Day 25 Day 25 Progress Report

Overall, I am thrilled with my progress. I started my TMS treatment (before starting this specific program) back around the beginning of November. During that span, I have gone from:

- Pain prevented me from sleeping more than 3 hours straight
- Symptoms prevented me from playing drums, which is part of what I do for a living
- Daily max anti-flammatory meds
- Nerve blocker 3 x a day
- Daily muscle relaxers
- Endless dr. appointments, therapy, massage, buying "stuff", etc with no relief from ANY of it.

And now...

- I sleep through the night w/o pain
- I CAN play drums, albeit tentatively and still with pain
- I take NO MEDICATIONS for my pain or symptoms.
- The only medical appointments I have are my weekly sessions with a Psychiatrist

There's really only one big elephant in the room at this point, and it still revolves around playing drums. The activity is so utterly high impact that I feel VERY tentative when I do it still, I still fear risking injury, I still feel fear in scheduling future gigs because I worry my improvement won't continue or will get worse from playing.

I don't have a true diagnosis from a Dr... I haven't been able to find a Dr. near Portland (Oregon) that deals with TMS, so I always have it in the back of my mind that I might be wrong. And that its possible that "time" is what is really the thing helping my symptoms. But having read all three Sarno books multiple times, having tried traditional medicine with no relief, and seeing myself fitting EXACTLY with the traits and history of someone with TMS, at worst...TMS is a "logical" conclusion.

Ultimately, whether its TMS or not, there is no harm in believing that it is... at least not at this point. And so I continue down this path. It seems to be working, despite some linger anxiety about the accuracy of the diagnosis.

I do wish I could find a drummer who suffered from TMS (relating to neck pain + associated nerve pain, numbness, and tingling), because while the idea of returning to "normal activitiy" ASAP is the key, I can tell you that weightlifting, running, tennis...all the usual suspects I read about in this forum... none of those activities are even CLOSE to as high impact as playing drums. The best comparison would be tackle football...and I don't see a lot of that going on with TMS patients.

 

Hi, KJFliving. Your pain-free progress is indeed thrilling. Sleeping without pain and stopping taking medications are two giant steps in your TMS work.

But you are still holding back a little on totally believing in TMS, that your emotions are causing your pain. Have you discovered what the emotions are?

As for playing drums despite pain, have you read Steve Ozanich's book, The Great Pain Deception ? He tells how he healed from multiple severe pains by discovering they were caused by anger at a doctor for causing his wife to almost die in a botched operation that left her wheelchair-bound. He also continued playing golf despite his pain and it finally went away. Your drums and his golf are examples of going ahead with an activity and strongly believing it would not cause any pain. Keep working on 100 percent belief in TMS. And keep up the great healing progress.

 

So delighted for you the great success you have had would lead me to believe your 100% TMS and to give the drumming a try . Acknowledge the TMS and its success at deception and call it out you are doing so well .