Psychology Of Cancer.
NATIONAL JOURNAL OF HOMOEOPATHY 1995 May / Jun Vol IV No 3.
Kulkarni, Bhargava, Dagaonker.
Cases.
` Staph / Ign / Stram / Bell.

"Look for it and thou shall find it" goes the famous saying. This is true in the field of medicine. Unless you are aware most of you will not explore. If you are not asking for a particular symptom, sign or disease entity, it will not come to your notice.

In this age of super-specialization and technological advances, we are trained to focus our attention to part of the patient coming under our jurisdiction, often forgetting that the part belongs to a whole living person, who may have problems with other parts of the body. If the patients complaint is not related to our special part, we can always write a note to a fellow specialist saying - "I have done my bit, now you do yours". We refer our patients as my case of gall bladder, I have a breast with brain metastosis, other day I operated a rectum, what would you think for a N1 neck so on and so forth. Our aim is to bring under control, the shadow on the X-ray or the abnormal blood test or the palpable neck node. We feel that once we have succeeded in doing this, the whole patient will then take care of himself since we have taken care of the cancer. Unfortunately many a time the patient returns after a few months with another shadow on the X-ray or other ... nearby. Once again our pursuit of the shadow starts with all our might.

Having worked with cancer patients for the past 25 years, we have found that we have to deal with the patient as a whole. We have to look into his mind as well as his cancer growth. More than 75 percent of cancer patients do have significant and obvious psychological disturbances. Fear, anxiety, depression, delusions are quite common. There may also be significant life event just prior to the onset of cancer. It may be in the form of death of spouse, death of a beloved child, retirement, family quarrels, financial loss, anxiety about health, problems of others in the family. Each patient reacts in his-her own special way to the above incidents. Reactions may not be uniform. The mental disturbances do have diverse manifestations but these are very specific for each individual patient.

I have experienced that if the physician can help these mental disturbance during overall cancer management, patients feel much better, they are cheerful and want to overcome their physical complaints. After all, a patient wants to feel better and our percentage tumor regression figures dont mean much to him if he keeps feeling miserable, sad, anxious and depressed. Here, routine prescriptions of tranquilizers and antidepressants do not help much. These medicines often induce much lethargy, drowsiness, dumbness and internal feeling of not being normal.

Over the last 10 years we have conducted various trials with homoeopathic medicines to supplement conventional cancer therapy. I personally witnessed some quick cures of certain simple non-malignant common diseases of my friends ten years ago as a result of homoeopathic treatments. This sparked off my interest in homoeopathy.

Recently, I heard Dr. Sehgal emphasize that treatment of persistent and predominant mental symptoms associated with any disease lead to better results in most of the disease processes. Hence for the past one year or so we have adopted his method to assess and treat patients.

Following are some of the actual case reports to illustrate the above points. All these patients had received conventional cancer therapy either previously or simultaneously. Homoeopathic drugs were used only as an adjuvant therapy after obtaining informed consent from each patient. During history taking, each patient was encouraged to come out with all his physical problems, mental feelings and life events, if any. It is amazing to note that given the sympathetic hearing and ample time, most of the patients can come out with very significant incidents and feelings peculiar to their lives. After carefully recording these mental and physical symptoms, appropriate homoeopathic remedy was quickly found by the help of the computer which has been in operation in our department since the last one year.

CASE 1:

BJ (Reg - 560093). Female, 35 years. Glioma R thalamic area, presented with stuporous talk, headache, vertigo, anorexia, drowsiness, progressive over past 6 months. Homoeopathic assessment - Patient unmarried. Angry and haughty. Soon after the death of her mother in Dec. 92, the symptoms related to her brain tumor started. Radiation treatment was started on 5-10-93. Staphysagria 30 was given simultaneously as the homoeopathic remedy. Within two weeks there was about 75 percent improvement in her headache, her talk was coherent and relatives noted that her angry spells had reduced.

CASE 2:

DP (Reg 365091) Male 60 years. A known case of Ca Prostate with bone metastasis. Treated initially in may 1991 with excellent remission. Patient returns in June 93 with c-o pain in the back and knees, weight loss, anorexia and depression. Analgesics and hormone therapy did not help. Pain worse in Oct. 93. Homoeopathic assessment revealed that the patients married daughter was murdered by a household servant in Jan 93, which obviously gave a tremendous mental shock to the patient. Radiotherapy was started in Oct 93 for painful metastasis in right femur. Ignatia 30 was given as a homoeopathic remedy.

Significant improvement in anorexia, insomnia and depression was evident within one week in addition to radiotherapy.

CASE 3:

RC (Reg - 566093). Male 69 years retired as a govt officer ten years ago. Now does some consulting work. Slow onset of backache since 1991 progressing to severe Sciatic type of paid in left hip in Sept 1993. X rays revealed metastatic bone lesions diffusely in spine and pelvis in addition to a carcinoma of lung. The patient was miserable with pain and unable to turn in bed. Diagnosed as a case of Ca Lung with diffuse bone metastases. Homoeopathic history revealed that patient was active, cheerful and enjoyed his work till sudden death of his married son in a car accident in 1990. The patients backache started after the incident. He was also anxious about the ill health of his wife. Radiotherapy started on 6-10-93 for pelvic bone metastases. Homoeopathically, Ignatia 30 was prescribed for his mental condition. There was a dramatic return of cheerfulness within four days. His sadness was reduced greatly. The backache although still present did not seem to bother him much.

Cases 1, 2, and 3 demonstrate grief reaction to be a significant mental disturbance.

CASE 4:

SS (Reg - 478093) Female 12 years. The girl had undergone a subtotal excision of a parietal lobe astrocytoma in brain on 25-8-93. Post operative radiotherapy was started on 31-8-93. She was depressed, fearful and had frequent headache during radiotherapy. Homoeopathic history revealed that she was having delusion of seeing a fierce black dressed bearded fakir following her on and off. She was scared. She used to scream at night during sleep. Stramonium 30 given her on 13-9-93 resulted in excellent improvement in one week. Her headaches had gone. The delusion of black fakir following her disappeared became very cheerful and started smiling. Radiotherapy was smoothly completed on 5-10-93.

CASE 5:

MP (Reg - 488093) Female eighty years. Sudden onset of giddiness, diplopia, ataxia, and tremors on 3-3-93 CT scan showed glioma at brain stem. Biopsy was not possible due to critical location of the brain tumor. Radiotherapy started on 6-9-93. The patient was uncooperative, crying, restless and throwing temper tantrums. Homoeopathic assessment revealed patient to be homesick, irritable and weeping when anything was refused to her. She gets dreams of ghosts very often. Ghosts frighten her in her dreams. She prayed for protection against ghosts. Belladonna 30 was given a chosen homoeopathic remedy on 25-9-93. Follow-up on 9-10-93 revealed that she became very cheerful and was all smiles. Her gait and co-ordination had improved greatly and now she could walk on her own. Ghosts had almost stopped visiting her in her dreams and she was no longer scared of them!

Case 4 and 5 reveal that there is a significant delusion and fear of being persecuted and seeing frightful people or ghosts in dreams. There are many more cases we can write about where we have looked for and then found significant mental disturbances. There are many cases where instances of retirement, family quarrels grief, disappointments, financial losses, insults, indignation, anxiety about other family members had led to peculiar mental disturbances correlating well with the progression of the cancer growth. Whether such mental shocks and disturbances are causative factors inciting factors, associated factors of cancer, we would not like to comment at present. What is certain is looking for such mental disturbance and treating them with adjuvant homoeopathy is beneficial and highly rewarding. Whether such adjuvant treatment would cause faster regression of cancer and longer remission would be subject of a long term randomized study.

Note: The above case histories are given in very simple and brief form to briefly illustrate how OPD patient too can be treated. In fact homoeopathic history taking is a very elaborate process requiring a deep study of homoeopathic philosophy coupled with ability for precise observation of the patient.

Suggested Reading:

1. Essay on Homoeopathic Philosophy by Stuart Close.
2. Introduction to Homoeopathic Prescribing by S M Gunavante.
3. Spirit of Homoeopathic by Rajan Sankaran
4. Re-discovery of Homoeopathy series of volumes by M L Sehgal.

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