Day 4: Anger

What was the most disheartening thing a doctor has told you about your symptoms? In what ways have you kept that in your mind?

This is going to basically be a rant about a couple of physiotherapists who seriously made me worry I would ever recover one of whom made me severely angry at the time. I'll try and keep the bad language out.

The first incompetent fool tried to do acupuncture on me a couple of times to alleviate RSI induced arm pain. After my 3rd session (by which time he said I should be seeing a significant improvement) he asked me how my symptoms were. When I reported no change he said to me: "well its your own fault for sitting infront of a computer typing for 8 hours a day. How can you ever hope to get better if you continue doing that". I felt a huge surge of anger that I had to suppress. I literally wanted to smash his face in and tell him to shut the F*** up and tell him he was a useless parasitic quack. Over the next couple of months at work what said went round and round in my head until I was believeing that it was all my fault that I had played too many computer games in my youth that I had worked to hard at univeristy that I was never going to recover and have to give up my new job that I really enjoy and worked my arse off to get. All because this idiot had blamed my body for not reacting to his flawed treatment.

The second physiotherapist was much more well meaning. He told me that I had super flexible shoulder joints due to a mixture of muscle imbalance and possibly missing cartilage in my shoulder joints, he said I should get an MRI to confirm this. He said my symptoms were related to the nerves being trapped as they passed through my shoulders because of this. He said that I may be looking at surgery to get this fixed or it would not get better and I would suffer a lot in later life. It is the second part of this statement that filled me with fear. I mean my symptoms are bad now if they get much worse over time then I could be crippled. Luckily I found out about Sarno and started taking that seriously soon after I was told this and I refused to get an MRI, incase it made matters worse and dropped him as my physio. However I still worry that he may have planted a seed in my mind that will germinate as TMS pain in later life because of what he told me about his shoulders.

I'm guessing alot of you on here have recieved stuff like this from doctors and physios. What is the worst you have had? How to you stop it resurfacing and worrying you? Thinking about this has made me so angry I'm off to the gym to let off some steam............

 

Ah baby, I reserve a special contempt for physios. My partner endured some hellish treatments at their hands and it took months to recover. It's a learning curve edging us towards personal truth.
Some people are trapped in a paradigm and would rather die than change. What the hell can you do about that? Nothing really, bar stay out of their orbit. Oh yeah, and vent when one of those tools bothers you. Hope you feel better my dear.

 

I think most of them are doing what they were trained to do and believe in what they're doing. Some may get to a point where they just don't know what to tell you anymore when they see you're not getting better. Like a doctor who tells someone to sleep in a hard bed because the soft one must be the reason the person still has pain! But these people are viewed as an authority, and their words can cause tremendous damage.

One thing I would suggest is writing feelings letters to these physios. No need to censor--just let your feelings rip! That could be therapeutic for you and has helped people (including me). Then burn the letters, shred, etc. or mail if you want! (I didn't mail them)

Best wishes!

 

Loved your response, Lori! I think we've all been told idiotic things by practitioners. I try to remind myself that they really are well-intentioned, even if they aren't familiar with TMS.

 

Good idea Lori! I've been feeling the need to vent again so down on paper it goes!

 

I'm fortunate that most of the doctors I've seen have been caring an haven't said anything that has really made me worry. Mostly they just couldn't find anything wrong an were confused by this. So concerning my condition I've been lucky in this area. However there was one doctor that was a real jerk. He asked me "Do you like women or boy?" or something to that effect.

When it comes to doctors it's frustrating that they don't understand TMS. They have a short time to spend with you, and the treatment they give has to be covered by insurance. They have a handful of possible diagnosis, so typically this means they have to find the one you fit and go with it. I am able to keep the fact that they found nothing wrong in the back of my mind to reinforce the fact that I have TMS. That alone has made seeing them worthwhile. And I've added that to my evidence sheet, naturally.