Homeopathy... surprise!

I walked out of the consult room after discussing a possible treatment plan for our patient with a constellation of symptoms. I was the assistant today and we were about to suggest some frightening laboratory tests

Angela rushed around the corner, her white coat filleted behind her. "Dr. Brigsby is looking all over for you!"

"Wha?" I turned around, as did my primary acting doctor, the resident and doctor, (who happens to be my hero).

"He's looking all over for you," she continued, out of breath, "You had an appointment and he's looking for you."

...
um...
I looked at my hero. A-a-a-awkward. Did I mention that I had just applied for his mentor shift for next year, which is extremely difficult to get? He grinned. Oh God, what does that mean.

So, I went back to the room trying to process, let go of my patient, (I'm only an assistant, but I'm still invested in my patients), decide between looking like an idoit for leaving the shift, (though now I wasn't necessary as that was our last patient), or completely inconsiderate by canceling an appointment that I had to be waitlisted on for a month and a half?

"Just go," whispered an upperclassman, "He doesn't care."

I asked if I could go and he said I wouldn't get the clinic hours for being there that day. I went downstairs, taking off my white coat and struggling to change into a patient.

Dr. Brigsby smiled warmly as I entered and apologized profusely, "These things happen, these things happen - go ahead and have a seat" He has a bushy well groomed beard and glasses that sit half way down his nose. "O.k., let's get started. What would you like to tell me?"

"...about me or why I'm here or..."

"Just tell me."

Ah yes, I know this strategy. Usually, a patient will tell you everything you need to know within the first 5 minutes if you just let them run with it. They'll cover most of the structured questions you would have asked and very often questions you wouldn't have thought to ask. For homeopathy, the things that are important are the aspects of life that the patient finds are emphasized in their mind. It's crucial to see how a patient looks at a situation.

So, I told him about seizures, night terrors, my triggers, what it feels like and the intense, worse-than-death terror that paralyzes me right before I lose consciousness. I told him about growing up in my non-ideal situations, but what I found surprising is that he didn't want to know what injustices happened to me but how I reacted to them, how I felt about them. He wanted to know about the bed I used to hide under and draw on the underside of the cardboard bottom. He wanted to know where I went to cry and why. He wanted to know about my dreams and fears.

With all my studies of homeopathy in a classroom setting, it was a LOT different than being a patient. It is quite a bit more uncomfortable to have someone asking you for the first time how you felt when things were going on and "tell me more about that". Ack! What? I've never thought of how I feel about that or why I reacted like that.

So, after a little over an hour he said, "O.k., I think I have enough. Anything else?" (Which I think was more of a polite gesture being that he already had enough information).

I headed back up to the conference room where I tried to become a student doctor again discussing how bananas inhibit phospholipase and are contraindicated (bad for) people with asthma as a result.

I'm keeping in mind that he will see enough of me to get the best constitutional remedy. To think anything else would be self destructive because I think in homeopathy a bit of intention involved.