eightball776
Well known member
I need help identifying a suspicious shoulder pain for what will be a year next week. Its onset was a whole lot like an acute trauma, yet with aspects of it that just don’t make sense. I have a real problem with brevity when it comes to writing, so I’ll omit my lengthy history where possible. If no one here is able to get through this, I expect there to be some value just in writing it all down.
What am I trying to get out of this post?
I’m hoping to hear more stories from those dealing with shoulder pain in general. Its onset, specific characteristics and limitations, success or failure of treatment with the principles of TMS and/or more traditional options.
Current Situation
I was fortunate enough to have been a patient of Dr. Sarno’s, who helped eliminate some debilitating back pain almost 25 years ago now. While it didn’t result in a lifelong immunity to recurrence, including a handful of episodes severe enough to require a wheelchair, it gave me the tools to identify and manage the psychological component of my pain. The “symptom imperative” hasn’t been an issue since my initial experience with TMS, when the back pain morphed into a two-year battle with panic disorder after Dr. Sarno ‘fixed’ my back pain.
Ever since, my experience with pain has existed in sort of a gray area – a chicken vs. egg scenario in which severe LBP can be rooted in enteropathic arthritis from Crohn’s Disease, or TMS. Most autoimmune disorders, especially Crohn’s Disease, can be activated by stress. That stress can be the repressed or current kind, depending on the perspective. There’s stress related to present-day physical and psychological impact of the disease (and its treatments), as well as the repressed kind coming from battling a chronic, incurable illness beginning at age 6.
There is both clinical pathology and incidents of physical trauma in the exact location of the back pain, identified as a clear correlation as opposed to generic DDD, bulging discs, etc. Spinal fusion was recommended by 4 different neurosurgeons without any direct financial or other interest in my decision. Thanks to the brilliant work of doctors David Hanscom and Howard Schubiner, who thankfully picked up Dr. Sarno’s mantle, I learned that recovery was possible without definitively solving the chicken/egg riddle.
I ultimately became somewhat of an expert in MBS - an evangelist even - adept at distinguishing between muscular pain of TMS, and the “skeletal,” arthritic kind. Sometimes there is even pain and radiating from hypersensitive nerves of nearby intestines, activated by bowel obstructions. Unlike TMS, IBD-related pain can cause tissue damage, and can even persist during clinical remission through non-inflammatory pain (arthralgias) through long term impact on pain-sensing and spinal cord neurons. Depression, anxiety, and general stress, all extremely common in Crohn’s patients, can also cause cells in the wall of the gut to function poorly, tipping the balance of bacteria and also leading to pain.
All that said, stress of all kinds can activate my underlying disease. It can also flare up in connection to lifestyle choices, diet, or no reason at all. I have suffered from and successfully treated TMS, though never in my shoulders. Like my back pain, the doctor expected exactly what he saw on my MRIs after strength/mobility testing and the reported symptomology.
For those who made it this far, I appreciate you. You also need more hobbies LOL
What am I trying to get out of this post?
I’m hoping to hear more stories from those dealing with shoulder pain in general. Its onset, specific characteristics and limitations, success or failure of treatment with the principles of TMS and/or more traditional options.
Current Situation
- The pain started abruptly, following athletic activity for which I was physically unprepared
- It makes no sense for it to affect both shoulders, as the activity required only my dominant shoulder (pain is worse in the other (left) shoulder)
- I had it imaged (I know, I know), and, perhaps predictably was told I have a torn rotator cuff, combined with severe tearing of nearby tendons
- Aggressive rehabilitation may help, but surgery is more than likely the only path to complete or mostly complete recovery
- The quality is not dissimilar to the labral tear 15 years ago, where I knew I needed surgery the moment it happened. A lifelong infielder who hadn’t played in several years, threw a softball from centerfield to homeplate (a strike to the catcher btw, who dropped the &$*@% ball)
- I have no doubt been under tremendous stress this year, especially after a layoff (my 6th since I started working). However, the “injury” occurred at a summer job I took at a sleepaway camp, where I was having a wonderful, stress-free experience
- I know the brain can use a previous injury as a trigger, using it as a more effective rouse, yet this was a much more abrupt, cause-effect kind of situation
I was fortunate enough to have been a patient of Dr. Sarno’s, who helped eliminate some debilitating back pain almost 25 years ago now. While it didn’t result in a lifelong immunity to recurrence, including a handful of episodes severe enough to require a wheelchair, it gave me the tools to identify and manage the psychological component of my pain. The “symptom imperative” hasn’t been an issue since my initial experience with TMS, when the back pain morphed into a two-year battle with panic disorder after Dr. Sarno ‘fixed’ my back pain.
Ever since, my experience with pain has existed in sort of a gray area – a chicken vs. egg scenario in which severe LBP can be rooted in enteropathic arthritis from Crohn’s Disease, or TMS. Most autoimmune disorders, especially Crohn’s Disease, can be activated by stress. That stress can be the repressed or current kind, depending on the perspective. There’s stress related to present-day physical and psychological impact of the disease (and its treatments), as well as the repressed kind coming from battling a chronic, incurable illness beginning at age 6.
There is both clinical pathology and incidents of physical trauma in the exact location of the back pain, identified as a clear correlation as opposed to generic DDD, bulging discs, etc. Spinal fusion was recommended by 4 different neurosurgeons without any direct financial or other interest in my decision. Thanks to the brilliant work of doctors David Hanscom and Howard Schubiner, who thankfully picked up Dr. Sarno’s mantle, I learned that recovery was possible without definitively solving the chicken/egg riddle.
I ultimately became somewhat of an expert in MBS - an evangelist even - adept at distinguishing between muscular pain of TMS, and the “skeletal,” arthritic kind. Sometimes there is even pain and radiating from hypersensitive nerves of nearby intestines, activated by bowel obstructions. Unlike TMS, IBD-related pain can cause tissue damage, and can even persist during clinical remission through non-inflammatory pain (arthralgias) through long term impact on pain-sensing and spinal cord neurons. Depression, anxiety, and general stress, all extremely common in Crohn’s patients, can also cause cells in the wall of the gut to function poorly, tipping the balance of bacteria and also leading to pain.
All that said, stress of all kinds can activate my underlying disease. It can also flare up in connection to lifestyle choices, diet, or no reason at all. I have suffered from and successfully treated TMS, though never in my shoulders. Like my back pain, the doctor expected exactly what he saw on my MRIs after strength/mobility testing and the reported symptomology.
For those who made it this far, I appreciate you. You also need more hobbies LOL
Hope something in all that was helpful.