Day 4 What was the first thing any practitioner said to me?

[Sarah79]

It's an interesting question, this, and my answer is as follows -

In November 2016, bearing in mind this pain had started in April of the same year, I finally had an ultrasound. Before this, I'd seen two podiatrists (neither of whom had known what was going on), had two x-rays (both clear), seen three doctors, a sports massage therapist and a physiotherapist. Still, the foot pain continued. So, I was very hopeful for a diagnosis, or some light, at least, to be shed on matters when finally I was going to have an imaging test. Along I went, all gee'd up and terribly excited. Got on the couch, foot up, ultrasound gel applied and.....

'I can't see anything,' said the doctor, as he moved the device across my foot and ankle, 'where does it hurt?'
'There,' I said, pointing to my midfoot, and duly he drew the probe there. 'No, nothing. Totally normal tissue.' 'It hurts on my arch, too, and my heel.' Again, nothing. All the way up my Achilles to my mid-calf. I was almost weeping.

I left, drove home, did weep. That was the worst point because having finally seen inside my foot, nothing was apparent. Nothing at all. Now, and I'm only Day 4 so my understanding - and experience - of TMS is still pretty nascent, I can see that if all that was happening was mild oxygen deprivation, then that wouldn't show. There was no obvious tissue degeneration, fraying, inflammation, mis-alignment, fractures, trapped nerves, nothing. And now, it makes sense. But then, oh boy, was that the nadir for me

 

[Sarah79]

Eek! What was the WORST thing any practitioner ever said, the title should read!

 

[Sarah79]

Also, during journalling, I remembered only about a couple of years ago when I was having some very intense therapy and the issue of being able to say 'no,' came up. I'm self-employed and tend to grab and say 'yes' to any work at all, and as a result, hadn't had a day off in months. I would arrive at my therapy sessions in bits, exhausted, and would make all the right noises in relation to the encouragement to set some boundaries, but I never did. It struck a chord with me as I'm reading Healing Back Pain today and Dr John references a woman in her thirties who's a mother to three girls. He says that she adores them but may not realise the resentment she has to the demands they put on her. I work with dogs, and I'm the exact same; I love them but sometimes wish they'd stop being, well, themselves. I didn't delineate my boundaries for a long, long time and became very, very resentful. Not surprising to see why a foot issue (ostensibly) developed to keep me at bay from my job and at bay from having to deal with setting boundaries in place, asserting myself and protecting my own interests outside of my work. Last year, a client's partner fell very seriously ill indeed and I had their two dogs to stay for an ongoing period of time - even now, her future is very uncertain and the dogs come to me as and when. So, I'm being a goodist and a people-pleaser and letting other people dictate my life; granted, self-employment does require an element of this but it's been in overdrive, for me, for a very long time.