HOMEOPATHY INSTITUTE of the PACIFIC

Never one to sit still, I soon called the clinic and was sent an application. I was volunteering within months, one afternoon a week, at the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center clinic. They said no, but they offered cards, and I thought it might be a good way to get more clinical experience.

At the clinic, we’re very lucky to have a wonderful staff on which to rely. The office manager, Shannon, has been indispensable in facilitating our clientele. There are case managers, doctors, physician’s assistants, nurses, and staff that keep the clinic rolling. Shannon lets us know various training sessions that may help us understand and broaden our knowledge of how to take care of our clients, appropriate conversation being key. The clinic is on the second floor, which boasts an outdoor patio and many offices and exam rooms. Maria heads the front reception area of the clinic, tending files and sending us clients she feels are good candidates. The street -level entrance serves as a sign-in place to secure a bed at a shelter for the night, take showers, wash clothes, and store belongings in lockers. There is also a phone available for local calls. People are almost without exception friendly, kind, and honest.


Here we are over 5 years later, and I’ve been so grateful for the experience. Over a year ago, Melinda McGee joined me (while working a full time job), and then Wanda Smith-Schick also joined the team, thankfully attending each week. These great women have given me a sounding board and helped formulate the structure we need to bring homeopathy to these people in San Francisco. Our work together has been invaluable. We discuss our cases and philosophy, often suggesting remedies where there may be a blind spot in the thought process of another. Having persons with differing backgrounds has been immensely helpful, too, because if we have open minds we can find the best way, not just the way we were taught.



Some clients appear as a cough in the waiting area, and when my office was just off the waiting area, I’d drag these unfortunates into the room and treat their acutes. I learned to look for the ‘slight aggravation’ - a look of fright on the face, a dash for the bathroom, then a slow turn-around. Or the look of terror while they search the room for a tissue, then hawk up a tennis ball. They’d smile and say, ‘Wow, I feel better, it works that quickly?’ During epidemics, such as with Swine Flu, you’d see the same story, and knowing the genus epidemicus gave me such a boost in helping to alleviate the suffering quickly. Generally, only those that had taken some other OTC drug or syrup where ones with fever, where the decongestant or antihistamine worked counter to the vital force. This I documented, but it was a fairly uncommon occurrence.

Many of our clients are drug and alcohol addicts, or homeless persons whose problems stem from an early life of abuse and/or grief, often both. Sometimes it’s just an earache or a rash or the flu. Many have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Some have come from prison and are looking for a different way to live. Almost all of them have one thing in common; their pain does not allow them to function in the way most of us take for granted. The rubric ‘Ailments grief’ is very common. Let me be clear; these lives are the result of something that created this disease early in life. It is not a choice that you would make willingly. They can be helped.

Bill was one of my first cases. He came in complaining of chronic diarrhea. His was a story of paranoia: the government was after him, following him! He might be arrested or murdered at any time. He looked, to the passerby on the street, to be a normal, healthy, 40-something-year-old man. As he spoke, he could have been calmly discussing a book review. He was neatly dressed, had no extraordinary indication that anything was amiss. Working his case, I came to Phosphorus, and gave him a 200C. I used a lower dose than normal, due to the chronic diarrhea. I did not want to aggravate a situation in a person who didn’t have easily accessible toilet facilities. I wholeheartedly subscribe to the mental plane disturbance needing higher potencies, and physical disturbance lower potencies. More than once I’ve given a 10M to start, a few times a 50M.

The following week I saw him in the common area, and he appeared to be avoiding eye contact. I went over and asked him how he was doing. He said, ‘I don’t know what you gave me, but it didn’t work.’ I asked him to explain. ‘I had the worst diarrhea for 5 days! But…it didn’t bother me.’ A look of surprise came across his face. As unlikely as it sounds, those were his words. I asked him if he remembered what I’d told him when I gave him the remedy. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s what you told me might happen! What was it you gave me?’ I explained I could not tell him, as it was my practice not to reveal the remedy. This comes from having clients rush down to the health food store and buy a tube, often mistakenly thinking a little is good but more is better. ‘Well, then, I can’t take it anymore.’ In true Phosphorus fashion, he had the delusion he might be poisoned. When I explained what had happened to his case manager, he was surprised Bill had even accepted the remedy. ‘You’ll never get him to take another remedy,’ was his comment. He was right, but Bill got an apartment within a month. I heard he was doing well and successfully stayed off the street. I do not attribute this turn around solely to the remedy, but I know his chronic diarrhea was gone.

To be sure, we’ve had our share of disappointments. I remember the staff bringing us an alcoholic man with acute alcohol poisoning. He cowered under his hood and mumbled until we found the remedy, his second dose. He sat up almost immediately and pushed his hood off, and started talking. He convinced me (I’m rather hard to fool) he’d be back the following week. Of course, we didn’t see him. About 2 months later, as I parked my car nearby, there he sat on the curb, with a bottle in a brown bag, three sheets to the wind. I went over to talk to him, but there was no convincing him to come back to the clinic. We sometimes get only one shot, and I felt we’d failed this man. We treated him for his present state, an acute alcohol poisoning, but did not have the chance to treat his chronic case.

Sometimes we’ll get a client and give them a remedy. We may be sure they’ll come back, but there is often an extenuating circumstance; an offer of a job in another city, a bed for a week, an unexpected offer of drugs from another, or something worse. We often don’t know why clients don’t return, but sometimes months later they will, with a good result or another relapse. It’s important not to be judgmental, to support them in their attempts. The last thing we want to do is make them feel they failed us - we aren’t the important ones.

Unfortunately, much of the normal information about a client is not available for use; when sleeping in a shelter, it’s common to have lights on during the night, and food is catch-as-catch-can. The client’s preference isn’t considered when it comes to the needs of the masses. This results in sometimes less than nutritious food, and these two necessities, sleep and food, can be an obstacle to cure. We do the best we can.

We often start a case with an Arnica 1 or 10M, or possibly Aconite or Hypericum, when the symptoms agree. The information is very clear in these cases. Frequently there is a mental component, a story of child abuse, but often with a sad twist; abandonment by one or both parents, or a parent remarrying an abusive spouse. Once I gave Arnica to a woman who had been repeatedly beaten and raped by her husband. He would appear out of the blue, maybe once a month, in the middle of the night. These visits were random, and she did not exhibit symptoms of panic until 2 years after she escaped him. It took her body that long to feel safe enough to exteriorize her fright. I gave her Arnica 1M for the broken jaw and other injuries, while I worked out the rest of the case, but when she returned later, she revealed sleeping 14 hours a day for 2 weeks, and having friends remark she must have had a face lift, or gone to a spa! Her panic attacks disappeared after this dose as well. After this case, I always search my analysis for trauma remedies. Last year, I treated a 61-year-old woman with Aconite. Everything that went wrong in her life traced back to when she was 18 or 19. Of course, she said she didn’t remember anything happening around that time, but it didn’t matter. Aconite was what was needed. Her agoraphobia lifted, and she began to rid herself of baggage from the past.

Sometimes there is a shocking revelation. Don shuffled in, and seemed annoyed at having to fill out paperwork. I asked him why he’d come to see me, and bruising my ego, he told me in order to see the dentist he had to see two other healthcare people. He was a veteran, didn’t want to talk, and didn’t want to reveal anything to me, and said he didn't have an alcohol or drug problem. I said, ‘you must have something that is bothering you.’ He showed me some lesions he'd developed, and where he thought he'd been bitten by what must have been a spider. He’d gotten an odd job cleaning out someone’s basement, where it was dark and damp. The hospital told him it was a brown recluse spider bite (and I’ve learned from Will Taylor - MD, marine biologist and homeopath - that’s a common ER response, but often untrue). There were lesions and edema in his legs below the knee, and a few lesions on one of his arms. I came to Ledum for him, as I expected, and he received a 1M. What I didn’t expect was that 2 weeks later, after the second dose (a 10M of Ledum a week after the first), as he was getting ready to leave he said softly, in wonderment, that he hadn’t been drinking for 8 days, which had never happened before. I asked him if that was a good thing or bad, and he said he didn’t know. I asked him if he wanted another dose, in the event he wanted to drink again. He hesitated. ‘Can you give it to me in an envelope, so I can have one more night of drinking?’ And I did. After he left, I went to the repertory, and there it was: Mind, Alcoholism – Ledum. It may have been one of 149 remedies, but it was the remedy he needed. Sadly, I did not see him again, because I would have loved to find out how he fared.

The common story we have seen in the clinic is the person with a particular ailment for which they seek help: stroke recovery, alcohol or drug addiction, high blood pressure, violence, ADHD, abandonment (often as an infant), back pain, constipation, panic attacks…the list is long. Often the situation that precipitates the homelessness is on the surface. Child abuse and sexual abuse are very common. They aren’t hidden symptoms; they’re revealed in the first 5 or 10 minutes. I’ve never seen this in private practice. I’m not sure why this is, but it is very helpful. It really brings home the idea that you must be sure you want to bring a child into the world, and that you are the caretaker of this vulnerable being. Most of these precious people would not be in this state if they’d been able to be cared for by their parent(s). It goes without saying, most of the parents were exposed to the same dysfunction they, in turn, passed on to their own children.

The ones that are ready to change come religiously. We do not discuss what they should and should not do with their lives, but we know when we’ve had success. We give them space to learn from their mistakes, and listen when they need to vent. It was hard not to bring them clothing or food in the beginning, but we want to encourage independence and self-reliance. They now have the tools they need to begin again, whether it’s self-confidence, shedding of the past miseries, strength to say no to an addiction, or the conviction that they deserve better.

Of the many people who make the clinic a success, I must particularly thank Dr. Ricardo Alvarez, the doctor running the Mission Neighborhood Clinics who agreed to my participation; he also got to see homeopathy firsthand by being my translator for one of our clients. The case was clear, but one symptom bothered me; pain in her back that did not fit the remedy. I explained this, and asked him to ask her if there was a modality, something that identified when it occurred or what made it better. She stood up and demonstrated; there was pain on inspiration, and bingo, the remedy I had chosen was there in the rubric; I was thinking of back pain, but it was pain on breathing! This case was a particularly rewarding case, as she needed only 2 remedies in a year. He says of the clinic, “All patients seen are vitalized by protocol and evaluated by a Western medical provider as needed.” We find many don’t, or won’t, take their meds, and it can be serious if they do not have some form of intervention.

How do we know our clients have improved? Not just by how they’re releasing grief through weeping, or examining their lives, but by the single most instrumental act that above all shows you - they contact their often estranged family. There have been cases where the family has not heard from the client in decades. This contact shows us the client is moving on a deep level, so far above the common comment, ‘I feel better.’ We’ve now learned to take a more statistical view, and often get a 0-10 scale on most items discussed. Although we are there weekly, it is a very different setting from private practice; these clients zip through remedies quickly, and we must be unhesitating in our prescription of the next potency or prescription. Often a remedy will peel away the first layer, maybe mania or violence, to reveal the next layer, possibly depression or anger.

Now, in this period of economic difficulty, homeopathy has much to offer. Millions take these remedies daily, all around the world. These remedies we use at the clinic come from our private supplies, and cost very little in comparison to other treatment. It is common to have clients either on meds (SSRIs, BP meds, sleep meds, etc), street drugs or prescribed meds they may take, but often refuse to take. In most cases, we’ve found homeopathy to be effective and successful regardless, giving us hope for expanding our small circle into a larger population in the city of San Francisco and beyond. We highly recommend this work to anyone that feels they’d like to help the homeless or less fortunate. Views expressed in this article are Renita’s only, and do not necessarily reflect MNRC’s.

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