Alex

Now for some details...
Since I was in my mid 20's I started feeling some back and shoulder pain. I assumed it was due to the many hours I'd spend doing Ju-jitsu, volleyball, surf and cycling. Then I had a motorcycle crash and though I had heavy armor the impact on my mid back was tremendous. Since then my back was never the same. There were no fractures, just some compression, and after a few days I was doing my normal life but with a new pain.

Couple years more and a bicycle crash caused some compression in the lower back but again no injury or fracture. Fast forward many years and I was/am struggling with increasing pain, trying all sorts of treatments from the most to the least mainstream. I was seeing many doctors and getting really frustrated at a certain sentence that seemed common among all: you have some issues with your back but none that justifies your pain or the need for surgery, so you better start to learn how to live with pain, avoiding certain efforts, postures, etc. You know the drill...

Some "fun facts": after I had a caudal block injection to ease the pain on my lower back, it actually made it worse; despite the tremendous pain felt when riding my bike, I never stopped doing it, just had to take it easy and be the last in the group; even the local butchers (doctors "scalpel happy") were not keen of cutting me open. Blood work was always top shelf as I was leading a healthy lifestyle. I was stuffing myself with pain killers but the relief was minimal and of short duration. Last year I suffered a spasm so intense that I was admitted in to hospital and given plenty of medication. Now I know that the improvement came from those days off work rather then from the drugs. 1 month later, on vacation but 3 or 4 days before having to resume work, a new spasm so bad that I could only lay down. I was in a coffee shop and luckily the owner knew a good chiro that saw beyond the physical and opened the path to my own research. But it was only when I was referred to a new doctor months latter that I was introduced to the mind-body approach, although from a different angle, acknowledging the fact that pain is a signal and I had no structural damages. Still far from Dr. Sarno's more complete approach but enough to make me dig deeper and find other sources of chronic back pain.

And this is where I am today. I had some improvement with the last doctor but it has been through the reading of Dr. Sarno's Healing Back Pain that I am grasping a much wider concept and TMS in it's depth.

Some pain is gone and some is better but some days it comes back, so there is still some work to be done. Although I am convinced that I'm fine structurally, it's still difficult to ignore years of pain. So I still need to reach that state of very little to no pain to convince myself that I am 100% fine (if that is really the case since there could still be some residual damages to my back).

I will now start my journey in this forum, go through the program and keep on focusing on the recovery. The amount of info is overwhelming but I'll start from the beginning, one step at a time and will post some updates.

Stocked to have read some inspirational stories and well done on all that have chosen this path and achieved so much.