2 Years severe CFS / FIBRO / PAINS - almost recovered

Hello, my name is Nico, 37 from Germany. I almost recovered from 2 years of absolute hell. Here is my story:

Before all of this happend I had some epidsodes of depression and what I see now - a lot of anxiety - in my life, I always considered myself as healthy. Never had any physical symptoms or any other disease. But I had some small signs of tms, which were so small that I totally ignored them. (I sometimes had a little tingle in my fingers and hands, or some accelerated heart-beating, but nothing to be worried about).

So in the beginning of 2022 I got my booster vaccination and covid. Few weeks later I drove to spain and got a stiff knee, which I blamed on the long drive. A little later, my leg muscles started to burn at night. Very strange, but still OK and no limitations. I really do believe the onset of all of this had something to do with Covid/Vac.

In the later summer of 2022 my father suddenly died of an ugly disease. This is when my symptoms started to skyrock like a tusnami. Within a couple of months I developed the following symptoms:

Pains: All kind of heavy burning, stabbing and shooting pains all over my body. At the worst time (which was in the first 6 months) I had so much pain that I could not sit, not stand, not lie down. I was changing my position all 2 min, taking off all my clothes becaue I could not bear the additional pain e.g. the tension of the elastic of my underwear would cause.

Fibro: Besides my muscles all of my soft tissue went hard. All of my joints were burning, hard, stiff and cracking (neck, knees, hips, feets, shoulders, hands...). At my worst time I prefered to stay 5 hours in bed than standing up because I would have to bend my knee.

It is so much symptoms, to sum it up: Tinitus, Pots, whenever I turn my head to the sides or backwards I fainted for around 30 sec, skin rashes on my fingers and face, my digestion didn't work for 18 months, overall feeling of diziness and drunkenness, severe fatigue, severy depression, a lot of fear, anxiety, depersonalisation, panick and pain attacks, heavily sucidal thoughts, candida overgrow, ulsters in my mouth, teeth sensivity and mouth burning. My limbs sometimes fall asleep so quick that I couldn't feel or move them anymore. I also had a lot of things in my eyes like fuzzy vision, floaters, visual snow.

Like a lot of you, I went down the medical pathway for a year. I got different diagnosis from beeing totally healthy (normal medical doctor), to all which is out there: long covid, lyme disease, EBV, vaccine damage, psychosomatics and and and..

The medical system contributed a lot to my jouney. When my father died, my symptoms where only at the start. Beeing told from a doctor that I have cartilage damage in my knee, the pain shooted up through the roof the very same day. I feld like someone stabbed a knife in my knee. (I found out afterwards that the damage is so little and so normal, it has notheing to do with the pain). Anyway, I went to other more doctors, the next one said that my knee is ok, but my hip is worn down. This was totally not true as I did an MRI later, but on the burnung pain spread out to my hips and from there to my whole body. After that I went down a lot of pathways (like taking heavy antibiotics agains lyme which totally crushed me) and and and. So in a couple of months I went from a healthy person to someone who could not sit upright for more than 30 seconds on my worst days.

At this point, after maybe 6-9 months after the onset of my disease I was at my lowest point. Beeing crushed by the symptoms every day, I felt that my life is pretty much over. I tried almost all medical approaches out there, but I only went worse and worse. I also understand more and more that some pills or some massage, some workout or something of anything would not help or heal me.
I got to a point of hopelessness, because I figured out that all the medical approaches wouldn't help. If you have all of this symptoms and doctors advice is e.g. to drink more water, do some sports, do some physio, electric stimulation. Even heavy stuff like antibiotics would attribute to the symptoms rather then ressolve them.

So around after 1 year I found about tms, this forum and some youtube chanels (Realan Angel, Miguel Bautista from CFS recovery) which helped me a lot.
My journey to healing was very slow, a thousand crashes and a lot of awful days. But over the time I got slowloy better, seeing a lot of sympoms beeing easier or fading away. I think what helped me most to recover are my three P's:

1. Pacience: Recovery for me was slow. A process. I hated this word. But it is the way it is. You just have to be pacient, accept your current situation and celebrate all small symptom improvments. Sometimes the pains is not a 100, but 98 - and you are 2% better. This was my way of healing, with all symptoms. It just takes time, for some people more, for others less. There is no magic pill, no medical approach, no magic meditation nothing. Just time and patience which gets you out of this.

2. Piece: On this journey, you somehow have to calm down. For me this was very hard. But with a lot of knowledge, meditation - it works. Sometimes I feld kind of pressured by a lot of recovery strories. I always thought that I have to respond or deal better to all my symptoms. But the truth is, that it is fu... hard, every day. But same here, its a process. Maybe with knowledge and meditation, you can be 1% better a day. So maybe you are still 99% in fear, but you have recovered 1%. So over time, little less fear, little less sysmpotms, first steps of recovery.

3. Persistence: For me, persistance is to stay on track and never give up. Eventhough on a 100 days I feld like giving up, overall I went my way. I tried to introduce sports again again. I felt awful. I withdrew. I tried again. Again and again. I started to run for 2o seconds on my worst, I feld awful, but happy that I was running. Same with working out... I tried it, I crashed, I readjusted and I tried again.


So, where am I today? Without doing heavy sports I almost feel ok. I still have a little ringing in my ear (much better), still some body and muscle aches (90& better). When I don't do heavy sports, my pains is more or less gone, my soft tissue is 90% better. Pots, dizinees and drunkeness totally gone. My digestion is back and working again. Anxiety and depression 90% better.
The only problem I still have is when exercing to much, I spiral for 3-4 days. But I am working on this as well. I will keep you updated.

 

Hi @nico87

Congratulations on your success & thanks for posting such a detailed post. I'm extremely pleased for you & love your success story.
Your three Ps- 'Patience, Peace & Persistence' are a great mantra & sum up the Path to take Perfectly.

All the best

Mala

 

Great great story!!!!! I have many of your same symptoms, so you give me hope!!! Thank you for sharing with us.

 

There is no doubt you are an incredible success story. The persistence that you describe will inspire many others!!!!

Two comments about this. The more relaxed you are about the remaining symptoms patterns, the better, in my opinion. Saying something to yourself like "sure there are some symptoms, so what, I'm human" or some such neutral statement may be helpful.

The second thing I want to say about this is the feeling tone I get when I read about this is that you embody a deep acceptance and patience. Truly remarkable after all you've been through. A real inspiration. You probably already are doing something like my suggestion above.

This is a remarkable, and is testimony to your understanding of this process, yourself, and your inner strength!