Hello Soma,
I've enjoyed your website, and was immediately attracted to it by a mere few words on a google search, your experience and competence came through right away.
I am a TCM practitioner and mother of said 18 year old young man. I am perplexed by a recurrent cough/cold pattern that P. has manifested since early childhood. In keeping with not treating one's own family, I took him, about 10 years ago, to a wonderful homeopath who prescribed phosphorous, successfully. For a few years he was ok. Unfortunately the homeopath passed away, and in the intervening years the problem has insidiously crept back. Time to act again, and I would love your feedback as you are trained in both medicines.
Here is the usual acute manifestation: fairly typical head cold onset with one day of chills and or fever, moderate nasal discharge, followed by 1 - 2 weeks of cough: single cough at a time, loud and startling, as if something is forcefully expelled, but very scanty expectoration. One such cough, followed by another and so on, at intervals of seconds to minutes. May evolve into hacking night cough, or just go on this way for several days, until finally it loosens and slowly dissipates. Morning and evening cough may well continue, in this single cough at at time pattern, til the next cold comes, often a month later. Concurrently there is often one red eye, and itchy. Another feature is that the cough may suddenly appear to be gone for a day or two, only to come back and pick up where it left off.
Chronic background presentation includes a very thin build, good appetite, hyperopia, emotional sensitivity, fatigue, tense jaw, clicking joints, anxiety, neck and shoulder tension, slightly enlarged neck nodes with no tenderness, very cold hands and feeling "out of it".
Also seasonal allergies.
Another TCm herbalist prescribed XIAO CHAI HU TANG last fall. Taking it for several months in granule form did improve the cold hands, fatigue and out of it but the cough/colds came as usual, 5 so far this winter. Additionally P. got mononucleosis in the middle of winter, but recovered fairly well in about 5 weeks. He did get secondary hepatitis and splenomegaly, which both retreated promptly, although the neck glands are still more enlarged than is usual.
Modified xiao chai hu tang makes sense to me as a long term treatment, but nothing whatsoever seems to work once the cough has started.
I am not sure whether to pursue homeopathy, or TCM , or both, and whether phosphorous would still be appropriate, after all this time, and at what potency. I've not been able to find a local homeopath that I trust. For the moment I feel like a shoemaker whose children are barefoot....
Sorry for the long post and thank you so much, in advance.
adina.
