Day 1 - My Story
I am 34, married to the love-of-my-life, and we are closing on our first home in June. We hope to have children in the next few years and anticipate a happy, long life ahead of us.
I'd say my TMS journey began when I was in high school. I was singing in a highly regarded church choir, at the dedication concert paying tribute to the new organ they had just raised money for and had installed. I stood a few feet from the choir director, who was very active as he conducted us, waving his arms, jumping at times, and making eye contact as he nodded that we were right on pitch, tempo, etc. Everything was going great.
Without warning, my hearing and peripheral vision cut out. I could see a tunnel ahead of me, hear nothing but my own breathing. I turned to my close friend who was singing next to me and saw her mouth my name and the words "are you okay?!" I made my way to the staircase and took a step in the darkness, then fell down a flight of twisty stairs, since no matter how I turned my head I could only see this small box directly in front of my eyes. A woman in the vestibule at the bottom of the stairs looked at me as I fumbled to my feet and made it to the bathroom. My heart pounded and I laid on the cool floor in the bathroom in the one stall by the toilet, waiting for my hearing and sight to return. I heard my name being called as my friend told me our part in the concert had ended and the conductor was asking if I was all right. She told me I was pale and clammy, and I felt hot and sweaty. I had no idea why this had happened.
A similar version of this happened at several small a capella performances in a local French restaurant where my high school audition-to-be-in singing group performed to raise money for our spring trip abroad. It got to the point that I just "called out" prior to the performance because going through this type of thing at the performances was too stressful. My membership in the group became uncertain and I finally dropped out.
The church choir director called me in and told me he felt that I had stage fright. He offerred to arrange a phone conversation about the topic with a famous opera singer in Philadelphia with whom he had worked. I was getting increasingly anxious in all sorts of situations and never took him up on it.
In college, I began to black out on the free campus buses. After a few months of this, I dropped out of school and returned to live with my parents.
I saw therapists and a psychiatrist, but no one - and no medication - seemed particularly helpful to me at the time.
Over the years I had bouts of IBS, carpal tunnel syndrome, severe headaches, tooth pain that lasted much longer than it "should have" following impacted wisdom tooth removal, pelvic/abdominal pain which lasted much longer than it "should have" and was much more severe than it "should have been" following the removal of a tiny dermoid cyst from my right ovary.
Then in December 2010, I began to have headaches that would not go away. I found a job that generated significantly less stress than the one I had at the time the headaches came on, but the headaches continued. My primary care doctor tried me on several medications with no luck. I went to a pain clinic and tried all the migraine drugs on the market with no luck. I had a migraine that lasted over three months and was hospitalized for a DHE treatment. The treatment "broke" the headache and kept me headache free for a few months. I had another hospital stay and they did a spinal tap. An argument could be made that my cerebro-spinal fluid pressure was abnormally high and that I had a diagnosis of pseudo-tumor cerebri, or Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension. Some new medications, but I continued to have chronic migraines.
At some point I started reading Sarno, and it clicked. But I had (and still have) a hard time letting go of access to the pain medication, which, while it did not "work" in that I still had pain, it certainly made it easier to cope with it.
I had read, re-read, listened to audiobook versions, of several of Dr. Sarno's books. At one point I attempted to get an appointment with him but learned that he had just retired from seeing patients. I am now re-starting the structured program and hope to be able to fully go with it. My husband is a psychiatrist and we discuss what we now refer to as "Sarnosis" often; it makes sense to us and we can tell when one of us or the other is experiencing "acute Sarnosis" as we say. But what I need is to really believe that there is nothing structurally wrong with me, that I can give up looking for a medical explanation for my headaches (or low back back, or shoulder pain, or foot pain, or stomachaches, and so on!) and just be okay with my brain looking for a physical outlet for my unexpressed emotions.
Here I go.
I am 34, married to the love-of-my-life, and we are closing on our first home in June. We hope to have children in the next few years and anticipate a happy, long life ahead of us.
I'd say my TMS journey began when I was in high school. I was singing in a highly regarded church choir, at the dedication concert paying tribute to the new organ they had just raised money for and had installed. I stood a few feet from the choir director, who was very active as he conducted us, waving his arms, jumping at times, and making eye contact as he nodded that we were right on pitch, tempo, etc. Everything was going great.
Without warning, my hearing and peripheral vision cut out. I could see a tunnel ahead of me, hear nothing but my own breathing. I turned to my close friend who was singing next to me and saw her mouth my name and the words "are you okay?!" I made my way to the staircase and took a step in the darkness, then fell down a flight of twisty stairs, since no matter how I turned my head I could only see this small box directly in front of my eyes. A woman in the vestibule at the bottom of the stairs looked at me as I fumbled to my feet and made it to the bathroom. My heart pounded and I laid on the cool floor in the bathroom in the one stall by the toilet, waiting for my hearing and sight to return. I heard my name being called as my friend told me our part in the concert had ended and the conductor was asking if I was all right. She told me I was pale and clammy, and I felt hot and sweaty. I had no idea why this had happened.
A similar version of this happened at several small a capella performances in a local French restaurant where my high school audition-to-be-in singing group performed to raise money for our spring trip abroad. It got to the point that I just "called out" prior to the performance because going through this type of thing at the performances was too stressful. My membership in the group became uncertain and I finally dropped out.
The church choir director called me in and told me he felt that I had stage fright. He offerred to arrange a phone conversation about the topic with a famous opera singer in Philadelphia with whom he had worked. I was getting increasingly anxious in all sorts of situations and never took him up on it.
In college, I began to black out on the free campus buses. After a few months of this, I dropped out of school and returned to live with my parents.
I saw therapists and a psychiatrist, but no one - and no medication - seemed particularly helpful to me at the time.
Over the years I had bouts of IBS, carpal tunnel syndrome, severe headaches, tooth pain that lasted much longer than it "should have" following impacted wisdom tooth removal, pelvic/abdominal pain which lasted much longer than it "should have" and was much more severe than it "should have been" following the removal of a tiny dermoid cyst from my right ovary.
Then in December 2010, I began to have headaches that would not go away. I found a job that generated significantly less stress than the one I had at the time the headaches came on, but the headaches continued. My primary care doctor tried me on several medications with no luck. I went to a pain clinic and tried all the migraine drugs on the market with no luck. I had a migraine that lasted over three months and was hospitalized for a DHE treatment. The treatment "broke" the headache and kept me headache free for a few months. I had another hospital stay and they did a spinal tap. An argument could be made that my cerebro-spinal fluid pressure was abnormally high and that I had a diagnosis of pseudo-tumor cerebri, or Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension. Some new medications, but I continued to have chronic migraines.
At some point I started reading Sarno, and it clicked. But I had (and still have) a hard time letting go of access to the pain medication, which, while it did not "work" in that I still had pain, it certainly made it easier to cope with it.
I had read, re-read, listened to audiobook versions, of several of Dr. Sarno's books. At one point I attempted to get an appointment with him but learned that he had just retired from seeing patients. I am now re-starting the structured program and hope to be able to fully go with it. My husband is a psychiatrist and we discuss what we now refer to as "Sarnosis" often; it makes sense to us and we can tell when one of us or the other is experiencing "acute Sarnosis" as we say. But what I need is to really believe that there is nothing structurally wrong with me, that I can give up looking for a medical explanation for my headaches (or low back back, or shoulder pain, or foot pain, or stomachaches, and so on!) and just be okay with my brain looking for a physical outlet for my unexpressed emotions.
Here I go.
