Knee pain and osteoarthritis: Is it TMS?

Please advise!!

I’m hoping to hear some opinions and advice from people who have recovered from ongoing pain, specifically knee pain that’s been diagnosed as osteoarthritis. I want to believe that my pain could be TMS because I need a path to recovery, but I’m feeling frustrated and hopeless and I don’t have it in me to chase another dead end.

I’m 42 years old, generally healthy. About 4 months ago, I started noticing a few twinges in my left foot, and my lower legs felt tired, stiff, and achy. I figured that the plantar fasciitis (which I've had before), so I decided to “nip it in the bud,” and went on a spree of fast and furious chiropractic, massage, physio, and doctor’s appointments in the hopes of warding off any emergent foot pain. But instead of going away, the pain got much worse. It spread from my left foot into my knee, then up toward my hip, then into both knees. I went from walking 2-3 hours/day with no problems to being in pain any time I move. First I was diagnosed with plantar fasciitis that affects the knee, then with runner’s knee (left)/compensation pain (right), then I went for x-rays that showed mild "joint space narrowing” in both knees, and am now being told that all of my pain is the result of osteoarthritis.

Here are the reasons why I think my pain could be TMS:

· I’ve seen MANY different health practitioners over the past few months, and have not received one single piece of medical information from any health provider (from diagnosis to cause to treatment) that hasn’t been directly contradicted by a different health provider.

· When I received the arthritis diagnosis, the doctor pointed out exactly where in my body the arthritis had developed, and at that precise moment, all of my pain locked into those exact areas. Prior to that though, the pain wandered all around my lower and even upper body.

· The emotional aspects of TMS that Dr. Sarno describes seem to line up with my experience. I have suffered several significant losses over the past few years, and am very much continuing to deal with heartbreaking loss right now. Prior to this winter I had already reached a point of feeling hopeless about the future, but I had convinced myself that as long as I could still do the things I enjoy (swimming, long hikes all summer), life was still worth living. This pain is stealing away the last few joys in my life, so every time I feel pain, I also feel rage and despair.

· I recently went on vacation. This trip was a wonderful “escape” from a challenging everyday life, and my pain decreased significantly while I was gone, then returned with a vengeance as soon as I arrived back home.


Sounds kinda like TMS, right? But here are the reasons why my pain might not be TMS:

· Everything I’ve experienced has a convincing structural explanation. Of course my knees hurt if I’ve got arthritis! Of course my knees felt better when I was on vacation because I went somewhere warm and dry! Of course my foot hurts sometimes if I’ve suffered from plantar fasciitis in the past, etc.

· X-rays don’t lie, right?


So that’s the situation. Here are my questions:

1. Do I have TMS? (I know you can’t tell me for certain, but do you have a sense that my pain could be TMS?)

2. Because I find this pain so upsetting and I’m so terrified of how much worse things will get in the future, I tend to hyper-focus on every twinge, and then I become very angry and depressed. Is that part of TMS? Am I making my pain worse?

3. Could my conscious rage (as opposed to my subconscious rage) be causing pain?

4. What are my next steps? Merely reading the books didn’t bring about the relief that it does for some people. How do I make myself believe that my pain has a psychological origin when I’m so afraid that it's just my body falling apart?


Alright, that’s all for now. Thank you for your help! I will keep reading…