AnonymousNick

I was born to boomer parents who were also both only-children... goodnight folks!

Seriously, I've never had a formal diagnosis but these symptoms have dogged me for so long and have had so many permutations and spontaneous recoveries that I can consciously rule out really dangerous issues. That said, when symptoms hit, it still scares the hell out of me. I've never trusted doctors and medications, but my eyes are now open to the idea that there are actual competent, caring professionals out there who don't just write prescriptions and hack and slash. I still can't afford them however.

I have been through an encyclopedia of natural treatments, and -- while I still believe in them in other contexts -- they weren't helping me. My issues are largely in the digestive system, but I have had back pain, migraines (usually aura and very rarely with headache but, on a few occasions, numbness and briefly garbled speech, which was very scary), a bout with Lyme (that I realize I probably won very quickly but carried on with for a while in TMS fashion while my mother was in breast cancer treatment and I was in full caretaker mode), and more recently some anxiety symptoms. I'm a home-brewer and really enjoy the taste of alcoholic beverages over the narcotic effect, but noticed that my life is very different when I have a few drinks. Symptoms disappear, and it makes the TMS very obvious ( scary arthritic problems from "Lyme" would disappear, even well into the next day). It has been a weirdly effective diagnostic tool, but not something I want to continue to use in a coping way.

I've remembered that at a young age I would get really sharp chest pains. I'd tell my parents I might be having a heart attack, but they were insistent that I wasn't. Being ten-years-old or so at the time, I had to concede that they were probably right. But it didn't explain why I was getting them, why they hurt so much, and why "gas pains," as they called them, were in my chest! This might have been the beginning of the whole TMS pain saga for me.