2 years of suffering from upper back, neck and abdominal pain.

Hello, my name is Dawid I am 36. I was a passionated active person and really disciplined with my sport and my nutrition till the day an illness called Guillain Barre Syndrome made me completely disabled for almost a whole year. From doing squats with 350 lbs to a wheelchair in 10 days.

I was not able to swallow,to close my eyes or to move my arms and feet.It was a very scary time and I almost thought I would die and have been very depressed too. But after a year i thought I overcame the most of it. I started to work again in a psychiatric hospital with dissocial patients. I soon became to develop strange symptoms around my ripcage that felt like a belt and sometimes even were in the front. But after getting the diagnosis of an gastritis and taking some medicine it went away.
As time passes by i started to train again in the gym and after some weeks a hurt my back during a rowing exercise it felt like a trapped nerve under my left shoulder and it did not go away, i got muscle spasm and it started to hurt even more. The pain was in my upper left back in my neck and sometimes I got little cramps around the spine. I started to be afraid that the cause could be cancer and my symptoms stater to get worse..

i had multiple ultrasounds,2 x-rays, visited 2 times weekly physiotherapist, changed it 3 times had an endoscopy for my colon and my stomach, had even an mri of my thorax but all came back negative. The told me that there were maybe a small compression of a nerve and should go away with time but it didn't.
Massages got me temporary relief and painkillers didn't help at all just muscle relaxers but also temporary. There were days were i had almost no pain after doing sports but then one day later I lied on the floor crying after an 12 hour shift at work.

The pain was like every 5-3 days at the beginning and then like every other day..and then every single day i got obsessed with it. Stretched, manipulated and rolled a thousand time a day over a black roll just to find out what can give me release...my wife had to massage me more times a day just that I could work. At work i thought about nothing but the pain... The pain was so unpredictable, on Time the whole neck cramped and the tops of my shoulder blade were so painfull. The next day the thoratic back was cramping you could feel hard spots on the sites on the spine. Then the abs or the abdominal left sided pain was back and even there it was moving left side, near the belly an so on...i really wished I would rather be dead and thought this must have been cancer...
What i didn't understand was that there were days with more and days with almost no pain..or moments.
This went on till i married my wife and we have been to the honeymoon for 3 weeks. The pain slowly got better, i didn't manipulate the back every single day. And it almost disappeared.Till i got at my last day a Thai massage and felt a click on my left backside till then it returned like it started.
First it was like a 3 out of 10 and like every 3-5 day at the end again a 9-10 and every single day.. and then it stayed like this for 6 months i quited my sport and was lying 4 hours a day on the floor and lying during my nightshifts at work on the floor to when my patients slept..again i got obsessed about cancer..but still thought if the pain is so intense the white coated would have found something because who would survive 1,5 years in pain from cancer without treatment.
So 1,5 year with pain i had to remove my wisedom teeth and got an infection. And got my negative results back from my thoratic Mri with said that all seems fine.
We moved in a new flat.And i don't know why but the pain went again away not from instantly but more like every day pain, then every second day pain then like just once a week and slowly the intensity was lower and lower till it totally diminished.
I was doing sports again, lifting as heavy as before Guillain Barre Syndrome and felt great , had now and then little short pain but didn't thought about it. Almost 6 month later the cancer of my wife's father returned and she got pregnant.. then one day i remember i was at my night shift and suddenly got this crazy back and neck spasms..but after sleeping everything was back to normal. Than i had a day and my neck pain and upper back spasm returned at work..out of the blue. I started to be afraid that the back pain and the abdominal pain would return and was starting to think that maybe i just have metastatis in my back like my wife's dad, who passed away.. and till then I am living again I'm constant pain, massages , muscle relaxers or heat and cold are helping but only half a day or maybe one day. I get little cramps around my spine that are so much hurting that i start to be afraid..and i am again obsessed about my pain. The last thing I think about is my pain and the first thing I thing about when I wake up. There are some hours a day where I am completely without pain mostly in the evening and the worst at work. I start to feel that I'm getting more angry because of my pain and that i start to think more negative.. i was so positive and active and it hurts my soul when i look what kind of person i now..
I started to search the web and found this thing called TMS. I really don't know if this could be tms because of the cramplike feeling and because there a moments with completely no pain..but i really hope it with all my hurt that i found the answer and that i get well for my little daughter that's coming in may.
I read dr. Sarno's book in english cause I'm from germany and can believe that this could be Tms but it feel so intense and these cramps that comes and goes..

I really try to find answers and a relief.
Dawid

 

When you have multiple chronic pain sites that ebb and flow and move around, and culminated after trauma, TMS is likely at play. You have experienced significant trauma and alteration to your life with initially a scary diagnosis and the uncertainty around it, and then your relapse of strange undiagnosable symptoms and accompanying understandable anxiety. As life went on your symptoms settled and you got on with life but with the next set of stressors (your father in law's cancer and your wife's pregnancy) your brain decided to 'protect' you with the fear of the remembered pain pathway. This is your brains way of distracting you from more 'dangerous' emotions. I suspect there may be some unprocessed emotions surrounding the trauma of the virus. Good news is if this is TMS, there is nothing wrong with you. This is a journey into your own emotional and spiritual self and a rebalancing, healing self exploration. You are safe.

I would suggest firstly completing Alan Gordon’s recovery program that is free on this website. You could also start on the structured educational program on here to help get in touch with deeper emotions. Good luck!