freedrn asked: I am a pediatric nurse who has been working with a 9 year old boy who has migraines. He has had a headache now for over 2 weeks without relieve, dispite several attempts at medications, including DHE, was on that for over 72 hours no relief. Now after seeing some of his behavior I wonder how much is pain and how much is attention seeking behavior. Family doesn't have money for counsoling, any suggestions? He has missed a great deal of school as well.
Good Question. My advice would be to refer him to a doctor that deals with these kind of mindbody syndromes. Here’s a list: http://www.mindbodymedicine.com/doctors.html
Also more info here: http://www.tmshelp.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6558
You could also refer his parents to The Mindbody Syndrome by Dr. John Sarno. Actually Migraines were what Dr. Sarno dealt with and what led him to discover and characterize TMS.
Hope that helps.
Will.
From Wheelchair to Iceskates
Recovery from Chronic Pain Excerpt from the TMS Wiki: “Despite having a spinal fusion from T2 to L2 (for severe scoliosis when I was 17) I used to be very active, I played football every week and used to love horse riding, skiing, walking and hiking. Then in 1998 I pushed a sofa that was extremely heavy and I put my back out: I couldn’t stand up straight and was taken to hospital by ambulance and given pain killing injections. This was very scary (especially because of my surgery) and it took me several weeks to recover, I took a course of anti-inflammatory drugs and seemed to get better.
However this was the beginning of 10 years of back-pain episodes which became more and more frequent; usually I had pain with walking or movement, never when sitting and never with sciatica.”
This is amazing. It’s a syndrome called Foreign Accent Syndrome with less than 100 known cases. Wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_accent_syndrome
thank you
Hi Will, My name is Shelley and I am in Mississauga. I stumbled across your site after doing a search on psychosomatic illness today. I have been dealing with chronic pain since 2005, most of which has been lumped under the heading of fibromyalgia. Today I was thinking that it must be all in my head. In fact, for some reason I was convinced and decided to google it. Reading your story LITERALLY brought me tears of joy. My husband didn’t know what to make of my silly blathering, but I just wanted to extend a huge THANK YOU for sharing your story. I am now convinced more than ever that this is what I have and I feel hope for the first time in years that I will not have to spend the rest of my life in pain. I am so excited to read more about this and get to work on my brain! :)
Story #11 - Pre-Wedding Back Pain
This story comes from an old friend of mine who asked that her name be kept confidential. My friend (let’s call her Julia) is a physiotherapist who works in spinal cord rehabilitation. In 2007 she called me a week before her wedding in a panic because her back was hurting so much. I told her my story, and referred her to Dr. Sarno’s book Healing Back Pain. A week later she did a tap-dance routine with her father at her wedding. I reconnected with her recently and interviewed her about her experience for this site:
Will Sacks at Healing From Inside (HFI): What is your name, and what do you do for a living?
Julia: My name is Julia, I’m a physiotherapist in spinal cord rehabilitation
HFI: When did your back pain start?
J: My back pain began just after starting my dream job at a spinal cord rehab hospital.
HFI: What was going on in your life at the time?
J: At the time I was still a relatively new graduate working with patients who had very recently gone through the life changing experience of spinal cord injury. They would often be looking to me as their only hope of walking again. I was also newly engaged and planning a wedding for the summer of 2007. I started to have on and off back pain for a few months that I would describe as a more vague ache, about 3/10 in intensity.
HFI: How did you feel about where you were at in your life when the back pain started?
J: I was elated to finally have this job, while at the same time feeling enormous pressure to help my patients and perform well. I was also struggling with planning my wedding; one of the biggest days of my life. Given that planning small gatherings with my closest friends brings me an abnormal amount of anxiety, planning a wedding was like my personal Stress Olympics lasting a whole year.
HFI: What did it feel like?
J: It all felt exciting but also nerve-wracking. As my wedding date neared, I started having more regular emotional breakdowns. It got to the point where I just wanted it all to be over. We even considered canceling the wedding and buying a house with the money instead.
HFI: What happened next?
J: As it happened, the week before our big day, I was finishing up with my final patient on a Friday afternoon. She was a larger woman who required moderate assistance to transfer from the therapy mat back into her wheelchair. We had been working together for months and performed this transfer many times before. I counted us in, 1,2,3, and she didn’t budge. As I started lifting she unexpectedly didn’t. I suddenly felt unbearable pain in my lower back. Working in the field that I do, the worst started going through my mind. I couldn’t move. It took about 4 physios to lay me down on the mat as tears streamed down my face (very embarrassing). My manager showed up and sent me home immediately instructing me to take entire next week off. Three more physios walked me very gingerly to the car and drove me to the doctor. There I was prescribed a dangerous dose of painkillers that left me laughing and crying on my dinning room floor before passing out until the next day.
HFI: What were your symptoms the next day?
J: The next day I was not much better off and now had visions of being wheeled down the aisle in a wheelchair borrowed from work.
HFI: What did you think had happened?
J: As my spinal cord injury rehab brain was on overdrive, I pictured my disc herniating, and at any moment ready to paralyze me for the rest of my life.
HFI: Why did you decide to read Dr. Sarno’s book?
J: I was a mess and willing to try anything. I remembered talking to a friend weeks earlier about his experience with back pain. I recalled him recommending a book that helped. In a state of panic I called him, got the name of the book, and had my husband buy it that day.
HFI: What did you think about the book before you started it?
J: I was skeptical but willing to try anything.
HFI: What did you think while you were reading it?
J: I thought I was crazy. I hoped I was crazy! At least then the cure in the book seemed a little less daunting.
HFI: What did you think after you finished it?
J: It gave me hope.
HFI: How did you apply what Dr. Sarno talks about in his book to your life at the time?
J: I tried to calm myself down and acknowledge that there were currently huge stresses in my life and that there was likely no significant trauma to my back. I tried changing my whole psychological approach to the situation. I became more positive and less scared.
HFI: What were the results (if any) in your body and in your mind?
J: I quickly started to feel less and less pain until the third day, when I was back to “normal.”
HFI: How did this experience affect your wedding?
J: I did a tap routine with my father at my wedding!
HFI: What other thoughts (if any) do you have about mind-body illness and mind-body healing since this experience?
J: Although I knew there was a huge psychological component to feeling pain, I never realized what an enormous role it could play in my own life. It is also hard to admit to yourself that maybe some of the pain your feeling is not stemming directly from a physical injury. Once I was able to grasp this concept it was quite liberating in the sense that I felt I had more control over the situation.
Thanks to Julia for sharing her story! Her’s is similar to mine in that the pain appeared during a period of high stress. Her mind manifested the pain as a defense mechanism against the intense stress brought on by her job and upcoming wedding. Once she understood that the pain wasn’t physical, she was able to deal with it.
Allergies still not well understood
From the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/health/research/12allergies.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=food%20allergies&st=cse
Feeling Despite Pharmaceutical Drugs?
My friend Ivan Staroversky found this great quote from Hippocrates: “It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.”
Ivan is an alternative health care consultant who helps people get over their illnesses and find their purpose in life. In a recent blog post Ivan writes of the Pharmaceutical industry by quoting the movie Equalibrium:
“In the first years of the 21st century, a third World War broke out. Those of us who survived knew mankind could never survive a fourth; that our own volatile natures could simply no longer be risked. So we have created a new arm of the law: The Grammaton Cleric, whose sole task it is to seek out and eradicate the true source of man’s inhumanity to man - his ability to feel.
“Prozium - The great nepenthe. Opiate of our masses. Glue of our great society. Salve and salvation, it has delivered us from pathos, from sorrow, the deepest chasms of melancholy and hate. With it, we anesthetize grief, annihilate jealousy, obliterate rage. Those sister impulses towards joy, love, and elation are anesthetized in stride, we accept as fair sacrifice. For we embrace Prozium in its unifying fullness and all that it has done to make us great.” - Equalibrium
Ivan goes on to say “Reread the above quote from the movie and replace The Grammaton Cleric with the pharmaceutical industry and prozium with pharmaceutical drugs.” Read the full post here.
Story #10 - Wil Carlos, Recovery from Chronic Shoulder Pain
Hi, I’m Wil and I am excited to share with you all about my experience of shoulder pain, and the impact of reading Dr. Sarno’s book Healing Back Pain has had on my experience of my pain.
First a bit about me: I am a Success Coach living in Toronto. I have really found what I love to do as a Coach in that I support people to do what they’ve never done, or thought possible. My mission is to help people get clear on who they really are and what they really want to create in this life. I coach people past their barriers and help move them towards the success they’ve always wanted.
Most of these barriers (if not all) are actually in people’s minds. It’s not the circumstances of their lives, but what my clients make up about their circumstances that impedes their success. The same event could happen to 5 different people, and each would have their own interpretation of that event which would cause 5 different actions. Some would see loosing their business as terrible and go into depression, whereas others would see it as that opportunity to travel the world they’ve been waiting for.
The physical pain that I have had since I was a child was one of those big barriers to living a life I love all the time. The only thing was that I couldn’t see it for what it was, a mental barrier. The book “Healing Back Pain” by Dr. John Sarno really opened my eyes to that.
Story #9 - Hives in a Patient with Multiple Personalities
An amazing 1988 article from the New York Times pays testament to the power that the mind exerts over the body:
“WHEN Timmy drinks orange juice he has no problem. But Timmy is just one of close to a dozen personalities who alternate control over a patient with multiple personality disorder. And if those other personalities drink orange juice, the result is a case of hives.
The hives will occur even if Timmy drinks orange juice and another personality appears while the juice is still being digested. What’s more, if Timmy comes back while the allergic reaction is present, the itching of the hives will cease immediately, and the water-filled blisters will begin to subside..”
Story #8 - Jonathan Van Ee’s story about finger pain
Excerpt from http://www.mindisbody.com/story.html: “For about two and a half years my fingers were in continual pain from typing on a computer. I visited a variety of highly regarded doctors, took anti inflamatory medications, went to physical therapy, iced my hands, and more. My condition progressively worsened, even though I stopped typing completely. Eventually, I effectively lost the use of my hands. From that low point, I rapidly recovered by pushing through the pain. Today I am back to living the intense life I’m used to, typing for several hours at a time, and do not feel the same debilitating pain.” Read More…
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