Updating Format After Giving a Homeopathic Medicine

The very best way to update Dr. Jeff prior to your appointment is to use the web update form. If for some reason you are unable to  submit it, and to help organize your thoughts prior to updating, you can also review the general guidelines below:

Writing complete and succinct updates during the homeopathic treatment of your pet will help ensure the best, fastest, and most gentle course of therapy. In addition, brief, well organized updates allow faster, and less costly, determination of the treatment.

Your updates will both provide important observations and become part of your pet’s medical record. The electronic record initially (before being double-clicked) only displays the first few lines of each entry. Therefore, please include the most important information at the beginning of your update (remedy name and doses and overall progress or new problems). In this way, the records can be most efficiently scanned to help determine your pet’s current overall level of health trend. Try to keep your updates short.

The following information will help the updating process. If you would like further clarification please feel free to either comment on this article, post a message in the homeopathy forum, or e-mail me directly. This document will be modified based on your feedback.

General guidelines:

• Please limit your updates to once weekly (unless we have decided that more frequent updates are needed due to your pet’s condition).
• Please write your update in the body of an e-mail.
• Use dates (not days of the week).
• No attachments.
• No formatting (bold, bullets, tables, etc.).

1-All updates should start with your date of last appointment, and which (if any) homeopathic medicines and what doses were given, and when.

If there is a new or particularly problematic symptom, please include it at the beginning of the update, e.g. recent vomiting, diarrhea, itching, etc.

2-Was there any immediate response to any of these doses?

e.g. “3/5/12 Sul 30c 10/1 (10 succussions of the bottle, 1 drop from it added to 1 cup of water)-5ml, after which he uncharacteristically fell deeply asleep for 3 hours and then woke and ran around energetically”, or “After the dose, the next day both eyes started discharging white mucus that had to be wiped out 3x a day”.

3-Since the dose(es) which symptoms are better, worse, or unchanged?

It is very helpful to report all of the relevant symptoms in each report. Use the 4 Ps (Problematic, Persistent, Prominent and Peculiar) to help determine which are the most important symptoms to report. Try to quantify the degree and timing of changes before and after the dose. For example, normal may be 100% or 10/10 vs. 50% or 3/10 before the dose.

Here is an example of a very useful actual update during the cure of a dog with pneumonia. The original version that follows is less helpful:

Here is the very helpful version: “Only 1 dose Phos LM 1 10/1-1 tsp. since our last appointment.  He is 75% better overall since the dose. A three minute coughing fit and restlessness were seen immediately after the dose.

Since the dose:

Better-cough (2x daily vs. 2x/hour), energy (8/10 vs. 2/10) and appetite (10/10 vs. 3/10). 
Worse-Diarrhea accident in house (first time ever for any accident) overnight @2am.
Unchanged-itching, ear redness, vomiting, drinking, clinginess”  

Following your summary you can include any germane details.

I will also probably ask (for almost every pet at every appointment): temperature preferences, change of favorite areas in the house , changes in sleep position (and dreaming), preferring to be alone or clingy, new cravings, aversions, fears, itching, discharges, skin rashes and eruptions, etc.

Below, is the original version. It is too long and detailed. Also note that the dosing info and overall update is buried within the text. Please keep the detailed  information in your home journal (or an online plog). That way it is available if I  have questions.

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