Sweet Dreams

Stephen seemed quiet. A bit too quiet for an 11 year old boy. Clearly he was uncomfortable being in the office. Not in an antagonistic way. No it was more an underlying fear.

A glance at the intake form confirmed my impressions. In order the complaints were

At 5 years of age Stephen had a viral pneumonia caused by Coxsackie virus.In the bargain he also suffered a bout of cerebellar ataxia. Thankfully neither have ever been repeated.

Also at 5 years of age his tonsils overgrew their welcome and were removed. Apparently they may be growing back.

Sleep has been a lifelong struggle. Stephen must be exhausted to easily get to sleep. The first year of life he would sleep for no more than 3 hours at a stretch and then be up for a full hour at least.

Waking was not pleasant. He would wake crying hysterically but after a while could be appeased by being held.

When walking was in the repertoire he would walk himself to exhaustion in order to sleep. Once  accomplished he would fall into a “dead sleep”.

4 or 5 nights per week he will be wanting his parents to sleep (yes even  at 11years old).

It is at night that his anxiety really presents itself. He will need to sleep between a person and the wall. He needs the safety.

Stephen needs to calmly be read to at night. He gets very nervous about fires ⁽¹⁾ and robbers⁽³⁾.

He fears the robbers will come in and kill  his parents. He fears his parents will leave him in the middle of the night⁽³⁾. He can get “hysterically crazy”about this. There have been times when he was found hidden under the covers petrified.

Well once he does get off to sleep you would hope the fun and games are over but no!

Stephen wakes at 4 am. Once up he marches to his parents bedroom to ensure their presence at which time he will snuggle in with them.

He perspires from the cervical and shoulder areas at night. As far as the room goes he prefers the environment on the coolish side for his evenings activities.

Now for some odd reason at this point in the interview I turned to mom and asked if there was anything of note which occurred during her pregnancy. To my surprise I was knocked off my feet by the story that followed.

At around the 31 week mark mother of the child was afflicted by the aforementioned Coxsackie B virus resulting a case of viral meningitis that seemed to recur 3 times!

During this illness the mother became very anxious. She developed a very particular fear of ghosts at night. It was as if she was visited at night by the spirits of patients who had recently died in hospital. In response to these visitations there was a strong sense of “how horrible to die alone in this cold room”.

The child then gestating-our Stephen-was later afflicted by this same virus that gave him pneumonia and rendered him unable to walk for one week due to cerebellar ataxia.

He tends to apologize a lot⁽³⁾. He wants to please everyone. The moods of his parents affects him profoundly-he will weep, get anxious, try to please-depending on their mood(remember his night time behavior).

He is quick to tears if the issue is unfairness.

History of Molluscum. Eczema can occur in patches.

There is a history of sensitivity to the brightness of the sun as a child.

Natrum muriaticum 200 was given (2 pellets as a dose) September 08.

Follow up one month later. That first night Stephen woke at 3am! That is one hour earlier than usual. 2 days later he actually got into a fight at school. This was unheard of because he was normally so quiet. It was unusual for him to react angrily.

From then on until last week he slept well.

In general, however he is much calmer and more confident.

I repeated the remedy.

It was only today that I saw them again. Last week after no more doses the problems partially relapsed. I increased the potency to a 10M. Let’s see what happens now.

It seems, I am told that in their home I am referred to as “the sleep doctor”. Normally I hear this title bestowed to me after delivering a lecture. This one I like.