HTodayOct2007

WildAgain Wildlife Rehabilitation, Inc.

Down for the Count: An Adult Ear Infection

Homeopathy helps heal the skeptic
by Allan Casey
(As published in Homeopathy Today, September/October 2007)

When I first heard about homeopathy in 1992 I had my doubts. Okay, I was extremely skeptical. I enjoy scientific and quantitative endeavors; I like understanding how things work. I didn’t understand how homeopathy worked and doubted it could work at all—even when told that homeopathy has been around for 200 years and is used by millions around the world.

Over the next few years, I watched my wife, Shirley, and our veterinarians begin to use homeopathy in our wildlife rehabilitation activities. We had enough experience working with wildlife by then to know how long it would normally take for wild creatures to heal. With homeopathic treatment, many animals were healing faster and with fewer complications than with conventional medicine. This piqued my interest.
I even began to use Arnica montana for occasional bumps and bruises and Hypericum for those building project accidents when my thumb got in the way of the hammer. I had to admit, the remedies helped.
I liked how homeopathy supports the body’s ability to heal itself. I also liked the concepts of the minimum dose and finding a single medicine that matches the patient’s full set of symptoms, instead of using multiple medicines for different conditions. I appreciated that homeopathy is less invasive than many conventional medical procedures and that it has no harsh side effects. The more I studied homeopathy and the research behind it, the more I began to accept it. Not understanding how homeopathy works became less of a problem for me once I realized that there are also many unknowns in conventional medicine.
Even so, I still relied heavily on my conventional physician for most of my healthcare—until the one-two punch of an inner ear infection took my appreciation of homeopathy (and my willingness to seriously embrace it) to the next level.

Inner Ear Infection - Round 1

One morning in downtown Denver, I was leaning against the doorway to a colleague’s office discussing some issues of the day over a cup of coffee. Out of the blue, a wave of vertigo hit me, then left, and then returned. The intensity of the vertigo increased over the next five minutes, and I found myself having difficulty focusing on the conversation. In fact, I was about to fall over. My immediate task was to try to return to my office—hugging the wall all the way. Since I had ridden the rapid transit bus to work, I called Shirley to see if she could pick me up immediately. Luckily, she was available to make the 45-minute drive from our home in the mountains.
Forty minutes later, I gingerly made my way down in the elevator to meet her. The vertigo was intensifying, and a splitting headache and fever were developing. I got out to the street and hung on to a no-parking sign for dear life. Thankfully, she pulled up right next to me. As she opened the door, I literally fell into the passenger seat. Reclining the seat turned out to be a bad idea, as the many turns required to navigate our way out of the city brought on waves of nausea. With the seat upright and on a straighter highway, I began to worry about the 3,000-feet increase in elevation and the winding, up-and-down roads we would traverse on our way to our house.
Sure enough, about three miles from home, we had to stop the car as I leaned out and lost that morning’s coffee. When we finally got home, I crawled up the stairs, hugged the toilet a few times, shed the suit, and dove into bed with a major case of the chills.
What a relief to finally be lying still and not moving! Under the covers, I was also warming up slightly. As long as my eyes were closed, the vertigo seemed to subside. When I opened my eyes though, the room was constantly spinning, and at an increasing speed.
Never having experienced these symptoms before, I found them unsettling and wanted professional advice. Rather than drive back to Denver to see my regular doctor, we made the three-mile trip to the local urgent medical clinic with me holding a plastic bucket in my lap, just in case.
A quick consult with the doctor resulted in a diagnosis of “standard inner ear viral infection” and an IV plugged into my arm delivering saline solution. “I’ve already seen six other cases this week,” the doctor added. “Seems to be going around, especially with those on the early bus. Since it’s viral, plan on lots of bed rest, and increase your fluid intake. You’ll be fine in about 10 days.”
He was right; after a little over a week of feeling crummy, I was back at work. I also remember thinking that as much as I supported public transportation, sitting in a closed bus twice a day, five days a week, where germs are shared about as freely as friendly conversation is not without cost. Over the next year, Shirley and I would occasionally discuss my case of ear infection, wondering how homeopathy would have addressed the symptoms and outcome.

Inner Ear Infection - Round 2

I got my chance to find out about 15 months later. I was at home this time when the initial wave of vertigo hit—an immediate and vivid replay of the sensations I had felt before. Within five minutes, the same type of headache and chills were becoming apparent, as well as a growing sensitivity to light.
As I sat in the chair with my eyes shut, I remember thinking, “Wow! This must be what ‘rapid onset’ feels like!” As the intensity increased, I realized that this was probably the same type of viral inner ear infection as I had had before. It felt exactly like the last time. Since I knew the doctors had nothing to suggest but bed rest and fluids for ten days, I figured, “Let’s give homeopathy a shot.”
I called out to Shirley who brought paper, pen, repertory, and materia medica. She asked a bunch of questions, which I answered with irritable impatience (so she said). She also checked my temperature and found it was 100 degrees. Repertorization of my symptoms indicated the following remedy choices:

Shirley read aloud the indications for the homeopathic remedy Belladonna, and it sounded just like what I was experiencing: sudden and violent onset. It also included symptoms that I hadn’t mentioned, like my dry mouth and throat and throbbing ear pain. I put a couple pellets of Belladonna 200c under my tongue. My fever quickly spiked to 103 degrees and my symptoms were worse—for 10 minutes!
Then just as suddenly as they had appeared, all my symptoms were gone! I felt great—and very relieved! An hour and a half later, we were enjoying dinner out on our deck and watching the hummingbirds at the feeder. What a relief to have those debilitating symptoms for less than an hour instead of for ten days like the last time!
I haven’t had any ear-related problems in the decade since, thank goodness!

Moral of the story

In retrospect, I wish I had tried homeopathy the first time around. At that point, however, I was not ready to use it for my own health care, so I turned to the medical modality with which I had the most experience, trust, and comfort level. It was only after observing hundreds of successful cases in our wildlife rehabilitation activities and having used Arnica montana on minor conditions, that I felt confident turning to homeopathy for myself on something that felt more serious. It helped, of course, that we had the necessary knowledge and resources (repertories and materia medicas) to accurately work up a case, along with the basic remedies at hand.
It seems to me that anyone who has choices in their own medical care should understand the strengths and limitations of each modality and develop partnerships with certified/licensed health care providers skilled in those modalities. We consider homeopathy to be an essential part of our health care toolkit. The larger the toolkit we have available, the more options we can consider—and that can make a big difference!
And a final thought: it’s always a good idea to keep your immune system healthy, whether you use mass transit or not!

About the Author

Allan Casey is a management consultant who also serves on the local Parks and Recreation Board of Directors in Evergreen, Colorado. He and his wife have been conducting seminars around the US on homeopathy for acute wildlife conditions for wildlife rehabilitators since 1997. Allan particularly enjoys giving presentations on homeopathic research and comparing some of the “unknowns” in homeopathy and conventional medicine.