Printed in American Homeopath in 1998
This is a patient I have been treating for two years. This time she called me during her third trimester of her third pregnancy and she said you must do something for me, I am feeling incredible fatigue. I never felt this weak in my other two pregnancies. I am so weak that even walking down the stairs is exhausting." She also reports she has been feeling very irritable, and that her husband and kids are fed-up with her nit-picking and grouchy attitude. Everything they do is wrong or not good enough. They are so afraid of her that they fear crossing her. I asked her is there anything she can do to feel better. She said "I love gardening and landscaping." She has taken up this big project of landscaping her yard, and she forgets all her troubles when she is immersed in it. But she gets so frustrated because soon it makes her tired again and the whole cycle continues.
One dose of Helonias 30 was given, two days later she called me, and in an enthusiastic voice she said her weakness was completely gone and she was glad because she would be able to finish her landscaping project before the arrival of her baby. She said that her husband and children thanked me too! In such cases, especially the ones that obviously point to a known remedy, I make sure to look it up in the repertory. I use Phatak's Repertory in short, telephone cases very successfully. In this case, Sepia would have been an obvious choice; third pregnancy, irritability with the family, with both desire and amelioration from being occupied. So I looked up the following rubrics in Phatak's Repertory:
Pregnancy: complaints during,
Diversion ameliorates,
Fault finding
Helonias was an indicated remedy, so I read Phatak's description of Helonias: "It is the remedy for females; who are unduly exhausted by frequent pregnancies, abortions; enervated by indolence and luxury or over domestic work; and who always complain of tired backache and tired feeling. Better: If busy. Diversion. Mentally they are irritable; cannot endure the least contradiction. Finds faults with everyone. Desires to be let alone. Conversation unpleasant. Always better when doing something; when the mind is engaged."
One of the main differences between Helonias and Sepia is that Helonias needs to be occupied mentally and physically, whereas Sepia is more ameliorated by physical labour with an aversion to mental labor. The suffering in Helonias is so severe that they can't stand to even see others happy (Happy, on seeing others, agg.). In Sepia the irritability during pregnancy has to do with how out of shape they are and an anger towards the husband who did this to her. So Sepia is averse to husband and also herself. Helonias has desire to be left alone by everyone - not as much of an aversion but an irritability stemming from severe suffering. Helonias is not very well proven, a complete proving needs to be done to understand and use this "small" remedy which could be a very common remedy for modern times.
All aches and ailing left me, and I felt as I imagine a strong man in perfect health must feel; the change in the state of my daily life was so marked that I could but observe it, although I had ceased to look for 'Symptoms," I cannot specify in detail how I felt, I only know I was filled
with a general wellness, which made living a luxury (from twentieth to twenty-sixth day); on the twenty-seventh day reaction began, and until the forty-first day I was in a mental hell; it was the most profound mental depression I have ever known; I was plunged into the most abject despair. A prover of Helonias,” T F Allen