to know what people want or that your treatment is necessarily the best for every case. Admit to not knowing.
Mojo, a very sweet and gentle 10-year-old
male de-sexed Jack Russell terrier, is one of my more favourite examples of an integrative approach to cure for two reasons. Firstly he was in extremis when I first saw him and had been through the rigours of conventional approach including surgery for cruciate repair three months prior with a worsening of his symptoms beyond diagnosis or comprehension. Secondly, he was cured.
The pain in Mojo’s hind leg post surgery for cruciate stabilisation was considered psychogenic by the referring veterinarian, but it was much more debilitating than anyone had seen happen. After failing to respond to a range of conventional painkillers and getting depressed and toxic from them, he came to me for an alternative approach. He was still unable to weight bear, or walk on either hind leg without toppling over. He seemed to be neurologically normal so disc protrusion was less likely, even though he appeared to have exaggerated patella reflexes. He also did not respond well to Hypericum or other first aid homeopathic pain relief, but he did respond momentarily and repeatedly to physical therapies like Bowen and once he started to recover from the drug-induced haze, we could see that he had not totally given up his attempts to recover.
Specialist diagnostic testing revealed no diagnosis for the failure to be able to use either of his back legs that were in spasm. Spasm medicines like Cimicifuga and paralysis ones like Plumbum and Lathyrus also had little to no effect over weeks, which led me eventually to the conclusion that he was suffering an immune mediated myositis or neuritis.
I eventually understood his extreme pain and distress to be an autoimmune disease following acute emotional and physical trauma from a failure to protect his family members from domestic violence. He effectively had begun ‘attacking’ himself. The family was experiencing marital breakdown and Mojo was also breaking down. The wife later told me that
she we close herself to being diagnosed with an autoimmune blood disorder at that time, but she has also recovered.
A constitutional approach may have yielded more rewarding results, but time was running out with some vets recommending amputation, which was alarming. I did not have sufficient knowledge or experience in using homeopathy for immune mediated diseases but that would have been an ideal avenue. Mojo didn’t seem to have any particular attributes or symptoms that would necessarily give me confidence to prescribe snake remedies at that time.
Still reluctant to embrace cortisone as an option for the perception that it is not curative, Mojo revisited his specialist veterinarian, who had fewer reservations in using it combined with other pain relief medicines like Gabapentin. I also gave him Staphysagria for ‘never well’ post surgery and put him on Kali-c LM for nerve weakness, trying to protect family and hind leg disuse.
Mojo responded very well to cortisone (not surprisingly), but what is surprising and encouraging is that he used the cortisone to get well and then didn’t need it any more. This was a nice discovery. Maybe the combination of homeopathic and physical therapy with the conventional in this example of a fully integrative approach was the key.
Lesson: Use what works and then trust the vital force to cure if cure is possible.
Winston is an eight-year-old male de-sexed Golden Retriever that has been a patient for over twelve months. He first presented with what the owner described as ‘the gulps’, where he would frequently wake during the night licking his hard palate repeatedly and once a week or so would go outside and vomit bile during the night. He may do this empty swallowing behaviour up to six times a night and the frequency increased from once or twice a fortnight to nightly over several months. It was a mystery but considered to be gastric reflux.
It has been a frustrating case, because the pattern of symptoms seemingly changed independently from treatment attempts with diet, probiotics, protectants and homeopathic medicines. This is another case of a range of
homeopathic medicines being given that ought to be well indicated for gut/liver/pancreas symptoms in a big lazy dog that looked like he had ‘the sads’ and despite giving some signs of definite response in improved demeanour, not holding or fixing the gut. Specific gut/mucous membrane first aid medicines like Hydrastis and Iris also had no long-term effect.
The client was committed to a raw food diets and had every conceivable diagnostic test undertaken more than once with the exception of endoscopy and biopsy, which were becoming necessary.
When I have these cases alarm bells start to ring, when no sustainable improvement is evident after a maximum of three prescriptions. They often turn out to be an immune-mediated disease, like IBD or worse, neoplastic. I did not get the ‘feel’ that either of these were the case, although I was worried it would turn into that soon. The owner has two, very different Goldens and when the second one started doing the same thing, things got interesting. This progressed in both dogs having diarrhoea and then frequent watery diarrhoea and I considered, we had a new disease that was contagious, parasitic or environmental, because these dogs are in no way alike or related. I did not link Winston’s previous history at this stage.
Conventional worming seemed to help but then recurred in two weeks time and seemed worse. Faecal flotation was negative. We were at a standstill and then Winston burped rotten egg gas in an extended consultation this week; the blessings of a homeopathic length consultation. I understand rotten egg gas to be pathognomonic for Giardiasis and I also discovered that since I have graduated, an Elisa test exists for this now. Apparently this parasite can go undiagnosed for years. It is very difficult to find in regular faecal examination.
If there were not two dogs in this household I know this may still remain undetected. I wonder, how often we are thwarted by the simple things.
Lesson: If you don’t look you won’t see. Use all appropriate and affordable diagnostic tests in intractable symptoms like diarrhoea.
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