A Case of Kidney Stones

A few years ago, I treated a man who had suffered kidney stones daily for almost 20 years. His problems with kidney stones went back to his late teens. He’d tried every conventional treatment: medications, diet changes, shockwave therapy. But the stones kept coming back.

Listen to him describe his physical symptoms, which began at a time when he was under tremendous stress:

When I started getting kidney stones, it felt like my heart was beating from my kidney. I would pee pure blood two times in one day.  When I peed in the bottle, blood specks came out. The stones dragged and cut me up as they came out. The sharp points on the stone hurt. I could feel one right as it was coming out, slowly coming out, just scraping me. Sometimes they were too big to come out naturally. It's like they were holding on, not coming out. I had to go to E.R.

Hearing his stories reminded me of my time working in an emergency room. I can still see the patients who came in while passing a kidney stone. They writhed on gurneys in intense pain, the nurses rushing in with high doses of narcotics to calm them down.

I could feel my kidney pulsing. I could feel my heart beat in my kidney.  It always feels like a knife just poked right in there.

I knew there was more to his story beyond the excruciating physical pain. Always in homeopathic case-taking there is the outer story, the reality the patient lives, and the deep, inner story that produces their disease. It’s important to look at what was going on in a person’s life when their disease first shows symptoms. The outer reality often triggers something deep in the person’s inner life.

As I asked him more questions, his inner story emerged. His professional career had many ups and downs. He held a top position in his organization, with everyone looking up to him and depending on him. Like many at the top the corporate ladder, he had to work very hard to get there. He started by telling me about his early money struggles.

I think of where I was at in my life. I was financially broke, didn't have any money.   

He went on to describe a feeling that had dogged him all his life:

Nothing I did was ever good enough. If I walked into a room and people were laughing, I assumed they were laughing about me. I would internalize it,

I asked him how this made him feel.

Used. Of no value. I felt like someone was like putting a lot of pressure on me to do something; most of the time they had a motive but wouldn’t tell me what it was.

His feeling of being under pressure came up again at the end of our conversation, when he began to speak straight from the inner life of his disease. I asked him why people snap.

Pressure. Pressure put on themselves or by other people. Pressure to be something they are not, to perform at a level they are not capable of.   

What does it feel like to be under pressure?

Just like everything is closing in on you. The more and more pressure you’re under, either it will make you a better person and create a breakthrough in your life, or it will crush you.    

There emerged from his story images of stones, massive pressure and translucency. His feelings of worthlessness – and its opposite, immense value – struck me as particularly relevant. He talked about control, power, being used and using others for personal gain.

It’s the story of the diamond. Diamond is made of a common carbon, like the ashes in your fireplace, which through time and massive pressure becomes a brilliant, beautiful, translucent stone of immense value. A diamond’s value is maintained by the power and control of the cartels at the center of the diamond trade.

So I gave the man diamond in homeopathic potency. 

And it cured his kidney stones. At the first follow-up he told me, “When I took it, my whole body burned. My kidneys have not hurt since.”

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