1.5 years neuropathic hand/wrist pain gone

I struggled with chronic hand/wrist neuro pain for 1.5 years. I posted my story here

- Sharp pain in my wrist after playing excessive guitar one evening.
- Opening doors, picking up the lightest items, washing my hair, was painful.
- I eventually had symptoms of muscle tightness, burning sensation, increased skin sensitivity, stabbing, and parasthesia. The pain was predominantly on the radial dorsal side of my left hand/wrist, though later I would get start feeling increased sensitivity on the volar side, as well as some stabbing and dull feelings on the ulnar side.
- Early on it would calm down with less activity so I figured I needed to let it rest or work it out carefully.
- After a few months of it sticking around I went to multiple doctors, for over a year, and was diagnosed with carpal tunnel, tendonitis, wartenbergs syndrome, cervical stenosis.
- I thought about the pain 95% of the day. I stopped doing what I loved and became a vegetable. I spent so much time online trying to fix myself.
- Work became extremely hard to stay ahead of. I work in tech, which involves a lot of typing, so I felt so useless with my ailment.
- I learned about Sarno/Gordon 6 months into my chronic pain. I thought it war a neat idea, but felt like it was too good of an outcome.
- About 9-10 months in I tried to apply ideas from A Way Out. The pain got worse, twinges would wake me up at night. Soon after I started having insomnia/reflux. More on this at the end.
- A few weeks ago I lost my dog to cancer. We learned 1.5 months earlier that he had 2-7 months to live. My pain got worse, I was panicking, and I made my first post here, wanting to vent.
- There was great advice given, and I decided that I needed to make a choice. I'm not the type of guy to put faith in things without evidence, and I'm no doctor so I wasn't sure I'd even be good at parsing said evidence. Given that, I said screw it, I have enough weak evidence I feel is in favor of tms, so lets just take that approach.
- I spent 3 weeks typing more at work than I have in months. I thought more about what I'd want to do at work, played video games, and practiced guitar. These things triggered symptoms, and I tried my best to calm myself down, and look forward to doing it again instead of fearing it. I went bouldering again, something I thought I'd never get to do. I really focused on changing what my brain was wanting me to think about to what I wanted to think about.
- On Monday Sept 26th I felt different. I had to drive to an appointment in the morning, and noticed I wasnt thinking about my hand at all. Mind you there was some pain, but it felt different, like a weaker version of it.
- On Wednesday I had the day off work, and played on my computer for hours, and had nearly zero pain, which felt like a dream. I was so excited. I'd continue to play excessive amounts of games, practice guitar, and go climbing again. No pain.
- It's been over a week and the pain has been getting even better/more minimal. I'd say it's 90% gone, and I'm confident the rest of it will go away in time. It tried cropping up while pushing a cart grocery shopping on the weekend and I just embraced it.

I really didn't think I would be posting this. Just a month ago I was going through the usual cycle of desperation and somehow now I'm able to do things I love without pain. It's such a wonderful feeling.

I still have work to do however. As my mind has mostly stopped thinking about hand pain its switched to thinking about the digestive and sleep issues that have cropped up. Part way through my journey I had sudden insomnia and acid reflux. The worst of the reflux lasted around 3 months, where I lost over 20 pounds and could barely eat/drink anything without pain, even on PPIs/acid reducers/diet. It eventually calmed down/stopped, so I don't feel heartburn or pain, but I get chest pressure and random other pressures in my stomach and esophagus, and it seems to happen even if I haven't had anything to eat/drink in several hours. In fact I know I've had a near instant reactionr of chest tightness after getting/worrying about hand pain in the past, so I'm thinking that maybe this is just my brain cranking up the digestion symptoms give myself something new to worry about now that I no longer think about my hand.

 

@Exuro89
What a great healing story! Now you have your evidence. TMS is real. And working to heal it works! The new symptoms are typical. It means The fight isn’t over yet. You might have to also address some rage by doing some journaling, I personally like Alan Gordon’s method in The Way Out, but you might have to also mix some Sarno in there too (emotional work). Have you checked out Nichol Sachs yet? She’s queen of healing journaling. She has a great podcast (The Cure for Chronic Pain). Start at the beginning. She will explain everything. You are on your way!