Day 1 Hope Feels Good

Ten years of unaddressed irritable bowel with constipation sent me into a spiral in late 2017, leading to mono. My "active mono" experience was mild, but over time things worsened. My digestive issues worsened, along with new aches, pains, major fatigue, congestion, a constant sore throat, anxiety, and the dreaded post-exertional malaise, where any significant mental or physical stress would wipe me out for days.

I was starting to get better at the end of 2018, but then the flu knocked me out for a week and brought some of the symptoms back. A few weeks later, I started telling myself every day I was not sick and just suffering from some form of beatable autoimmune issue. I also started replaying happy past memories and visualizing future ones. It seemed to help as I experienced more better days, but simultaneously new, scarier symptoms started popping up including shortness of breath/asthma like attacks and major leg weakness/tingling.

Just a few days ago I stumbled across an article from Dr. Howard Schubiner linking CFS and TMS. Normally, I am a very logical person, so when people have told me in the past year that anxiety might be behind my failure to recover, I brushed them off. However, after reading the article, the evidence is too strong with all of the recovery stories from patients similar to me in personality and experience. The real turning point was when I realized that my new, worse symptoms are an extinction burst. Without knowing it, I have already started TMS treatment.

Now, I am convinced. I have had over a year of medical tests that have found next to nothing. If I needed any more convincing, the last 3 days since reading about TMS have been my best since I got sick. I am even experiencing a new extinction burst that if not annoying, would be down right hilarious. My symptoms, which used to be slow to develop and slow to leave, and follow somewhat predictable patterns, are coming and going fast and furious with no logical explanation. My breathing gets bad. I tell myself that it's nothing to worry about, then twenty minutes later, it subsides and my legs start to hurt. I laugh at that and it goes away, to be replaced by a pain in my gut and so on.

Anyway, I'm all in. I am reading Dr. Sarno and starting the treatment plan. I've already visualized and named the little demon inside my head that is causing all of this trouble. Dark Ben. He is the personification of my anger, stress, and fear (which I have had plenty of...working on it with a counselor). I feel like he is already losing.

In the last few days I went from feeling destined to die or become incapacitated, leaving behind a wife and daughter, to having faith and hope. It feels good. I do have some worries though. I do wonder how much TMS can fix. I know my newer, more worrisome symptoms are TMS related, but my lingering fatigue and post-exertional malaise..time will tell. Also, I am trying to mentally prepare myself for Dark Ben to come back with a vengeance. I hope not, but you never know. Overall, I am optimistic.

 

How are you doing?