Alan G. Need some help to embrace diagnosis

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Question

Hi All,

This is a tricky one, I was recently diagnosed with TMS by a MD in NYC (Dr Ira Rashbaum.) I want to believe I have tms, but there are a few things holding me back, in addition to tendon pain in most of my joints (which I attribute to tms) here are some other things:

1) I have pinched nerves in each of my elbows, these came after having an RSI in my arm and obsessing about it, I think had a pinched nerve in one elbow and then when I stressed about it and was worried about it coming in the other elbow, it ended up in both. An MRI showed no pinched nerve, a nerve conductivity study showed very mild pinched nerve. Can I have a pinched nerve with TMS in my elbow as opposed to my back?

2) My elbow hurts (Comes and Goes) MRI (Which I had done for the nerves) showed very mild inflammation in the tendon, after having my MRI about 2 weeks later it started to hurt more often and didnt got away...if I have inflammation, can I have TMS?

3) Lastly, since I have knee pain an MRI showed slight swelling in my knee in addition to the tendinitis in my knee tendons.

I have also met with Ortho's rhuemeotlogists etc who all said everything seems fine and to just to Physical Therapy as there is nothing surgically they can do either than move my nerves in my elbow. I want to believe I have TMS but these 3 things are holding me back from 100% believing the diagnosis, any response helps.

Thanks

Pete

 

Answer

1. First of all, nerve conduction studies often result in false positives so frequently, some TMS physicians rarely even conduct them. Having TMS symptoms the same part of your arm on both arms are a telltale sign of TMS. Your extremities evolve independently so that would be an enormous coincidence outside of a TMS explanation.

2)Many people with no pain have inflammation. Even if there is inflammation, inflammation goes away with rest. Think about twisting your ankle. It hurts, there's local inflammation, after a couple weeks the inflammation goes down and it doesn't hurt anymore.

3) I'm not sure about this. I can't definitively say that all your symptoms are TMS, but the more independent symptoms you have, the more likely there's a universal underlying cause. Tendinitis can occur, but it goes away with rest.

It might benefit you to see Dr. Gwozdz in NJ. He's a TMS physician and is great. It sounds like you need more confirmation to fully wrap your mind around this.

Alan

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