Song in my head: Tossing n Turning
There’s always a reason stuff pops in my head when I first awaken. This time it’s obvious. I went to sleep itchin and a scratchin this annoying spot at my left wrist where some little hungry insect stuck their pointy fangs in me. Am I that tasty? Naw. Otherwise I’d be riddled with additional marks and that would’ve decreased my sleep even more.
I remember waking at three, determined to hunt down an effective remedy for my discomfort. With less than half my brain working, which half is debatable as the part I was working with was having a hell of a time focusing on the task at hand, I began noisily rummaging through the cabinet housing my various homeopathic vials of pellets, ointments and tinctures. Even in my sleepy itchy stupor I knew what I was looking for but either I wasn’t reading the bottles and jars correctly or I had neglected to open the right drawer, because it wasn’t until I methodically opened and inspected each of the twelve drawers twice in one smaller cabinet, did I finally discover the tincture “Ledum Palustre”.
“Aha!” I remarked loudly, half expecting daughter would run into my room asking if I were okay. Thankfully my “aha” was not loud enough to waken her yet now I was fully awake and ready to apply my discovered remedy to the point of my discomfort, the bug bite. Only now the squeezy thing for the bottle dropper was determined to stay attached to the bottle so that when I attempted to unscrew it, it wouldn’t fucking budge. “Grrr!” I proclaimed, enough to have Porter the lab raise his head off the bed, but not enough to get up to examine the source. It also didn’t move the the stopper.
I knew I had to calm myself or I would either wake up the entire household or break the damn bottle, neither would be the desired outcome of my wee hour foray for a cure to what ailed me.
Mumbling unintelligible sounds, even to me, I very slowly began to twist the tiny bottle top, eventually (and surprisingly not breaking it in the process), separating the upper top and rubber thingie from the lower bottle. “Eureka!” I whispered, this time, as I dabbled droplets of Ledum onto the little circle of red on my arm and waited for the pain and itching to miraculously subside, which it did, as I knew it would.
Now that’s I’m wide awake, because it’s morning and I’ve applied another few drops of tincture on the “spot”, I’ve had warm, brewed water processed decaf espresso and a freshly made sourdough bagel (thanks to the first fruit of my womb who is currently on a baking frenzy), I can say unequivocally that homeopathy works when one knows what they’re doing, even in semi-sleep, which I do.
Of course the debate about the efficacy of homeopathy continues elsewhere, because there are tons of people out there who are unaware of it, or have totally bought into the Big Pharma machine or are too skeptical for their own damn good. And I’m not here to explain homeopathy this time.
I, however, thankfully, learned over forty years ago, when facing the looming possibility of either radical or full mastectomy, because one of my breasts had grown into resembling a personal size watermelon while the other was not even a B cup, that it is a quite viable, effective and truly Hippocratic “do no harm” form of healing.
When three renowned breast specialists, one in Canada, and two in the USA and my frantic mother who worshipped regularly at “Our Lady of Kaiser Permanente”, told twenty-three year old me I’d need life changing surgery, I screamed “Stop!” After which my very helpful older sister drove me to the Herring Family Clinic in Berkeley California (it’s no longer there) for a two hour appointment with a classical homeopath. I had never heard of one before that, nor did I even know what homeopathy was.
I recall driving from San Francisco across the Bay bridge, filling out forms, sitting with a very nice youngish man who asked me even more questions than were on the forms, watching him look at me then writing some notes, after which he excused himself, and left the room for what seemed like at least an hour, or more. There I sat, with a ridiculously mismatched pair of boobs, scared, in a room filled with magazines I had absolutely no interest in reading, when he reappeared before me with a small bottle of teensy white pills. Handing me perhaps an eighth of a teaspoon full of the pellets he instructed me to open my mouth, insert the pills under my tongue, neither eat nor drink anything for 20 minutes, to avoid caffeine, camphor and mint and to report back in a week.
I left the office crying, bewildered, questionably thankful but determined to see this out. Within three days my watermelon was a grapefruit, within the week and at my next appointment it was a near match to its breast-mate. The knife-happy quacks were bewildered and in the land of denial when I reported the “miraculous” healing. I decided then and there I would henceforth make homeopathy my go-to health modality. And by the way, the watermelon never returned and I went on to nurse my two healthy children.
As I said, it’s obviously the reason that song popped into my brain this morn. My sleepless night was another reminder for me that homeopathy works. My itchy spot is now barely a memory. Homeopathy has saved my bacon more times than I can count.
Tune in.
Janet Bernson 