CWP in Retakes

Failure: An Opportune Window for Success

Dr. Albert Einstein quoted “It's not that I'm so smart; it's just that I stay with problems longer.”

Every failure brings with it an opportunity for a new learning experience, it is not a dead end to one road, but rather I see it as a new door to achieve what I couldn’t in one attempt.

I consider every failure an opportunity to move ahead.  When I looked into the life of great men, I realized that “every success story is also a story of great failure.” Many such great personalities failed before they actually became successful, like…

Walt Disney The man who gave us Disney World and Mickey Mouse, his first animation company went bankrupt; he was fired by a news editor because he lacked imagination. Legend has it that he was turned down 302 times before he got financing for creating Disney world.

So every time there is a failure there is a chance of correcting it, reassessing the work and making a newer attempt to understand it completely, this I also apply in my practice, hence every case of mine that hasn’t done well until now I reassess or retake that case and refine my case witnessing technique more and more…

But when do I understand that there is a need for retake or reassessment in a given case? What would be the criteria set aside for attempting retakes?

• Patient is not improving at all – physically, mentally or holistically; that is, there is absolutely no shift in any of these parameters in 2-3 months of starting treatment and the case has failed completely
• Patient improves for some time but comes to a standstill, and the remedy we are giving appears to be a partial similimum
• In one-sided cases where during the first case there were only PQRS symptoms in one area, related to only physicals or one situation alone, and not on a holistic PQRS in different areas.

The failure in a particular case is more to do with the problem in understanding the individual, rather than during the analysis of the case to find the remedy, because if we had understood the patient correctly then the remedy would have been correct itself. Hence it would be important to understand that the case taking has to be refined during retakes. Let me first in short put forth to you the case witnessing technique that I use in my practice

The next question which then bothers me is, the same case witnessing process which I have been applying in all my cases, will I be able to use in retakes or reassessments also?

How will I modify these three steps for failure cases, or during reassessments, so that I am doubly sure that I understand the patient completely this time?

After observations of many retakes that I have taken, I have been surer every time that definitely the 3 steps of case witnessing technique itself will help me for reassessments or retakes as well, but this time the patient is also aware of the entire process, hence we need to more cautious and be doubly sure of the focus and centre of the case. 

• So the first step is to - have a longer Passive and Active CWP without focus. The benefits of this technique are twofold - One, a longer Passive CWP gives the patient additional space and time to go in to many more areas which he may have previously hesitated to go into, because of this it allows the patient to go deeper and many more qualified and peculiar expressions come up. For the physicians, it provides us with many more areas/ PQRS terms to explore during the Active CWP.
• Similarly, a longer Active CWP assists us to repeatedly confirm the focus in different areas, especially and then start the Active-Active journey.
• Even if we are sure of the focus in passive, we become Active without the focus, and we go to 1-2 subconscious areas like childhood, interests hobbies, dreams which the patient has not yet touched during the extended passive and see what knowingly or unknowingly the patient is putting in the centre. Hence with the peculiar expressions that have come up in the passive and the areas we have explored in the active we are absolutely sure of the focus.
• The chief complaint area is one of the most important and credible ways to get the total picture. We explore the chief complaint area thoroughly and obtain the exact location, the side and the physical appearance of the affected area, the local sensation experienced, the modalities, other aggravating and ameliorating factors, any concomitant symptoms, also the ailments from and the origin, duration and progress of the complaint. This gives us an idea about his physical particular symptoms, that is physical symptoms pertaining to the chief complaint, but to understand his mental/ emotional and holistic state, I ask him questions such as –
• What do you feel because of the disease?
• What thoughts come to your mind because of the disease?
• Deep within how does it feel to have all these complaints?
  1. It gives us the ailments from, the location, sensation, modalities and concomitants; that is direct rubrics/ references towards the remedy and
  2. b. It also gives us the thematic understanding of the patient through his delusions and central state

And the confluence of both leads us towards the exact similimum. 

• Another important step is to take the focus which we had understood in the previous or earlier CWP and see whether it connects with the present focus also…

With this we now have obtained the “master key” or rightly the holistic focus, and now we confirm our focus again, this step we call “Active with focus”, the most important point here is persist with the focus, till the patient starts joining the out of place, out of order, PQRS expressions of passive and you are absolutely sure of the focus.

• The Active CWP is followed by the Active-Active Case Witnessing Process which is the automatic effortless process towards the patient’s centre. As we keep the patient with the focus, the Passive and Active get joined beautifully in a complete ‘whole’.
• Finally for confirming the remedy here also in retakes we need to be doubly sure about it so we reconfirm the PQRS expressions which the patient have not connected, we ask the patient about these and see where they lead us to.
• We also confirm with the remedy both based on the rubrics, by confirming the physical general, particulars, and also on thematic materia medica.

For further details refer to upcoming book of scientifically intuitive case witnessing process – Part II in difficult cases and conditions.