Purple feet and leg pain

Hi experienced something similar or can offer insight.

I’ve had a long and confusing health journey, and I’m trying to make sense of it.

I’ve had headaches since my teenage years. In my early twenties, I started experiencing nausea and dizziness, but no clear cause was ever found.

Around the time of COVID, after having my second child and going through a very stressful period, I woke up one morning with severe, sharp groin pain. I went through extensive testing (CT scans, MRIs, ultrasounds), and the only finding was a hip labral tear. I had surgery to repair it, but afterward the pain shifted more toward the midline and eventually to the other side.

I later had exploratory surgery to rule out endometriosis, which came back normal. Another MRI showed a labral tear in my other hip, and I underwent a second surgery. Unfortunately, my symptoms worsened after that.

Since then, my pain has expanded and changed over time. I now experience:

• Low back and pelvic pain
  
  
• Pain in my feet and hands
  
  
• Constipation and stomach pain
  
  
• Blurred vision and light sensitivity
  

I’ve seen rheumatology (normal results) and tried functional medicine, where I was diagnosed with Lyme, mild toxicity, and long COVID. I followed treatment for about 1.5 years but continued to get worse.

More recently, I began exploring a neuroplastic/TMS approach. Interestingly, as I started making emotional and lifestyle changes (like setting boundaries and standing up for myself), my symptoms began to shift again—pelvic pain improved, but other symptoms appeared or intensified.

My current symptoms that concern me most are:

• Burning sensation and heaviness in my legs
  
  
• Tight hamstrings
  
  
• Toes turning blue when sitting (especially with knees bent), but returning to normal quickly when I stand
  
  
• Feet becoming very red with visible veins in warm showers
  
  
• Hands also turning red at times
  

I’ve had vascular testing (ABI and Doppler), which came back normal.

I’m trying to understand if others have experienced similar symptoms—especially the positional color changes and burning/heaviness in the legs—and whether this can be part of TMS/neuroplastic symptoms or something like autonomic dysfunction.

I would really appreciate hearing from anyone who has gone through something similar or has insight. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.

 

Marie,
So sorry to hear of all your troubles.
Yes, purple feet and leg heaviness is a TMS thing. (You can search any symptom with the search engine in the upper right hand corner.) I put in purple feet and got this: https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/search/24311676/?q=Purple+feet&o=date&c[node]=2

But the important thing to know is it doesn’t really matter what TMS symptoms you have; they are all treated the same way. Digging into your life, etc, which you are doing. You’re on the right path.

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone comes on this forum with stress that compounded over the pandemic. (Myself, as well). TMS is also a form of anxiety and that plays a huge part in it all. Your nervous system has to heal. It’s like all your circuits are blown. It takes a while to soothe yourself and the symptoms start to dissipate very slowly. The book Hope and Help for Your Nerves, by Claire Weekes, has played a big part in getting me on the right track. It’s another piece to the puzzle. When you read it, replace whatever symptoms she’s describing with your own.

 

@Marie5904
Some of the symptoms you mention are not unusual in the body. Dr. Sarno's The Divided Mind book describes a variety of patients presenting all sorts of strange symptoms. You did the right thing getting things checked out! I love @Diana-M 's suggestion for Hope and Help For Your Nerves by Claire Weeks - the perfect companion for Dr. Sarno's book. It helped me immensely!

I think you are making headway into your symptoms and your anxiety by being present for yourself. Another way Dr. Sarno suggests we be present is to acknowledge and begin to feel the rage that builds up unknowingly inside of us due to our previous inability to do things like set boundaries, put ourselves first etc. You might relate to the personality traits he describes.

I too had a wide variety of symptoms that seemed fairly unrelated: vision, auditory sensitivity, inability to walk, "nerve" pain, dizziness, pseudo-seizures, other body pains, head aches, racing heart and much more. Most of them are gone but occasionally re-surface but only for moments - maybe a few days but I no longer worry about them. They are there but don't stop me from feeling pretty good most days and doing the things I enjoy doing. Most of all, so many things in the world no longer stress me out and drive me crazy

It took a little time, but I'm a lot better even though I'm still in the process of becoming pain free.

 

I'm taking a very clear look at your current symptoms because although I'm not a doctor, having a lifetime of fears of health sometimes makes me feel like one. I can kickass in the health categories on Jeopardy .
As Diana said, which symptoms you have really don't matter when it's TMS because they can be nearly anything. Yet in your case I thought it might help to get some assurance that none of these things are likely to be something scary or deadly.
To review, heaviness in legs, tight hamstrings, toes that look funny when knees are bent but look normal when standing and walking, feet very red with warm showers (Yes! me too!), hand looking red.....all of these things feel very benign and often very tied to anxiety or TMS.

Have you taken some time to set your worries about your symptoms on the shelf and do some digging into hidden emotions of anger?