Divine guidance during a rheumatoid arthritis flare-up

I just had a flare-up of my rheumatoid arthritis which I am trying to handle with homeopathic remedies.

On a side note, I want to mention that this flare-up occurred a couple of days after my first Corona vaccination.

Originally, I wanted to wait with the vaccination until next year (2022) until more would be known about side effects and whether it protects against the delta variant. But then I heard that we had the two school graduation ceremonies of my sons upcoming in July 2021 with many people gathered in closed rooms. Even though the Corona numbers were low here at the time, I considered these as potential superspreader events and started to worry.

When my employer had dates for vaccination left over, I made the spontaneous choice to get the first vaccination (with an mRNA vaccine) end of June 2021. Even though I would not be fully vaccinated yet for the graduation ceremonies in July, I thought it would provide at least some protection.

I have rheumatoid arthritis which I usually keep in check with homeopathy. Before the shot, the left knee was already a bit swollen and stiff. But 5 days after the first vaccination, the inflammation started to flare up. It became so bad that I couldn’t even ride my bicycle anymore. I am not 100% sure that it was caused by the vaccine but since it occurred after 5 days, I thought that there was probably a connection.

What to do about it? I searched for a homeopathic remedy. It is always a bit tricky to find the right remedy. There are many remedies for swollen knees. But I considered taking Lachesis since it had helped me a lot in the past and would loosely fit the situation in that the swollen knee was on the left side. I just wasn’t sure whether it would really work because in the past it hadn’t helped so much with pain in the big joints like the knees.

Then I recalled that just a day before the flare-up of the arthritis, I had seen small snake, a blindworm, on my path in the forest. Even though they are common here, to encounter one is a rare sight. Was that a sign that I was to pay attention to the snake remedy? I thought so and took the chance and tried the snake remedy Lachesis.

And thankfully the next day, my left knee started to become better.

When I took a walk, still worried whether things would be okay, I saw a t-shirt saying , ‘Never mind, everything will be alright’. And I took that as a comforting message from my guides for me.

After a week, though, the effect of the remedy wore off and the knee started to worsen again. And when I tried Lachesis the second time, it was effective, but unfortunately the effect didn’t last long enough. So, this isn’t over yet. Now, I’ll have to try some other remedy tricks to get Lachesis to work again.

In my experience, guidance shows up in many forms, not only as intuition, but also in signs along the way, be it a rare animal or something writte on a t-shirt. I think of the world I see as a giant organism which is animated by an unseen hand and which talks to me and I pay attention to anything unusual which I encounter on my way.

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Disclaimer: The information in this blog post is no substitute for professional medical advice. If you have a medical condition, consult your doctor or another qualified healthcare professional.

From rheumatoid arthritis to homeopathy

In 2003, only three weeks after the birth of my first child, I fell ill with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). It started with a severe acute attack with pain and stiffness all over the body spreading out from my neck and shoulders.

This was very difficult to handle since I had to take care of a newborn. I was hardly able to take my child out of his crib for nursing at night.

RA cannot be cured by conventional medicine. Physicians can only suppress the inflammation with drugs with more or fewer side effects. I got cortisone and sulfasalazine which made me fat and tired.

I was disappointed with conventional medicine and didn’t want to accept the statement that this disease cannot be cured.  Therefore, I sought help in alternative treatment. After trying various paths (massage, acupuncture, bioresonance therapy, nutrition, vitamin supplements, etc.) without success,  I ended up with homeopathy.

I vividly remember the first time I got a homeopathic remedy. “Let them dissolve on your tongue,” said the doc as he gave me two white sugar globules for my RA. “I won’t tell you the name of the remedy so you won’t be tempted to look it up. See you again in six weeks.”

I headed home and observed my physical reactions.  There was a marked improvement the next days. The veil of heavy lethargy was lifted and the joints were not as stiff anymore.

But – what was that? Blue spots all over the body! Like bruises but not painful. No way that I had bumped into that many tables without noticing. “Geez, you look like you are bleeding internally,” said my husband. “You better get your blood coagulation values checked!”

The bruises faded after a few days. Six weeks later at the next appointment, the physician told me, “Blue spots that look like bruises? Yes, this is a so-called ‘proving symptom’ of the remedy I gave you. Actually,  it is a good sign that the remedy was a good match. I gave you potency 200C of a snake poison, Lachesis.”

In order to understand my bafflement, one must know that a 200C potency is so highly diluted that it contains no molecule of the original remedy anymore. Then why does it have any effect at all?

It is not clear how homeopathy works.  But there is no way that these bruises could have been a placebo reaction. I became convinced that this alternative healing method was the way to go regarding my RA.

During the following three years, I became passionate about homeopathy. I read many books, took a couple of classes, and learned a lot about it.

Before the disease, I was into dancing. It was my passion. I danced about 5 times per week, competitive Latin and ballroom dance. But there was no way I could dance with this disease.  I was desperate since I had derived so much joy from dancing. I thought, ‘I can’t dance anymore. How can I ever be happy again?’

I was confident, though, that I could handle the RA attacks with homeopathy, and I decided to have another child.

In 2004, just before the birth of our second child, we moved into our house. With two children and the new house, life became even more busy.

My health was getting back to sort-of-normal or at least bearable.

Even though homeopathy did not completely heal me, I was able to leave away the conventional medicine entirely and rely solely on homeopathy for the treatment since 2010 (which was seven years after the sudden onset).

Later, I wondered what this phase had been good for. There was a lot of physical and emotional pain. But was it also good for something? Eventually, I settled for the following conclusions: (A) I got used to watching the reactions of my body closely, how it would react if the homeopathic remedy was changed.

And (B) I got familiar with the fact that something non-material as a homeopathic high potency does have a remarkable effect, even if no one knows how this can be explained.
In retrospect, I think that homeopathy served to crack my world-view open.

Using the metaphor of the hike, my path had become rocky due to the pain. I had tried various side roads which all came to a dead end. But when I came upon homeopathy, that was a turning point in my path. I became aware that there was a mountain which I had not seen before.

In 2006, I was in my mid-thirties and had achieved my goals in life:  a job in the corporate world, a husband, two children, and a house.

‘Life could go on like this,’ I thought. But again, life had different plans for me.

***

This post is part of a series about my spiritual journey (table of contents).

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