Backache after Bereavement

"I felt battered when she died... like being in a car accident"

Kath sought help for backache and sciatica after her parents had died. They had been a close family and the circumstances around the death of her mother and then her father 3 years later, left her feeling anxious, unable to relax and with severe backache. The backache had started when her mother became ill, four years ago, gradually getting worse, her mothers decline continued.

Kath is an up-beat and very capable person, herself a therapist and she wasn't used to feeling so unwell and being unable to remedy the situation. She had put her own health on the back burner while she was doing everything she could for her ailing parents, but now it had all caught up with her.

Of particular distress to Kath was that her mother had died in a traumatic way suffering pain and sepsis before she died. This caused Kath a lot of heartache as she found herself unable to do much to relieve her mothers suffering and also, she lived a fair distance from her parent's home so was unable to be with them as much as she would have liked.

After her mother died, her father became ill. Kath and her sisters felt unable to tell their father how difficult mothers' death had been as they felt it would give him more distress. As he was now quite elderly and his memory was going, they felt the best thing would be to keep him as happy as possible during his illness.

"I felt bruised inside"

​​The backache continued to worsen during this time and Kath took Arnica, which is a great homeopathic remedy for sore pain and bruising, however, on this occasion it did not have much effect. She said she felt bruised on the inside as well as the outside.

After her father died, Kath thought that eventually her health would return but that was not to be the case. Despite trying all avenues to improve her back pain, including seeing her GP and using painkillers, Kath's back problem remained largely the same.

The first remedy I gave her was Natrum Muriaticum. This is a great grief remedy and as Kath was still suffering from grief over the loss of her parents this remedy was called for. In most cases of illness following bereavement, Nat Mur (short form for Natrum Muriaticum) would be given or another similar grief remedy if better indicated.

When she came for her follow-up Kath said she felt better in herself and had more energy. She was having lots of dreams about the past and her Grandmother and felt she could hear her Grandmother talking to her and reassuring her. It was a comforting dream. She was feeling more tearful than before and able to express her feelings of loss through crying.

However, her backache whilst a little improved was still very much a problem.

Second layer of the onion

​In Homeopathy, we talk about peeling away the layers of an onion. So in the case of Kath, the top layer was the grief that she was suffering as a result of her parents death. The Nat Mur had helped to address this as she was now able to express her withheld grief as indicated by the dreams she was having and her ability to cry more easily. So although her back was not yet as good as it could be, we had to remove that top layer of the onion, or "dis ease" in order to reach the heart of the problem.

Now I could give Kath her next indicated remedy which was Sepia. This was because she had felt angry with the hospital who she felt had abandoned them, by not providing the care her parents needed. She also felt guilt because she wanted to do more to help but could not. Sepia is very much a women's' remedy. Some men do well on this remedy, but mostly it is for women. A key aspect of Sepia is women who are forced to do things which are against her intentions or her own desires. She has been dominated and not allowed to have her own way. In Kath's case the treatment of her parents and the fact that she could not help them in the way she would have liked, also other family issues that had arisen during the time of their illness, had led to her feeling at odds with herself and disempowered.

She phoned me three days after having taken the remedy to say that initially, for a few hours, she felt worse. Then the following morning, she could put her feet on the floor as she got out of bed for the first time in ages. We decided that the remedy had begun to act and I asked her to wait for more improvements which would surely come.

"Better than I have been in years"

On her next follow-up, which was 4 weeks later, she reported that she felt better than she had done in years. The sciatica pain went, and had not returned. She also felt that something had shifted in her life and she felt more free than she had done in years. She was now happy in herself and able to enjoy life to the full again.