How to help a friend

I have an old friend, really a mentor from my youth who I stay in touch with over email from time to time. He's always been an inspiration, continuing an exceptionally active life into his 70s with running, triathlons, and more recently endurance cycling. He rides probably 150 miles a week, and done mountain rides all over the world.

Off and on, he has suffered from sciatica and generalized low back pain. Recently he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and got that resolved with a surgery, but with a recurrence of pain he has an orthopedic surgeon telling him his sciatica pain is due to L3-L5 impinging his spinal cord and that without surgery there he "would soon be in a wheelchair." Fortunately he is smart enough to not just take that doctor's advice and is instead seeing a Neurosurgeon for a 2nd/3rd opinion.

Knowing him all these years I can see potential for TMS in his personality and lifestyle, etc. My issue is how do I broach the subject in order to help? I don't want to offend or insult but I would definitely like to keep him from having surgery if it's not necessary. He's a smart man (retired engineer) so I could see his being resistant to the whole idea of TMS.

I thought about anonymously dropping one of Sarno's books in his mailbox, but even there I'm not sure which one.

Anyone else ever worked through a similar situation?

 

All of us... Look up old threads.

You can straight up tell him. Give him "Healing Back Pain" (my personal fave) BUT, be warned that most people will avoid this at all costs...TMS recovery is a lot like AA. Someone has to be pretty badly beaten with their own sureness of how things work before they'll be open minded. But it's OK to mention it. You never really know who will be receptive and who won't

 

Thanks for the reply, I figured this was a topic often visited but my search didn't find anything. I must be using the wrong search terms.

AA is a pretty great analogy.

 

By putting the focus on your own successes, that could drop some of his resistance. As an old friend, he'll be happy you found an answer to your issues. Making the leap to using it himself is another Huge step.

Just planting the seed that there's another option to his problems might be a small step forward. Many people take a bit of time to trust TMS.

By focusing on his extraordinary physical accomplishments (triathlons, endurance cycling, etc.), you might get him to realize the inconsistency between his excellent physical condition and the diagnosis he received. If he really has a condition like that, how has he been able to keep up that active lifestyle?

If he's wary of surgery, that's an in. He might be scared of surgery b/c of the recovery involved, possible long-term limitations on his physical activity. A "what've you got to lose?" message with surgery as the alternative might be convincing.
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I'm wary of surgeons providing a second opinion. I saw a surgeon who immediately tried to schedule me for back surgery. I knew I didn't trust his diagnosis with how quickly he decided on surgery. Then, I realized-- that he's a surgeon--that's the tool he uses to fix the problem.

 

All excellent points, thanks.

I won't get to see him anytime soon (with the COVID19 outbreak and he lives quite a distance anyway) but we communicate off/on via email. I was thinking of linking him to the 20/20 John Stossell youtube segment on Sarno. I know that had a big impact on me and he is more in the demographic of "60 minutes" and "20/20" than even I am.