That excruciating pain in the Tail-bone !

We all are used to getting treated with allopathic medicines. Antibiotics, analgesics, anti-inflammatory medications, or anti-allergic tablets appear commonly in our conversation whenever we talk about treatment modalities. In there, the treatment is targeted more towards the diseased organ or tissue, thereby trying to eradicate the pathology.

Homeopathic system of healing, one of the most popularly practiced holistic healing technique around the world, differs from the modern medicine in many areas. The main aim of homeopathic treatment is targeted towards restoring the constitutional balance within, to aid in setting the body-equilibrium. It does not target the organs or tissues, unlike allopathy, but focuses on the inner balance of the health-equilibrium. It is achieved by carefully selecting an appropriately suited remedy for an individual patient, considering the various characteristics at the physical, emotional and intellectual sphere.

A professionally trained homeopath knows how to ascertain these qualities and arrive at the most-similar remedy selection by analyzing them.

This makes it a challenging situation to select the most-similar homeopathic remedy for each individual case. Though the clinical diagnosis happens to be same for two patients, the remedy selected might be completely different for both of them. Each case thus raises the interest-quotient and a homeopath needs to be highly alert not to miss any significant characteristic symptom from the narration of the patient.

Though causative factor ranks the highest in remedy selection process, one may come across a case that can demand overlooking the causative modality and prescribe on the characteristic particular symptom. This following case will demonstrate exactly the same.

Case introduction:

Mrs SM, a 44 years old lady, visited Swaroop Clinic for the complaint of severe coccydynia, which involves pain at the tail-bone. She was suffering for almost 8 years with that excruciating pain along the tail-bone. The pain had started after a fall on a hard surface while climbing down a hill. The pain was aching kind and on prolonged sitting in one position, for more than half an hour, she used to get intense burning in the affected region. It had made her difficult to travel long-distance. She couldn’t even sit comfortably in a movie-theatre, where the seats have sufficient cushioning, and thus could not enjoy movies or theatre performances which were her favourite hobbies. She have had taken treatment from few orthopaedic surgeons, who had prescribed her some analgesics, but without any significant relief. One of our patients had referred her to Swaroop clinic for trying homeopathic treatment for the first time.

Remedy selection:

Hypericum was selected considering the causative factor of fall and possible injury to the nerve-endings. Incidently, hypericum is one of the most commonly indicated remedy for coccydynia.

Follow-up:

The patient was prescribed hypericum in different potencies and repetition patterns but there was no relief at all. After exhausting all possible combinations of hypericum, the case was reviewed for the presence of any significant symptom.

Burning pain, which is not usually documented, caught the attention and guided us to the selection of Apis mellifica. It is a remedy prepared with honey-bees and just like the bee-sting; it too represents an inflammatory process.

Apis was selected on the basis of the burning pain that gets aggravated by prolonged sitting. Apis given in medium potency, thrice a day, relieved the pain completely within a month.