Molly came to me with depression and chronic fatigue. She was a beautiful young woman aged 31 and had suffered with these symptoms since she was 14 – that’s over half her life! She had been prescribed many different medications for both of these diagnosed problems over the years, but wasn’t satisfied with the results and now suffered with severe night sweats, which she felt might be her body’s way of trying to detox itself from all the chemicals. So, Molly was now looking for a more natural way of coping. She had given up hoping for a solution, she just wanted a way to cope with her symptoms.
As is so often with these illnesses, some days, or weeks were better than others. Occasionally she’d been bed ridden for a week or two with the chronic fatigue symptoms. Not because of the pain she told me, just a complete weakness, an inability to even pick her feet up. There was pain though, her legs ached, sometimes they twitched and felt numb and she felt nauseous and constantly tired with aching, stinging eyes. However, despite this she did her best to get on with life – she was a very driven young woman, career orientated and always very busy. She said she constantly felt completely wiped out – even going to Tesco’s was an ordeal and when she was forced to rest through exhaustion, her mind didn’t rest at all, she constantly planned and worried and stressed about all the things that she wasn’t doing.
She said she always felt anxious and suffered from very low self esteem. The depression was definitely aggravated by hormones and she described what happened one month:
“I cried all the time and they just put me on more anti-depressants. I was on my way to work one morning and just couldn’t go, so I went to the doctor instead and just sat on the floor crying, not even caring who saw me.”
One month later Molly returned and said that some of her symptoms were much better, the twitching legs had improved and her eyes didn’t ache any more. She had now halved her medication for depression but still felt very low and anxious about her inability to do things. She said her energy was a little better but she was still tired most of the time. I changed the remedy – the remedy I gave her had clearly done some little bits around the edge, but I didn’t think it did well enough; it didn’t seem to be hitting the centre of Molly’s real problems which were exhaustion and depression.
Molly continued to visit over the next couple of years and with different remedies I saw a gradual improvement of everything. She said on her last visit, “The chronic fatigue symptoms have all gone now, I’m still tired and can’t get going until about 10am but it’s such an improvement…” She is now completely off any medication for depression, although she admits she does feel low sometimes. She is working full time and able to enjoy family life.
It is interesting that out of all Molly’s symptoms she is still having the night sweats and although she says they are improved, they still sound quite bad to me. I wonder if her initial belief of them being a detox of 14 years of chemical medication is right – if she’s correct then one day they’ll stop.
You can see that her improvement has been far more gradual than with any of my other patients. That is because she has had these problems for so long, and because they had been treated for so long by medication that just suppressed the symptoms – however, although improvement using homeopathy has been slow, it has been constant – and in 2 years, homeopathic treatment has done far more for her than 16 years of conventional treatment did. I only see Molly very occasionally now, but every so often she returns, saying she needs another lift and I’m happy to see that now she just gets on with life in a far more easy going way with none of her earlier superhuman efforts to get everything done despite her illnesses.
If anyone you know struggles with any of these issues give me a call on 01626 201107 to discuss how homeopathy can help you.