BriefCase features short recaps of clinical cases that I have encountered.
It is always helpful for me to read about other people’s successful cases. You never know what you’ll comes across so I thought I’d share some of the ones that have crossed my path.
For the first case, I thought I’d tell you about my daughter’s plantar wart. Ok, granted. At first glance you may not be that interested in hearing about a wart. However, for all of those who are parents, any time you can help bring your child out of a state distress you feel like a million bucks!
Patient: 5-year old female
Chief complaint: itching and irritated skin at site of wart on heel of foot
Diagnosis: plantar wart from HPV (probably contracted from swimming lessons or gymnastics class!!!)
Warts are challenging to treat. I tried a number of unsuccessful treatment approaches with my daughter’s plantar wart including:
- 17% salicylic acid (like the Compound W my parents used on me back in the day)
- Soaking the skin in warm water and filing it down with an Emery board
- Topical essential oils
All of the above had little to no effect. In fact, the salicylic acid dried out the skin surrounding the wart while the topical essential oils even made my daughter complain that the wart became “itchy” and started to “hurt”.The wart was more flat from filing it down, but the radius of the hardened skin around the wart was spreading.
I did not try topical application of green banana peels or duct tape – couldn’t rationalize those approaches. I also did not want to try liquid nitrogen to freeze the wart. The reason for avoiding this is due to a very unfortunate case of another patient who had a plantar wart on the sole of her foot frozen by her doctor and it caused a debilitating complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). Definitely not worth the risk!
In the clinic, we have anti-viral IV oxidative therapy options like ozone, UVB, and hydrogen peroxide but there’s no way my daughter would go for any of those!
In the end, I turned to homeopathy. My daughter is very compliant to the treatment (what kid doesn’t like taking medicine that tastes like candy?) and the discomfort from the wart was causing her increasing distress.
I gave her Thuja 30C – 3 pellets daily. Within a few days, the center of the wart became very dark and surfaced like a scab. Within a couple more days, the surrounding skin was no longer red and hardened while the center of the wart fell out. Needless to say, I will be searching for the homeopathics first if it happens again.
