Check new pain symptoms before assuming TMS - my jaw pain turned out to not be TMS

Hi all,

I am fairly new to this forum and you can see my successful experience with TMS and low chronic back pain in the Support forum.

I have just had an interesting experience which I though I would share as it is a good reminder that sometimes we need to check certain conditions with our doctors before automatically assuming it is TMS related.

After 30 years of suffering with high levels of chronic low back pain, I was able to improve my situation significantly by reading up on TMS (starting with Dr Sarno's books) and have managed to significantly reduce my low back pain levels in a matter of about 5 months, which for me is almost unbelievable. This has involved a lot of journaling, work with a psychotherapist and also a lot of mindful meditation. There is no doubt in my mind that my back pain was caused by TMS (mainly as a people pleaser).

More recently, my pain appeared to be moving, and in the last couple of months I noticed a lot of jaw pain. Initially I assumed it was TMS related, however, it seemed to exhibit fairly reproducible behaviour. I would get the jaw pain every time I would go for a walk or exercise, and then when I would stop, the pain would subside (some of you can probably guess where this is going). After a few weeks of this, and checking out some info on the web, I started to think whether this could be a sign of angina. Apparently not all angina events involve chest pains. In the end I decided to do what even Dr Sarno recommends many times in his book - to get any new symptoms of pain checked out.

After seeing my GP and a cardiologist and having a stress test and angiogram, I now have a few stents as there was significant narrowing present in my arteries around the heart, that is, I was a ticking time bomb.

So I guess the moral of the story is to do as Dr Sarno himself has advised, always get new symptoms, especially ones which may potentially involve something serious, checked out to rule out anything serious.

This has disrupted my TMS work a little as I lost a bit of focus over the last few weeks and even my back pain started to come back. However, I am now getting back on track and have a bit of catching up to do.

Cheers
jimbob_oz

 

Hi. Jimbob. You definitely did the right thing by having a doctor look you over.
So now under doctor's care, medication I imagine, I hope you can get back to the main techniques of TMS recovery
for your back pain... relaxation through deep breathing, meditation, mindfulness living in the present, and maybe most importantly,
not to worry this into anything worse.

 

Thanks Walt, good advice. It's very easy to get over worried when your heart's concerned but staying positive is important.