Marth

I've been dealing with TMS for 7 years in the form of chronic back pain. The pain started in early 2017 and it started behind knee and on the back of lower thigh. It came on gradually, no one specific incident that I felt an intense pain, although I attributed it to a dunk contest I was recently in before the pain came on and I also assumed it was a hamstring injury which is a common injury for explosive basketball players. I spent the next few months doing physical therapy for a hamstring injury to no avail of it getting any better. In the midst of it my physical therapist suggested it could be a nerve issue due to some flexibility tests and even though he was definitely right I dismissed him and found a new PT because I really thought the issue was the hamstring. The pain continued to get worse and worse and creep up from the back of my knee to my lower back over 4 months. At this point it was clear it was a back issue and I got an MRI which saw a herniated disc at L4-L5. My doctors had told me to stop all physical activity and to focus on therapy dedicated to a herniated disc. This was devastating to me as someone who is extremely active and plays many sports like basketball, volleyball, and tennis. After the diagnosis the pain got significantly worse and the sciatica was just debilitating. I was afraid to sit down and I was in college where I had to spend hours each day in lectures or studying so every day was horrible. It was at this point I put together that "oh I was squatting heavy weight which I normally never do" around the same time as the pain came on so I immediately attributed that as the cause. I spent the next 6 months seeing dozens of doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists, acupuncturists, and many non traditional western medicine trying to help fix it but of course nothing helped in the slightest and after each treatment I felt worse and worse and more hopeless. I mean at some point I was even in a crazy machine that help me upside down and was supposed to separated my vertebrae so the disc could be reabsorbed and that did absolutely nothing. My pain was about at a 7 on a daily basis just existing, sleeping was horrible and sitting was the worst, I was taking 15 ibuprofen a day which didn't help at all honestly. I was too afraid to do anything really active besides recumbent bike which my doctor recommended but I did try to play in an intramural playoff game because I was still the best player on the team and halfway through the game it felt like my back was on fire and I couldn't continue. After this I had pretty much just given up, was severely depressed and thought this was just how life was going to be but then I remembered months ago when I got diagnosed a family friend recommended healing back pain. When he brought it up I thought it was dumb and ridiculous because how was a book going to help me but nearly a year into the pain I had nothing to lose by reading it so I did. Read it all in one sitting, seeing myself on every single page of that book and that night I had the best night of sleep in months. I woke up feeling so much better, still had some pain but comparatively it felt like nothing. I even got up the courage to go and immediately play basketball and there was absolutely zero pain to my astonishment. I thought I was saved and this was it. But the pain didn't fully go away. I never regained my flexibility and my sciatica was still there daily but I felt the best when I was active and playing sports. The pain was probably around a 3-4 daily but it was so improved I just figured i would take the miracle and hope the rest goes away but it didn't. I continued to have this pain for the following 4 years which gradually just wore me down and my belief in TMS and dr Sarno. I started thinking "okay what if its 90% TMS and 10% actually structural" so I started physical therapy again for my back and 2 weeks later my back went out playing basketball. I saw a back specialist, got an x-ray, said I herniated another disc or further herniated the existing one and thats when I went back to Dr. Sarno. Rereading healing back pain led me back to playing sports but the daily pain was so much worse. It was at about a 8 or 9/10 laying down, sitting, or basically anything sedentary it just feels like I'm on fire from my lower back to my ankle (this was new, before it stopped around my knee). But still when I play sports I'm in almost zero pain. I can play intense basketball for hours where I'm sprinting, jumping, landing weird, and getting it and have zero pain but the second I sit down its all back. Because of this I know there's nothing structurally wrong but for some reason I can't get past it and its depressing and frustrating. Right now I'm working with Dr. Rashbaum, who took over Dr. Sarno's practice at NYU and after getting a diagnosis of TMS from him, I'm hoping I can get better.