| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Wrow99 |
Posted - 03/22/2006 : 18:45:05
Hi everyone. I’ve been reading this message board for a while now and figured it’s time for me to contribute a bit.  Below is my story – I’ve tried to summarize it as much as possible. The first two paragraphs describe a physical problem from which the fear may have played a role in TMS symptoms afterwards.
Background
This all started last year when I was 33 years old. I never had any major health problems or pain issues in my life. Last June I started getting a moderate pain in my right groin area. At first I just through perhaps I pulled a muscle or something but it didn’t go away. A few weeks later I went to my doctor who told me to put heat on it, come back in two weeks and to see how that goes. Two weeks later, no change. So then they began a bunch of different tests, urinalysis, ultrasounds, trip to a urologist, and several trips back to my family doctor. No test showed anything wrong. Finally in September I had a CT scan that showed that my appendix was slightly enlarged. They felt I should remove it because it could be a precursor to appendicitis. So I had surgery two days later and found out that I had a tiny (9 mm) cancerous tumor on my appendix. They said with something that small and in its location, it’s basically considered “cured” when it’s removed.
I was pretty upset after my surgery because it took so long to diagnose what was actually wrong and because what they found was so unexpected. It was rather shocking to hear the word “cancer” because that was the last thing I expected. Anyway, in the follow month (October) I started having large amounts of anxiety, panic attacks, and some mild chest pain that my doctor guessed was acid reflux. The panic attacks went away after about a month. My doctor put me on a prescription for his diagnosis of acid reflux. After two months the symptoms didn’t change; I still had a mild pain in my bottom center chest that wouldn’t go away. In early December, I was sent to a GI doctor and who scheduled me for an endoscopy (a test where a camera is put down your throat and into your stomach to see what’s going on). The test showed nothing unusual.
It was at that point where “weird” TMS type stuff began to occur. I had pain in the very same place in my chest for two months, but the very next day after my endoscopy, the pain moved every so slightly to the right. Through the next two weeks it kept creeping to right so that now the pain was under my right ribcage and under my arm. It continued its movement for another couple of weeks until finally it settled in my right side of my mid-to-upper back. An x-ray taken at the end of December showed nothing wrong.
That’s about the time one of my co-workers gave me a copy of The Mindbody Prescription. It hit home after reading it because I seemed to fit many of the personality traits for people who experience TMS. It’s been about 10 weeks since I first read the book and perhaps 2 months since I found this message board. It took me a while to really accept that the brain would cause pain to avoid unconscious issues, but for me there seemed no other reasonable explanation. I’ve been working hard on trying to simply ignore the pain in my back and focus on what truly is be causing it in my head. That was very difficult at first – pain is not something people tend to ignore (which I suppose is why TMS is so successful at its purpose). After several weeks my pain diminished slightly. It had been there for pretty much all my waking hours and started to go away for small pieces of the day. Now after a couple of months it’s gone down to being only about a quarter of the day when I experience discomfort. The pain seems to float around quite a bit on different spaces of my mid/upper right back and also sometimes will present itself as anxiety instead of pain.
I think the stress from my events last year was the major factor that set me off. I guess most of my TMS issue has to do my lost faith in the medical community, the fear of deteriorating health, finding a sense of mortality, and just a general fear of pain. However I’m trying to figure out if there are other problems I may have unconsciously that are adding to it. So that’s where I am today. It’s been since the beginning of the year that I’ve been treating this as TMS and not a physical issue. I’m hoping the remaining symptoms I have will subside soon.
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| 3 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Jim1999 |
Posted - 03/26/2006 : 21:57:24
You're welcome. You are right that you are very fortunate to have heard about Dr. Sarno less than a year after your pain became significant. I suffered for over 7 years before I first heard about Sarno. And, yes, I spent a lot of time reading about possible physical causes and treatments. It was time-consuming and demoralizing, since studies showed that the treatments didn't do a whole lot.
Jim |
| Wrow99 |
Posted - 03/26/2006 : 13:23:05
Thanks Jim. I feel fortunate to have found out about TMS very soon after my pain started. Otherwise I probably would have spent quite a long time trying to pinpoint some non-existant physical problem. |
| Jim1999 |
Posted - 03/25/2006 : 22:35:51
Welcome to the group, Wrow99. Congratulations on your success so far! I hope you will soon be pain-free.
Jim |
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