Another Healing Story from an Herbalist's Notebook
Part 2
I got an email from her the next afternoon. She wrote,
“I couldn’t find the violet tincture, only
the leaves. Should I buy the leaves and brew them up
like I do the red clover blossoms or just omit it?”
What a great question to receive! I was excited that
she had gone right out to get her herbs and was thinking
for herself. I told her to prepare the leaves just like
the red clover infusion, covering them with boiling
water and steeping them for 4-8 hours in an airtight
jar. Her next challenge was that though she’d
found St. J’s in tinctures and pills, she couldn’t
find any oil and wanted to know either an alternative
or where to get some. I suggested she mail order from
one of the herbal resources listed on my website if
she didn’t find it in another local store. I closed
with this statement and question, “I trust that
the pain began diminishing immediately, yes?”
She wrote back the next day and told me she found
the St. J’s oil in another local store and happily
reported that it was being sold at half price because
it was being discontinued. A small digression: maybe
we herbalists need to get the word out even more about
St.J’s oil, because it’s hard for me to
imagine anyone who’s used it for pain relief or
for preventing or healing (sun)burned skin, discontinuing
it!
Maya wrote: “the pain and swelling have diminished
although the gland is still a bit swollen and hard.”
I thought this was a good report for one day. Then she
continued. She had apparently started taking antibiotics
sometime after our consultation. Here is what she wrote,
“I am on antibiotics. I HATE TAKING ANTIBIOTICS.
As a result I have a yeast infection. Do you think I
can discontinue the antibiotic? I understand the reason
for it. It’s preventative. There are tons of bacteria
and stuff in the saliva and if that’s sitting
in a gland not going anywhere because of a blockage,
there’s a huge potential for an infection to develop,
which can cause serious problems, especially if an abscess
ruptures. However, I do not have an infection. My sister
mentioned that some of the herbs I’m taking might
be enough. I would love to stop taking these things.
Do you think it’s okay? Is there anything additionally
I should do if I stop taking them? And are there any
herbal cures for yeast infections?”
I affirmed her instincts to discontinue the antibiotics
because she was giving her body two different messages.
The drugs would take over for her immune system, which
is one thing if it’s truly necessary, but when
it isn’t necessary, it weakens it. The herbs she
was using were nourishing and strengthening to her immune
system and the chickweed and burdock were both excellent
anti-bacterial, infection fighters. I gave her detailed
instructions regarding form, menstruum and dosage for
adding in echinacea tincture to her mix, and told her
to do that if she would worry if she didn’t add
something to “make up for” stopping the
antibiotics. She hadn’t added yogurt to her diet
earlier because she didn’t have a desire for it
after relying on it heavily back when she couldn’t
eat solid foods. She would eat it now, though, to help
heal her system of the (fungal) yeast infection. Burdock
is a good anti-fungal, too. Once she got off the antibiotics,
thereby removing the cause of the yeast infection, given
the herbs she was using and her general vitality, her
body would clearly be able to heal. I suggested adding
lots of cooked and raw garlic to her diet, too, and
told her to call me if she needed me, and to let me
know how she did.
She wrote to me a few weeks later for guidance about
something else and told me that the stone had passed
a week before. I wrote back and asked for details, such
as how the stone had passed?
Maya’s story in her own words:
“I woke up and the little flap of skin under my
tongue felt weird. Kind of hard and it was sort of swollen.
It didn’t hurt or anything, but it fell off. I
know this sounds gross, but I stuck my fingers in my
mouth and basically tried to pop it like a zit. I didn’t
squeeze too hard at first, and a little white/yellow
fluid came out. So then I kept on squeezing and at least
one tablespoon of fluid came out, maybe two, as well
as a stone the size of a small pebble. It looked huge
for the size of the hole it came out of, definitely
larger than grains of sand. But it wasn’t the
whole thing, which is why the gland’s still swollen.
The stone was about 1/8” in diameter and crumbled
pretty easily when I squeezed it between my fingers.
I meant to save it to show the doctor, but it got lost
in my bathroom somewhere. So I’m still doing the
herbal stuff. The past week or so I’ve been really
good about it, doing the heat, etc.”
The gland stayed mildly achy for a while afterward
and she grew a little less diligent with her herbs.
I see I wrote in my notes: “I think if she hadn’t
squeezed it out, if she’d waited, the stone would’ve
popped out whole in another 2-3 days. She would likely
have been out of pain more quickly, too, though some
discomfort was inevitable.” I still think the
stone would have come out without all that squeezing,
but I wonder, now, if I might not have been overly optimistic
about the time frame.
In Hawaiian medicine when they talk about an abscess,
which is what Maya had when she brought her own infection
to a head, there is a reference made to a core within
it. I first heard about this core in relation to the
effectiveness of plantain poultices in pulling them
out. I’m an enormous fan of plantain (plantago
major or p. lanceolata), including having often used
it as a mouth-healing herb, in tea, tincture, and fresh
leaf poultice forms.
So, six months later, writing this part of her healing
story, I’m thinking about how simple, chewed-up
plantain leaves, held by her tongue as a poultice over
the opening, could also have helped to pull out the
core, or in this case, stone, or helped complete the
healing after the partial stone had come out. I’ve
heard of two personal experiences with having the core
come out, and both happened to dear friends of mine.
The first core came out of an extremely tender swelling
on the outer edge of a man’s foot after he wore
a plastic-wrapped poultice every day for three months,
taking it off each night. The next came out from a cyst
on a woman’s back. The cyst kept changing size,
up and down, in conjunction with her menstrual cycle.
She’d had it for at least a year. Constant plantain
poultices while on a slow-paced vacation in Hawaii brought
forth the core. Each of these people was stunned at
the cartilaginous piece that had come out of his or
her body.
Plantain shares many gifts in common with violet leaves,
and I do alternate them in my own herbal mouth care.
Plantain, like violet, is a powerful drawing herb and
is even more specific for localizing any poison in the
body, not allowing it to overwhelm the lymphatic immune
system. It’s also anti-inflammatory, mucilaginous,
mineral-rich, tonic to the kidneys, cooling, anti-infective,
wound healing and pain relieving, and as such, would
have been one of the other possible excellent choices
for Maya.
Now, there is one other element to this story that
I will mention only briefly. I will not go into detail,
but you will understand immediately how large an emotional
subplot this was in her healing story. It also was deeply
influential in the particular choice of herbs. Three
weeks before the stone blocked up her salivary duct,
Maya had unexpectedly become pregnant. So, throughout
this experience, she was trying to decide whether to
have her baby or have an abortion. She finally decided,
with great difficulty, upon an abortion by pill, and
it wasn’t until after that had happened that the
stone passed.
© Robin Rose Bennett
Healing Magic:
A Green Witch Guidebook to Conscious Living
by Robin
Rose Bennett http://www.herbalmedicinehealing.com/store/item_view.asp?estore_itemid=1000046