Surviving A Death Sentence

The first thing I noticed about young Bhavesh was his fixed gaze. He stared at me, his eyes seeing, yet not seeing. As his mother poured her heart out, Bhavesh sat hunched in her arms, barely moving. He understood what we were saying but was passing our words through the filter of denial.

Judging by the look on his face, it was easy to tell that the nine-year-old was in shock. His unnatural stillness and glassy eyes spoke of sudden trauma, and around 20 minutes into the conversation, his mother confirmed my suspicions.

I call this case The Seven Faces of Bhavesh More – seven consultations, seven “different children” and finally, one happy kid. Watch the video.

But first, a brief background. Bhavesh was suffering from renal artery stenosis. The artery supplying blood to his right kidney was blocked, a condition diagnosed about 45 days before mother and child came to see me on April 1, 2009. Bhavesh was reeling under toxic build-up and water retention that had made him puffy and swollen. He also had severe hypertension as his blood pressure was a dangerous 180 / 120.

Bhavesh had also become extremely withdrawn. At home, he barely uttered a few words, preferring to lie in bed all day. He had also stopped eating – definite signs of shock and depression.

This is one of my more heart-rending cases. The boy’s mother fortunately gave me a wealth of detail and it was clear that Bhavesh’s symptoms had developed soon after an emotionally traumatic event. His father had died a few years ago, and in January 2009, his uncle, a “second father” to him, had collapsed and died in his presence.

A particularly sensitive and emotional child, Bhavesh went into shock, and the only way his vulnerable psyche could deal with the sudden and powerful sense of abandonment was to numb his mind and convert the psychological trauma into physical symptoms. Thus, his renal artery went into a spasm, placing the child’s life in jeopardy.

What followed was a tryst with allopathy. Bhavesh was hospitalised for a month and put on strong allopathic medication. It didn’t help. So they finally trotted out a line we so often hear conventional physicians say: “There’s nothing more we can do.” Doctors had given Bhavesh a death sentence.

I feel compelled to mention here that conventional allopathy serves only to suppress symptoms of disease and does not treat, much less cure, the root disease process that’s raging in the body. Coupled with Bhavesh’s serious condition, the drugs had actually made the nine-year-old much worse before he came to me.

‍What Is Miasm?‍

This was a classic, clear-cut case, illustrating three vitalaspects that determine disease in any individual. One, Bhavesh was a hypersensitive child with strong issues of abandonment. In homeopathic terms, he exhibited the classic Psoriatic Miassm or Psora. To keep this simple and easy to follow, I will sidestep homeopathic jargon to say that classic homeopathy broadly classifies all individuals into three basic Miasms: Psora, Sycotic and Syphillitic.

These three Miasms are classic patterns ofreaction to diseaseafter it sets in or the body’s defensive response to, say, infection or injury or any type of harm, both physical and mental. Miasm is nothing but the body’s way of trying to adjust to or even accommodate disease just so that you don’t succumb to it and perish. If that sounds odd, remember, the natural tendency of all life on earth is aimed at self-preservation, not self-destruction. In much the same way, a part of the body becomes diseased to preserve and save the whole organism.

Miasm is thus not disease per se but the body’s response to it. All this physiological, biochemical and structural jostling, pushing and nudging that follows, allows you sufficient time to regroup and strengthen your immunity so that you are restored to a state of good health.

If your immune response is not strong enough, the disease process continues to progress in a specific pattern determined by your Miasm. Now follow what I’m saying very carefully. Chronic illnesses are your body’s repeated but futile attempts to self-heal. And since your body will not give up without the best fight it can put up, you get trapped in a self-perpetuating disease cycle. So, successful or not, full marks for trying!

It is critical to note that your Miasm depends on your constitutional make-up – the basic matrix of homeopathic science. Despite what behavioural scientists say or staunch nurture-over-nature proponents believe, it is your constitution that influences aspects of your personality way beyond what conventional medicine and science is willing to admit.

Your constitution determines your basic nature both physical and mental including your temperament (sure nurture tempers but cannot alter it), personality and emotional responses. It also determines whether you take ill or not and the type of diseases you will develop and their progression – or your Miasmatic state.

‍“Changing Gears”

Having discussed one of the pillars of homeopathy – Miasm – let’s return to Bhavesh More. The child exhibited a second classic quality, one that makes it easy to understand why some people fall ill (even violently ill) fairly easily but also recover quickly, while it takes others years for illness to show up and a long time to recover.

We all fall on a continuum, whereby disease and / or its reversal to good health proceed at a specific pace. It’s akin to the gears in a vehicle. Haven’t we all heard of someone who was diagnosed with a ‘terminal disease’ and who perished within months after its detection? On the other hand, there are individuals who live for years, even as cancerous tumours grow and spread in their bodies.

There are also those who spontaneously recover from diseases such as cancer but why, oh why, does conventional medicine deny or dismiss the power of mind over body and “alternative systems” of medicines such as homeopathy!

The pace at which symptoms progress has nothing to do with how healthy or not your immune system is. Whereas immunity determines whether you fall ill or not, your ‘gear’ or pace determines how quickly you go downhill and / or return to a state of good health.

But what determines your ‘gear’ or pace of disease progression and its reversal? Once again, that would be your all-important constitutional make-up. Bhavesh was predisposed to “changing gears” very quickly, going from the Psora Miasm in almost fast-forward mode (45 days) to the Psoro-Syphillitic Miasm. That is, he shifted gears with alarming speed, from traumatic shock at his uncle’s passing to renal artery stenosis, a physically destructive stage resulting in his kidney malfunctioning (as opposed to experiencing all the nuances that would have taken him from shock to grief and sorrow).

‍Mind Over Body

There is a third reason I call this a classic case. Bhavesh’s kidney ailment illustrates the power of the mind in causing disease or how emotional trauma can lead to cellular shock.

This brings us to Bhavesh’s second setback, which is evident in his fourth consultation. Midway through treatment, I received a call from his mother saying Bhavesh had been rushed to hospital. He had suddenly started bleeding from his nose and had fallen unconscious. Doctors in hospital also discovered that his blood pressure had climbed to dangerous levels for the nth time.

When the child and his mother returned to my clinic after he was discharged four days later, Bhavesh looked puffy and swollen again. At the risk of sounding repetitive, I must say that the strong prescription of allopathic drugs he was given for the second time in four months had once again suppressed the disease process and caused Bhavesh’s health to regress.

(I must mention here that interventional medicine is definitely recommended in cases of medical emergencies, where homeopathy cannot help. But once the individual stabilises, long-term use of allopathic drugs is invariably suppressive and destructive)

But why did a child whose health was obviously looking up after starting on homeopathic treatment fall so violently ill a second time? Again, the clue came from his mother, who said that just minutes before his nose began to bleed, Bhavesh had had a bust-up with his grandmother who, in all her grandmotherly wisdom, had scolded him very severely. (Watch the video above)‍

Coming as the incident did just seven months after his uncle’s death, the perceived “shock” and “trauma” from another authority figure had sent Bhavesh’s mind into a paroxysm of pain for the second time and his body had reacted violently.

I decided to take a bold step now. I requested Bhavesh’s mother to halt the drugs prescribed by the hospital’s doctors and asked her if she could place her faith and trust in homeopathy. And she did. This was perhaps one of the best decisions the lady will have ever made, because just 17 months after she walked in carrying a child who had been handed a death sentence, Mrs More had her son back from the brink… healthy and happy.

Note: I cannot end this post without mentioning that the study of Miasms is included in the curricula of homeopathic colleges across India. But it is limited to the realm of theory. It was Dr Prafull Vijaykar and his predictive School of Homeopathy that took Miasms to the realm of the practical. Having spent a decade as both practitioner and faculty with the Predictive School of Homeopathy, it continues to be the most crucial tool I use to understand the nuances of my cases and a beacon while prescribing homeopathic remedies.

(Next: I’ll take the subject of Miasms forward and illustrate with images and videos from my practice, cases of individuals who have shifted Miasms on the rocky road to sickness and health.)‍