What is going on with my foot?!

Hi All,

I've been at this TMS stuff for a while now. I am dealing with many different pains throughout my body. The exciting thing is, I've had some success with my lower back!! I have gone from incredibly limited movement about 6 months ago to picking up my kids and, in the last month or so, have experimented with jogging for a few minutes at a time. This is huge, as I hadn't done either of these in a very long time.

While I'm having this success, I'm having some very frustrating setbacks in a few areas. The one that is really plaguing me right now is my left foot. About a year and a half ago I broke my 5th metatarcil stepping on a piece of lego (yes, a piece of lego!). It took forever for the bone to heal. The pain has never gone away and really flares up every few weeks, even after the bone healed a year ago. My foot has always been a bit swollen since all of this happened a year and a half ago. In the last few days, the pain has gotten worse and the swelling has increased a bit. I have been back to the foot doctor a few times in the last year due to the pain and they keep telling me it can take a while for the nerves to settle down after a break. The pain moves from the top of my ankle all the way down to my toes, on the top and bottom of my foot. The swelling is always in the same place though - slightly above the break area.

I am really struggling with the TMS diagnosis, as there was a real injury at this location. The pain doesn't really seem to match what the injury was though, as it moves all over the place, which seems weird (I broke the same bone 12 years ago and did not have this kind of pain). The swelling is really throwing me off, as I know that Sarno and other TMS doctors didn't seem to think that swelling could be a symptom of TMS.

I am going back to the foot clinic next week, as I am starting to get desperate. Can anyone share any experiences with something somewhat similar - ie, swelling (physiological changes), an old injury still giving them grief, etc.? I was so excited that I was finally able to start running, but now I am worried that I will be injuring my foot more so I am leaning towards not trying to run through the pain for fear it will make things worse.

There are no TMS doctors that I know of anywhere near where I live, or I honestly would just go see someone to help me figure this out!

If anyone can help share some insight it would be much appreciated!! Thank you!

 

Hi autumnismyfave, I don't want to worry you, but maybe you should talk to your doctors if this could be CRPS.
CRPS can also be TMS, there are some posts in this forum concerning this kind of pain.

 

Dr. Scott Brady ( Pain Free for Life ) was asked about CRPS in a lecture that used to be available online. His response was "CRPS is AOS." AOS was the term he used for TMS. It stood for Autonomic Overload Syndrome. Dr. Sarno writes about it by it's former name, RSD ( Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy ) on page 79-81 of the Mind Body Prescription.

 

The above posters are right, CRPS is a TMS variant. Swelling can absolutely occur as a TMS symptom. Remember the pain is not "all in your head," its really happening and the brain can cause any symptom to occur! There are people with stories who've had foot drop and lots of "real" impairments due to TMS causes. I have worked with patients who have had symptoms as severe as mimicking a stroke that was caused by TMS. So not hard to believe that your swelling is coming from the same thing. Recall that Sarno and others talk about TMS "piggybacking" onto old injuries that occur like broken bones.

 

Hi autimn..

Yes i can relate to your story, although in my case they could not tell if i had a broken foot or not (xray was too late to diagnose that ) had crazy nerve pain bottom foot into two toes and at some point my whole foot. Impossible to walk on because of the intense pain
This all came after i twisted my foot and angle. which was minor in my mind: no blue swelling the days after..and mild pain at the beginning.
It is hard to believe that such a minor event can cause such a great problem ""
In my case CRPS was named too at some point by a rehabilatation doctor. Also probably tendon inflamation. This was all 4,5 years ago. It also had swelling at first and for two years immense stifness. (And pain) I think footpain is a extra nightmare because you put weight on it and healing is extra problem. I had inlays which looking back made things worse.

Since one year the pain is lowering and slowly things improve. Still making progress but are still limited by this. The flare ups come lesser. At some point i had to let go of the diagnoses search . Was it broken ? is it the tendon? ' is it a nerve ' ? i will never really know
Now try too look forward and keep working on improvement
Tms fully embracing is hard en i am not fully there. On the other hand it helped me somehow and it still does. You have to create your own best 'program' i think : physical and psychological

i do fit the tms profile and had other pains too so "believing"in tms in itself is not hard
at all for me. the footpain seems harder to fit because of the fact there was something'that happened that could be the cause. but i had to face the fact that the event and the immense
pain do not really make sence. healling should be happening somehow withing that timeframe.
even dr sarno has pointed out that footpain is a hard one for everyone to reconnize as that.
i can relate with other body pains i had less problem connecting too body-mind

so i can understand your thoughts about his and questions completely !
greetings
Karina

 

Thank you Renate, Lavender, MindBodyPT and karinabrown for your responses and my apologies for the late reply! I forgot to mention something about my injury above and that was that I walked around on my foot with a fracture for a few months before finding it out it was fractured. Sometimes I wonder what came first, the pain or the fracture, as I was having pain in my foot so I was having regular vigorous chiropractic adjustments on my foot because of the pain (back when I still went to the chiropractor ). Sometimes I wonder if the pain started first and then the vigorous adjustments caused the fracture at the same place that I fractured my foot previously. I will never know, but I guess that doesn't really matter at this point. It is HUGELY relieving to know that swelling can be a part of TMS and that CRPS is also a TMS variant, so thank you for that information!! How do you know if it is CRPS though? I've researched CRPS and it seems like there are often changes to skin texture, colour, temperature. I have a mild amount of swelling and pain. How do you know if it is TMS or CRPS? Are the TMS strategies for overcoming the pain the same for CRPS? Any insight would be appreciated. Thank you so much!

 

CRPS is TMS so treat it the same way! Same treatment as a classic TMS pain syndrome, do the SEP or other program that will help you work through the emotional causes of the issue and strengthen your TMS beliefs.

 

Thank you so much MindBodyPT! Do you know an easy way to tell if it is TMS vs. CRPS? Maybe it doesn't matter if the treatment is the same, but it might be helpful to understand what exactly is going on.

 

TMS simply means a mind body symptom occurring due to psychological factors. CRPS is exactly that. It does not have a "physical" cause...the swelling is due to neural pathways/factors in the mind and not a new physical injury. So there is no difference between TMS and CRPS. There are so many different types of TMS, CRPS is just one of them. TMS is just a term coined as a way to categorize any mind body issue. Hope that helps clear it up!

 

I think so. Thanks!

 

CRPS is TMS - I know this from my personal experience. I am about 80-90% recovered from CRPS that manifested itself through multiple, very physical symptoms, like neuropathic pain, swelling, redness of the skin, Reynauld Syndrome, list goes on and on. Pain has been mostly gone for almost a year, but it is taking much longer to get rid of involuntary muscle contractions (one of the possible symptoms of CRPS) but I know it will finally go away.

If you are still looking for a TMS therapist, Amber Murphy who works with Alan Gordon, herself recovered from CRPS which developed upon foot injury. She helped me to get on the path of recovery. She is a wonderful human being, too.

 

Hi TG957, thanks so much for the input. It is crazy how many symptoms the brain can generate in the body. CRPS is different, as it can produce so many symptoms. That is awesome that you've had so much success! Do you mind me asking how you've recovered? I am working with a TMS therapist as well out of the Pain Psychology Center to deal with many of my symptoms, but I have not heard of Amber. Thanks for the info!

 

Recovery path is individual for every person, but the key is in psychology. I believe that in my case it was over-reactive nervous system that was under stress and in overdrive for many years. I tried many things, all from the playbook by Dr. Sarno and TMS doctors. Things that helped the most were meditation, qi gong and absolute faith in inevitability of my recovery (this one took me a long time to develop). Don't be spooked by shifting symptoms, uneven recovery, extinction bursts and long plateaus. All of the above is a clear indication that what you have is TMS. Search for my posts on the forum - I posted quite a bit. Great people to follow on this forum: plum, balto, Andy B, Steve O. Wish you best of luck!

 

I needed to hear this, thanks TG957. I have had a major flare up of symptoms recently with some new ones thrown into the mix and I just said to my therapist yesterday that this couldn't be another extinction burst . I feel like my brain likes to keep me on my toes and comes up with something new all the time to keep me questioning whether this is TMS again. Thank you for the encouragement. I will look for your (and the other recommended) posts!

 

My guess is that you have anxiety issues - even if you may not even feel it. Eric Watson also is a good one to follow on this forum. Check out Dr. Claire Weekes tapes - he posted the links. I was able to tame my anxiety (mostly) through meditation and Buddhist teachings on negative emotions.

 

Yes, I certainly do. Thanks for the info - I will look into it!