Day 1

I'm starting the Structured Program today in hopes of getting past the last remnants of my pain. If I were just having the last 15% of my original tailbone pain, it wouldn't be such a big deal. I'm SO grateful to have improved so much since reading Dr. Scubiner's Unlearn Your Pain book and then Dr. Sarno's books early in the Fall of 2018. But in Dec. I started running and exercising "vigorously" and my pain moved into my left knee and some very minor seasonal pain in my left shoulder became more intense. My husband calls the pain lovingly "Rover" and it was certainly roving my body. But my left knee swelled and I could feel an egg shaped fluid filled swelling, and the muscles around the knee tightened up creating pain, and stiffness. I finally gave up the running and vigorous exercise. The swelling has reduced a lot but lingering annoying pain and stiffness remains and my shoulder is being stubborn and painful only when I use it. I'm a bit floored that the agonizing tailbone pain that I was SO worried about is the minor player now in my pain scenario.

I believe 100% this is TMS. It took me a while to get to 100% because I had seen the sitting X-ray with the dislocated tailbone while sitting and a small bone spur that made me cry at the time because I was so relieved to finally understand what was wrong. But I've come to understand we all have normal abnormalities like these, it's just that MRIs let us see them. I believe it's the tendons and ligaments attached to the tailbone area due to TMS. I was actually shocked that Dr. Sarno even mentions tailbone (coccyx) pain in his books! It's shocking how little is known about the tailbone and tailbone pain. But let me tell ya, when it's agonizing to sit, it changes your entire world!

My history: Back pain off and on my whole life. I can see now that it went dramatically "Out" during high stress and high pressure times in my life.

In 2016 I was doing a very small minor leg lift with a new exercise program and thought I felt or heard a little pop (classic!) I was under massive work pressure at the time (much self induced) and within the week felt like I was sitting on an egg. (There's that egg thing again!) It was uncomfortable, and grew into outright pain within a few weeks. At the same time I was dealing with some extended family issues too that was making me mad.

Soon, I had given up my FAVORITE recliner, which mean giving up cross-stitching (my fave relaxing activity). I tracked down a tailbone specialist on the east coast and flew out to see him. I had the sitting X-ray done and saw the tailbone "dislocated" and the bone spur. He gave me an impar injection and I flew home. I felt better for about 6 months and it returned so I returned to him. Had another impar injection. This one didn't help much. I continued to suffer. Work stress mounted. The things I enjoyed doing were abandoned. I was scared!!!

Last July I flew to see the tailbone doctor again and had a nerve ablation in my tailbone area. I felt a little muscle spasm over my left butt cheek while he injected it. I was in excrutiating pain for 8 weeks while it "took effect." It finally all calmed down, but I was basically back where I started.

I joined the tailbone surgery group on Facebook and started seriously considering tailbone removal. My husband was seriously against it. One day a woman showed a picture of Dr. Schubiner's book and I was intrigued. I bought it, read it, and saw myself in it. I wasn't totally sure about TMS, but my husband who is very logical said, that is 110% YOU! Very quickly, within days I started feeling better, I soon went off the strong pain killer my GP had given me when I had the nerve ablation done. I was blown away that I could sit again. I still struggled with the X-ray but I knew the MRI I had said there was nothing wrong, and no serious illness to be concerned about. So I've worked and read every single day since.

So you can imagine with Rover started making the painful rounds to my knee and shoulder I was NOT amused. I'm stumped why it hasn't stopped since I'm so aware of it and I dig deep through writing and talking into my psychological and emotional issues.

Day 1 said to watch the Stossel video again which I've seen a dozen times. I almost didn't but I did. I cried when they talked about personality traits. That's a piece I don't think much about, but I'm a classic Sarno personality so I'm going to bring to the front burner and think psychologically about my personality, what's driving me, and making conscious choices about how hard I'm going to be on my self. How much I will "push! push! push!" I'm glad I watched it. So this program is already helping.

 

I had that knee problem "for no reason" (tms). It was harmless but very painful and distracting, just some synovial fluid leaking. It reminds me of another tms equivalent which was the retinopathy I had after a really stressful time passed when I was evacuated after a brush fire and then had a flea infestation of my place. The retinopathy was also harmless, a leaking of fluid of the eye to behind the lense. It's not a surprise that the eye doctor said that it's believed to be caused by stress.

 

Fredric, thanks for your reply. Did you stop the vigorous exercise to calm down the knee, or just ignore it and keep going? The books seem t say ignore it and keep going, but it seems so counter-intuitive when that fluid and pain is building up.

 

The knee problem was prior to using tms recovery. I wasn't exercising at the time and went to a chiropractor to have it checked, and it went away quickly. So I don't know about using the tms approach for it , but I believe that my problem was emotional.