Day 1 - Hopeful road to recovery

Hi,

I want my body to feel healthy again. My story - I began developing widespread muscular, tendon and cartilage pain earlier this year after several months of very intense daily and nightly panic attacks. This year has been the most awful year for me and this syndrome has deeply affected my work life, my personal life and my family life. The pain is always very bad in the mornings and fades as the day goes on, only to fully return again after sleeping. The pain also affects different body parts each day and moves around through the day.

As with most people with TMS I have spoken to and have been assessed by many health professionals, had many types of medical tests performed and multiple blood tests carried out. All of these tests shown no medical cause, with only my blood showing vitamin d and b12 deficiencies. Treatment was given to correct these deficiencies and at the time of being diagnosed with these I was very happy thinking I had found the culprits for my suffering, but after months of having very high dosages of vit d and b12 injections my symptoms continued and infact worsened in time. Needless to say I was very disappointed with this. All heart ECG's and blood pressure tests carried out were normal, and a brain scan was also normal with no concerns.

I feel that over the months I have made a complete nuisance of myself in my doctors practice with me making constant appointments to try and get to the bottom of what was happening to me, becoming upset and teary when talking to the doctor became a regular thing and I despaired when my doctor felt she could not help me further and referred me to a rheumatologist. It was he who diagnosed the vit b12 def but could assist no further because he could find no other cause for my widespread pain, but did feel it might be somewhere in the fibromylagia area of diagnosis! This wasn't a great to hear and I think at that point I became even more confused and needy for an answer, to now conclude whether it was or was not fibro. Of course I now know that fibro is a severe form of TPS.

The neurologist too felt that after carrying out a thorough hands on physical assessment there was no neurological cause for my widespread pain but performed a brain MRI because he could see that I was an anxious person. I was then discharged from him even before the MRI was taken, leaving me unable to ask him any follow up questions like - could these symptoms be caused any other neuro disorder that does not show in a brain MRI but could be caused by a spinal column malfunction, or a nervous system disfunction which is what I actually feared at that point.

So here I am now, still experiencing widespread pain and with no known cause indentified. I have recently read through The Mindbody disorder and indentified myself on every single character trait of the personality type most effected by TMS and many of the additional circumstances that can contribute to firing up TMS, both past and present. I am needing to get my mind and body back and am now putting my faith in that my suffering is TMS and am commited to following this program to do this. This has been difficult to maintain over the last few weeks because of the pain I experience each morning and I am aware by brain is trying to pin down a cause for all of this happening. It's tough battle and I do have to keep on keeping the faith that this is TMS at play.

Many thanks,

John.

 

Hi, John. And a warm welcome to the TMSWiki and TMS community. You have been through the pain mill and nothing structural has been found wrong with you. Now it is time to put all your faith in the TMS Mindbody concept of Dr. Sarno and others.

I am not a doctor but I would not take injections for vitamin deficiencies such as D and B12. I take tablets for those vitamins and suggest you do, too.
Swanson Health Products is just one of many good places I found on Google. You might also consider taking a magnesium citrate supplement because most everyone is deficient in that mineral but it is very important because it regulates more than 300 parts of the body. I get magnesium citrate from Now, and also take magnesium ultra in a magnesium oil spray, from Swanson.

These deficiencies may cause your pains, but more likely they are from repressed emotions or a perfectionist and "goodist" personality, wanting to please everyone. The Structured Educational Program will help you discover those emotional causes of your pain.

Here is a recent report on the program which should inspire you that it works:

Kevin healed 95 % from SEP


Welcome to the SEP and to the path of recovery. I am on my final two days of the program and I can say with complete confidence that I am a changed man. I started after 6 months of nasty low-back/butt/leg pain, could hardly walk, stand, etc. was in physical therapy, chiropractor, acupuncture, pain medications, etc.. the usual. My MRI showed 3 disk bulges/herniations touching nerves, so that is what I believe it to be....that is until I read Dr. Sarno and found this site.

I encourage you to really get involved, follow the instructions, do the journaling, take time to read all the suggested readings, and watch the videos. I'd say I'm 95% cured. There is still some very light lingering "annoyance", but I still have some work to do. I've been walking miles with hardly any pain these last few weeks. But even more, if the pain comes on now, it just doesn't bother me like it used to, I sorta just see it, acknowledge it, and go about my business. It took working the program to get to that point, but 6 weeks compared to 6 months is nothing! I made more progress in the first week than I did from two months of PT!!! It's going to challenge you and your "beliefs" in medicine, but you have nothing to lose. We generally wind up here when all else fails.

So give it a shot, especially before considering anything invasive like surgery. If you put the work in, you will get better. Have you read Dr. Sarno yet? I assume you have since you're here, but in case you haven't, definitely readHealing Back Pain. Again, it will challenge everything you've believed about your pain, and backs in general. You'll be encouraged to resume life as normal, i.e. stop ALL "therapies" (PT, chiro, etc.), stop taking medications, and most importantly, stop thinking STRUCTURAL problems are the cause of your pain and shift to psychological as the reason.....again, this can be difficult and takes some time to sink in, so be patient and kind to yourself.

It was a process for me. A few of the bigger moves in my case were: I ripped up and threw out my MRI test results (I found myself obsessively reading over them and comparing them to other results I could find on the web and even here on the TMSwiki site...); I got back to the gym and stopped using a weight belt; and I even cancelled an appointment I had made with aTMS doctorbecause it was more than a month away and it was hindering my recovery (that is, my 100% belief in TMS was lagging because I had this pending appointment, but as soon as I cancelled it, my recovery sped up significantly). Everyone's journey is unique to their situation, but I've found that really committing to the program and brining what I learn from it into my daily life has had profound results. Also, sharing along the way here in these forums has been extremely helpful - there's something about knowing that you're not alone in your TMS recovery that really helps. I encourage you to look through my past posts for some insight into my experience with SEP. Like I said, I'm just now finishing, tomorrow is my final day, and I feel like a changed person. It's amazing. And I feel as though it is something that one carries on with, not just like a one time 6 week thing and that's that...it has helped me to get to know myself and taught me tools to "deal" with my emotions. Learning and accepting TMS is a life changer for sure.

 

Hi Walt,

Thank you for your advice. My vit d levels were very low and after being tested I was prescribed three months worth of very high dosage vit d tablets and then daily tablets for life but at a much lower dose than the three month ones. My vit b12 was later tested and this too was low and the treatment in the UK for this is two weeks of injections to boost the levels and then one every three months. Tablet form of b12 are not prescribed in the UK to increase the levels when so low.

I was actually very pleased when the low vitamin d was discovered in May this year because the symptoms of a deficiency can include anxiety, panic attacks and widespread muscle bone pain. I was really hopeful this was the cause for my problems but unfortunately after the courser of treatment my symptoms did not lessen. I bought some magnesium malate but the first one I took made me feel really rotten, very tired, noticeable irritated and quite angry. It was a very alarming reaction for me to have and afterwards read about other people having the same reaction, not a huge amount by some. It was possibly I took too high an amount but the tablet I took was of a small weight and so I'm very reluctant to try them again.

This syndrome is so peculiar. This morning when I woke I felt very bad with pain in a lot of tendons, nausea, a thick headache generally feeling unwell. I resisted any painkillers and the symptoms faded as the day went on, enough for me to go out cycling for a good hour and felt great with near to zero discomfort. This is the usual pattern of my symptoms and as of writing this post hours larer I can feel my feet burning, some nausea and a burning stinging sensation running down my neck and shoulder which I haven't had for months. I'm just acknowledging the sensations and letting them pass me by. This is indeed a strange and complex animal to tame.

John.