A Case of Anxiety and unexplained Vascular and Neurological Symptoms of the lower Legs
Patient is a 55 year old female health care professional. I presented this case at the Annual BC Naturopathic Convention in October 2010. It is a great example of the connection we had to nature on a deep level. It is written in the patient's words.
As a very young child, I spent a lot of time looking out the window, looking beyond, spacing out. My earliest memories are of sitting at a picture window at the edge of the sofa staring out.
I grew up in a large family with a lot of discord. I was the youngest of five children. I remember siblings coming and going, my mother going out. It was like a movie. I wasn’t included, felt left out. They’d go off skiing but I’d be too young to come along.
But our maternal grandmother lived with us and spent a lot of time with me.
There has been a lot of sadness in my life. I spent twenty years working with a female psychiatrist. She was like in angel in my life.
My parents didn’t get along at all. My father had a bad temper and he took it out on my oldest brother. He beat him and we were witnesses. It was like living in a war zone. My father saw me as a little princess. I became very vigilant about my surroundings, very observant. I was always a bit on edge growing up. There were terrible fights at home, the police would come, would take away my brother at one time, and to the hospital at other times.
I escaped as soon as I could. I left school at sixteen or seventeen and worked. I went back at nineteen and finished high school.
I suffered terrible depression in my teen years. It started with the onset of menses when I was twelve. I didn’t want to get out of bed in grade seven. I had severe depression for a year. Then I moved out to live with my aunt and grandmother for a year. That fortified me. After that I never had that paralyzing depression again.
I’ve been an activist most of my life, always found solutions. But I’ve also been depressed and angry, and a bit lost.
When I met my husband at nineteen it was very helpful for me. He was such an anchor, kind and gentle. We’ve been married thirty-one years, but now the stress started again. I am thinking about leaving him.
My husband is a very intelligent man, a professional, but he never had a good sense for business and is not suited to be in positions of authority. He did well the first few years of practice but since then has really struggled. There have been huge financial worries. This has been a theme ever since. We moved to BC from Ontario a year ago and he has basically not worked since. All the responsibility is on me.
I have problems with my legs. My feet and legs turn red. It looks like I’m wearing socks. They are red and even purple-ish. I have had a lot of testing. I’ve been told it’s a form of Raynaud’s Disease. I’ve had this for ten or fifteen years. My feet will swell when they become warm. It is worse with stress.
I also have an eruption on my forehead. The doctor calls it milia.
I’ve seen many dermatologists and estatitions about it, there is no treatment.
 
As an infant, I almost died of SIDS twice. But my mother felt it and came and
shook me, saved my life.
 
I had eczema as a baby. It started on my buttocks, went down my legs. And later
to my feet. Then it was gone at puberty.
 
I have dreams of my legs being paralyzed. I am driving and have to stop the car,
but Ican’t get my foot on the break. Or I am in danger and my legs won’t move to
get me out. I feel anxious and scared. I felt like that when I was little. When things got
bad with the fighting, I’d jump in to pull my brother and father apart.
 
I am an activist. If things need to be done I do them. It’s ready, aim, fire. I go into
action, jumping in, I feel the adrenaline. I am charged. I am ready to pounce.
Jumping into the fray. It’s very primal, animalistic, like a wild animal, hyena.
Rawrrrr rawrrrrr. Rawwwwr. (Makes a claw sign with her hands.) I go at it full
force. It’s a reactive thing.
 
It’s very primal, like security, safety.
 
The tendons at the back of my knees are screaming at night. Rawrrrrrr, rawrrrrrr.
They go through cycles. I want deep massage on those tendons. I want
someone to just pull the tendons out. It is a gruesome thing, in the fiercest
way. Get in there and PULL PULL PULL! I feel really angry and pissed off.
I am just mad,and I want something to happen.
I have no patience. I want my husband to get going!!! Him and I are so opposite,
he’s ready, ready, ready/ its hard for him to activate.
 
In my twenties when I first started dating my husband, I’d ask him to massage my
legs all the time.
 
I’m always holding his back. But this feeling is always there (the rawrrrrr feeling).
I try to control it. In the past, I’d occasionally just lash out and get angry.
 
I don’t want this level of stress any more.
 
My legs – cats – hyenas - wild dogs. The teeth of a hyena. I am terrified of
hyenas.
That’s the feeling in my legs.
I also feel it in my jaw. Like large teeth. Pouncing, just ripping through something.
 
I feel like pouncing out of my skin. This is the flip side of me.
Hyenas. It started with the jaw, their legs. It’s very frightening. I also have a fear
of spiders.
 
I have dreams of flying. It’s beautiful, I am not fleeing. I am riding the wind, and
looking down on everything. It’s effortless. I’ve had these most of my adult life.
 
Q: Effortless?
 
I am done with all this doing-ness. I’ve done a lot of hard work. It is out of
balance. I want to make a shift into ease, but its not clear how. I want to live
gently. I don’t want to feel like I have to push all the time in all areas. In
relationship, with money… I don’t want to be the conductor any more. I want to
let go. Surrender.
 
Play more. Go along the beach, free and easy, with a kite. When you have a
kite, you have all the time in the world. You wait for the wind.
 
I would like to observe. I do a lot of observing with my work. It is not stressful. It
is a curiosity. I am just seeing what comes up.
 
As a child it was a different kind of observing, a vigilance, fear. Observing all
the time. My parents. What was going on. The new answers. When it’s
observationwith fear it is hugely different. I do that with my husband a lot, being
vigilant. I observe him for mood, his energy level. His activities.
 
I was very sure that I could make a difference as a little girl, when those were big
men, jumping in and separating them. I felt empowered, too.
 
I feel enormous responsibility to pay the mortgage, etc. My husband is not
involved in that.
 
Q: How do you feel about the sun and moon?
 
I love, love, LOVE the feeling of the sun. It goes into my whole being. It warms
my bones. The brightness lifts my mood a lot. I lived in Arizona for five years as a
child, that was very good. It influences a lot of my choices and decisions. I would
follow it around the globe if Icould. I bought my home based on the sun. I wanted
the maximum amount of sunlight to come in. When the sun goes down I feel like
going to bed.
 
I am not a night person. I am best in the morning, most clear, most productive. At
night fears arise, I get very anxious. It was worse when I was younger. Perhaps it
has to do with the trauma in my family. At night things would go badly in my
family. 
 
I like spaces that are open, not heavily forested. Rolling hills and open meadows
Of just grass. Great expanses. I love Montana. Undulating hills, grass, and eth
big sky.
 
She had a lot of nausea and vomiting with her two pregnancies. She loves food
She likes meat, it makes her feel satisfied, good.
 
Analysis: This is a woman who grew up in a high conflict family and has taken on
a lot of responsibility in her life, including intervening in acute physical violent
interactions between her father and brother and bearing the financial
responsibility for her family for over 30 years. She is tired of this and wants to
have space to play and be at ease. In these aspects the case is similar to the
previous Eagle case (The case of the caged heart) . She has dreams of flying and
of her legs being paralyzed.
 
She has a fear of hyenas, wild dogs and cats or lions and loves the sun, which
made me think of a vulture. Vultures compete especially with hyenas over prey and
get chased and sometimes eaten by them. Of interest is that she has problems
 with her lower legs as well as her forhead. Vultures have bare heads, probably
 to reduce risk of infections from working in carcasses and they urinate onto their
 legs to disinfect them.
 
 Plan: Vultur-g 6CH (This is actually Andean Condor rather than an African or Turkey vulture)
 
August 6th
 
Vultur- g 6CH since July 22nd od.
 
By the 26th experienced a lot of heartburn, radiating up both sides of her neck
and into her jaw, like she had when she was pregnant. Increased anxiety at night
and insomnia.
But in the midst of all this I feel emotionally more stable and very calm. I have
even had moments of greater clarity about the issue with my husband.
 
A: Mild aggravation
 
P: Discontinue remedy.
 
August 19th
 
Vultur- g 200CH, one dose.
 
August 23rd
 
Mentally – feel great, emotionally stable but my body is speaking to me. I have a
Strong feeling of fear in my lungs. It is as if I am recovering memories from the
time I almost died of SIDS. I have a feeling of panic and of not getting enough
breath. Last night I had a dream of being a fish and I was pushing something with
a team of other fish, but Iwas in the outside lane, getting squeezed out. There
was not enough room for me in my lane, and I had to make a decision. I knew I
couldn’t hold that place. I had to breathe and be in a completely different way.
 
I knew that I could do it but not how. And that moment I felt I was going to die.
This feeling is about transition. It is all around the breath. I have to breathe in this
 different way. It’s all around death.
 
When I woke up my right chest and lung were hurting and I had this intense fear
of dying. I feel like I am accessing deep cellular level of this long standing fear
 and anxiety. 
 
I am allowing myself to breathe more deeply. I am not paralyzed by it. I am
Moving through it.
 

FU September 10 (three weeks after Rx)
 
Now I am sleeping better. I have had the tightness behind my knees for only one
night. I feel as if I am not going too fast or too slow, just the right speed. I feel
less stuck.
 
My feet are perhaps not as red. I feel calm even though there is a sense of
change. Overall less anxiety.
 
Dreams: Of making a dreadful mistake. I’ve made a decision and am unable to
go back. My mother and sister are saying: “What have you done?”
 
I have done too much. I don’t want to do that much any more. But I ask myself –
is it true that I do too much or is it just something I am imagining in my head?
Did I do my best?
 
Not doing enough?
 
That would be wrong. I would not have done my best. I would not have been
responsible, I’d have been lazy and that’s just not acceptable. I have a strong
sense of fairness towards everyone. It is a value I was given as a child. I
remember when I was 10-11 years old I cut the grass which was my chore and
my brother said: “She does not finish what she starts.” I was so hurt. I felt guilty,
that I was not pulling my weight. I’d rather do more than my share.
 
This plays out over and over with my husband. I have always made all the major
decisions, buying property, dealing with staff, doing all of the banking, the
mortgage etc.
 
He would let things get wildly out of control.
 
He has told me he would be better off without me – why am I living with a man
 who sais that to me? I want him to take responsibility. I just keep working and
 trying and I don’t know when enough is enough.
 
I’m afraid I would not be loved and that would be terrible. I’d be a bad person, not
good enough to be loved and alone of course. Bad and lazy, nobody would love
me.
 
How would that feel?
 
Agony, I’m shriveling up. Intolerable. I would not know what to do if I did not have
the love of my kids and friends.
 
A: Positive response. Her dream reflects her inner state perfectly, the fear of
making a mistake etc. She is clearly shouldering what most people would
 consider excessive responsibility, but is not sure if it is true or not. A sense of
 questioning of reality. Overall less anxiety, foot symptoms are less, less feeling
 of being paralyzed.
 
P: Vultur-g 200 CH
 
Email feedback September 22, 2010:
Overall feeling less anxiety, sleeping better, legs better, still trying to decide
whether to leave husband. No dreams of flying.
 
Follow-up October 22, 2010
Patient feels she has reached a crisis point in her relationship with her husband, not sure if related to the remedy. She realized she had to focus on what was working in her marriage and be thankful for it. This was tough for her, she almost left him. She is realizing she has a choice of how to view this.
"I chose life, I chose love. Once this happened it shifted my perception. I am loving and appreciating what IS.
 
"I have a lot of fear in my dreams. Last night I dreamt I was on top of a very tall building, all alone, afraid of the height, on the edge there.
 
"I have an intense fear of spiders, some came into my office.
 
Her legs are much better, there is no redness and she has not had the tight,
'grrrr' feeling, her jaw also feels better. There is a bit of tightness after bicycling but it does no spin into anxiety as before.
 
"I don't want to scream anymore. I can be aware of it and not spin out.
 
Some of her fears are heightened lately, a feeling of a lump in her throat, her thorax is tight, heart can flutter, she feels as if she is on alert.
 
"I have a fear of dying, things are not safe. A scary way of dying, I want to run, move, something from outside is coming, it's bigger than me. I feel overwhelmed. I lock all the doors when I come home, I feel vigilant about my surroundings, but it is nothing like I felt in my 20s, it was very severe then. It's just worse in the last while, and worse with spiders.
 
In her 20s she was paralyzed with fear at times.
 
But she has not had any dreams of being paralyzed as before the Condor remedy.
 
Plan: I decided to give Aconite 50MK one dose. In retrospect I should maybe have repeated the Vultur-gryphis.
 
Follow-up July 12, 2010
 
She had a bad virus with sinusitis for three weeks. She had acupunture for this which was helpful, but has been feeling depressed ever since. The depression would be worse the day after the acupuncture each time, and now it is hanging around.
 
She was down and out with the infection, a bad flu with a very deep sinusitis. She missed more than a week of work, very rare for her.
 
Since then she has been feeling emotionally raw, she feels like all her emotions are on the outside from her mid-sternum to below her navel. She feels as if she has to protect her belly. This sensation is familiar from her childhood, a feeling of not being seen, not nurtured and cared for, forgotten.
 
"If I could only escape, everything would be fine, this is the feeling. Go to a different environment. Someplace hot and sunny. Palm Springs, go to California in a convertible, complete freedom. No itinerary, free and easy, go and get lost - in a good sense."
 
"But the escaping had a flip-side - it's lonely, too. But I do want to get away from all the responsibility."
 
Before the flu she had a lot of tension and pressure, it just kept mounting and mounting. Her husband is working now but not making a financial contribution to the household, there is not enough profit.
 
Her legs are not too bad.
 
Assessment:
She clearly relapsed after more stress, a bad flu and potentially the acupuncture treatments. Symptoms are clearly Condor.
 
Plan: Vultur gryphis, 200 CH.
 
(The case continues, an update will be added in the next few weeks.)