It's been a while since I have written on here, and I am happy to say that I simply haven't been thinking about pain much. My back no longer hurts. My foot is nearly perfect again and only hurts when I think about why it hasn't hurt lately. The past 3 months have truly been amazing, and I have been busy just trying to embrace the life I missed so so much.
I can't express to you the relief I have gotten with the release of pain. I actually have time to worry about things other the pain and no longer stress about how I will stand at a social gathering or make the walk to the restaurant to meet my friends. I no longer have to wear tennis shoes every day (although I still love some comfort shoes!). To be honest, I'm scared sometimes of forgetting just how bad the pain was, how it controlled every minute of my life. How I was terrified of the future and terrified of all the things on which I would miss out. I'm scared of forgetting how God answered my prayers. I'm scared of losing the faith that I gained while in my most desperate place of depression. But it's time to stop living scared, and start living the life I have been given back!
What made the pain go away? It all started with one of my daily desperate Internet searches for answers. On a Friday night when I had to miss a dinner with friends because my back couldn't handle an hour sitting at a restaurant, I started Googling chronic back pain (while in my permanent position of laying down). I stumbled upon the blog of a person who read the book "Healing Back Pain" by Dr. John Sarno of NYU. Dr. Sarno has written several books on the mind-body connection and his basic theory is that our minds create pain to distract us from having to deal with other stressful events in our lives. He refers to this syndrome as Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS). I was extremely doubtful at first. But then, I started to think about it. One of my favorite things to tell people when they asked about the foot pain was that "at least it distracts me enough that I don't worry about anything else." I always though that at least there was one perk with having pain - the distraction.
After thinking about it, however, I started to realize just how many stressors in my life I had been ignoring. The week my foot pain started, I started a job at a high powered law firm where I felt completely out of place and intimated. I moved to Chicago for the summer away from family and my fiance for the first time, and I got married at the end of that summer. At the time my back pain started, my family was going through a difficult transition and my husband's job announced it was moving several employees. Each of these events likely caused significant stress, but I didn't deal with any of them. My pain took over every aspect of my life.
Initially, I thought the mind-body connection was responsible only for my back pain. Within weeks of starting journaling, and dealing with some of the most complicated past and present stressors in my life, my back pain vanished. Completely. After a few months, I started to wonder if my foot pain could also be related to TMS. In his book, Dr. Sarno discusses a wide variety of pain and disorders that can be caused by repressing emotions and stress, including foot pain, migraines, irritable bowl syndrome, carpal tunnel neck pain, and many more.
Because a huge part of the treatment is accepting that there is nothing structurally wrong with your body, I saw a specialist at Northwestern University Hospital to confirm that my foot pain was also related to TMS. After a detailed analysis, the doctor confirmed that he believed my foot pain was due to TMS. I continued journaling and spoke with other sufferers of TMS. Sure enough, within weeks, I was running again and my foot pain level is minimal. For anyone who suffers from chronic pain, I can't recommend one of Dr. Sarno's books enough.
This will likely be my last post, as I am moving beyond the pain and on to bigger and better things....
