What is 'cure' anyway?

I'm puzzled at the moment by what seems to be our inherent need to label. 'I'm a _____'; 'Oh you won't get on with me, I'm a _____' is a conversation I've had before with someone with whom it turns out I get on really rather well in the end. Why we need to identify so strongly with labels I'm unsure, maybe part of our human need to have a 'tribe', or family group that makes sense to us...

So to 'cure'. I'm not able to say that I 'cure' anything, according to ASA guidelines for my profession. Which is fine with me as I'm not sure how you'd define it really and truly. What if you thought you'd 'cured' someone and then years and years later they got that complaint again? I've just now though read a letter from a group of vets talking about how vets should be banned from using homeopathy. Without homeopathy in the world, I strongly feel we'd be in a far less healthy place. We would lose a valuable modality we have to improve health and deal with dis-ease.

So I sit and wonder, what about the case I had (all cases have permission to mention for learning purposes here), where the lady had been on prophylactic antibiotics for 6+ years, still getting UTIs and having to take more antibiotics on top of that. Now, after a year of homeopathic treatment - with approximately 6 weekly appointments, there are no more prophylactic antibiotics needed, no more UTIs happening? How about dealing with eczema for the lady who would superglue her skin together, it would split so badly, and now her skin is lovely and smooth most of the time?

I'm struggling to find a term for what it is but maybe I don't need one. Or then I think  about the lady who had headaches and was taking over 200 painkillers a month and still in pain and discomfort, 5 months after we started working together no more headaches? Now 3 years in, occasional headaches resurfaced after a period of stress, but she's breezed through other stresses without them being an issue... What do we call that? The 9 year old who hadn't slept well since being a baby, who after a remedy slept but not only that would start to go upstairs by herself, settle herself back to sleep and no longer be in her parents room 7 times a night? Maybe though we have susceptibilities and slip back.  And I think we can and do, so does that mean not better after all, or that we have an inherent weakness in that area (this is what I observe in my work, and it seems we are able to work together to strengthen the immune system, lessen the likelihood of the weakness being a problem)?

In conventional medical cancer care you're considered cured if you have 5 years post treatment cancer free. But if it recurs then? Not so cured after all, but the medics have you down as all sorted and home free.

So not 'cure' for homeopathy because that's a no-no. People who are then in better states of health. Do we need a term? Should we have a more accurate term than 'they're more able to handle stresses in their lives now'. I don't know, and as I'm getting happier to step away from labelling I suppose I should stop dwelling on it.

Somehow though this attack on the vets is bothering me. A conversation about my horse's eye disease yesterday was interesting. Her recurrent uveitis could have been remission, not cure. Absolutely it could, and that's what we were told by conventional vets several years into her not having another attack. She did 15 or so years in remission though, so when do we decide that the homeopathic treatment could have done something, when options earlier were 6 weekly steroid injections into her eyelid or a possible removal of her eye to treat and cure the disease. For me it reminds me of the goal - 'gentle, rapid and permanent' when homeopathy is at it's best.

​5 years cancer free = cured but 15 years uveitis free = remission?!

Yes, we don't always get there straight away. Neither does conventional medicine. I don't think the image of my mare staggering around the field as if intoxicated will leave me in a hurry though it is at least a 7 year old memory. She had been put onto conventional Cushing's medication, and honestly, I'm convinced it nearly killed her. Fortunately there was an alternative, which had actually been documented in journals and a switch onto this meant a happy, healthy horse for several more years. The alternative? A blend of homeopathic medicines which she had daily. The price difference? I couldn't tell you but pretty huge. 

Vested interest anyone?!

I don't really know the reason for the attacks - if these scientific minds who were so concerned about what we were doing would go sit in on clinics for 3 months with many of the practitioners I know or learn from, I'm sure they would see remarkable things that would question their views on health and healing. And as to 'cure'? Who knows what that really is anyway... Just going to keep on doing my best.

With love,

​Em x