HattieNC

The Titanic sank on April 15, 1912; the stock market crashed in October, 1929; and my day of reckoning occurred on November 1, 2014, a few weeks after my 54th birthday. I woke up that morning to searing bilateral buttock pain that extended into my hips and upper thighs. I could barely walk and couldn't turn over in bed. I immediately knew that something was very, very wrong. Not that my body hadn’t given me warning signs before the collapse. A few years earlier, I had gone through a seven month ordeal with anxiety and panic attacks following the loss of my mother and my job within weeks of each other. The next year, I was stricken with severe TMJ after a routine dental visit.

Back then, I was ignorant about mind body connection. So I did the only thing I knew to do which was to haul my goodist, perfectionist, controlling self to anyone that held out the carrot of a cure: chiropractors, neurologists, orthopedists, osteopaths, rheumatologists, spine surgeons, etc. Followed by epidurals, spinal taps, and even nerve ablation. In desperation, I hung upside down on an inversion table, and allowed a chiropractor to put me an archaic torture device to stretch my aching spine into submission.

In the meantime, I was getting sicker and falling deeper into the rabbit hole. As my body continued the rampage, it threw in sciatica, neuropathy, TMJ, hives, dry eyes, clogged ears, tinnitus, back pain, hip pain, muscle spasms, ocular migraines, and near suicidal depression. I had almost given up hope when in December 2016, I found the TMS Wiki and began to learn about Dr. Sarno.

Slowly, I began to see how my goodist, perfectionist, people pleasing personality had caused me to repress my emotions, and why my brain had decided that a coup was the only way to get my attention. The hard core truth was that I hated my job, my marriage was in shambles, my finances were a joke, and I was scared shitless about aging. I regretted most of my adult decisions, and my childhood was not the perfect Norman Rockwell painting that I pretended it was. I was a fraud and a hypocrite. Inside I was fuming, but on the outside I was sweet, accommodating, friendly, and too nice. I let people walk all over me, and then felt sorry for myself for being a victim. These are hard truths to accept, and it’s taken me a long time to get there. Emotionally, I’m working through years of baggage trying to separate fact from fiction; learning to feel instead of suppress; practicing forgiveness (myself and others); and treating myself with kindness and compassion.

Five months later, my physical recovery is taking a while too, but I see a light at the end of the tunnel. Some of the painful symptoms have disappeared completely, and some are hanging on but improving. I'm able to incorporate physical activity into my daily rountine. Most importantly, I have faith that I will eventually be pain free. I’m not going to be one of the lucky folks with a “book cure.” But, I am lucky (no, I am BLESSED) to have found about TMS instead of spending the rest of my life in misery and pain without ever knowing why.

Update: Spring 2018 has been a major turning point for me. I'm not quite ready to post an "official" success story to the forum, but I'm close. I'm at the 3 1/2 year mark for when the chronic pain started. I look back on that pitiful creature and almost don't recognize her. Pacing the floor in agony night after night, sleeping on a mattress on the floor because she couldn't lift out of the bed, sobbing into her husband's shoulder and telling him she wanted to die.

There are many hours in the day that I don't think about pain. When I do think about it, it's to remind myself to be grateful that I've come this far. I would not be in this place of recovery without the TMS Wiki, I know that. I still have pain , but it's on a scale of 1 to 4, instead of 8 to 10. It's been a slow non-linear process that has taken over 17 months since initially finding out about TMS. Self-care and self acceptance have been crucial in my recovery. Along with learning to stand up for myself and realizing that it's okay that I'm not the perfect person I thought I was. I look forward to posting again when I'm at 100%!