Hi Sarah, I am fully recoverd. Here a piece of what I wrote about my recovery. If you want more information, please let me know.
RECOVERY FROM WHIPLASH
The weekend before my mother came over I was very depressed. There were three parties I had to miss that weekend. One of those was the bachelorette of one of my best friends that I hadn’t been able to plan nor attend as her witness. Considering she is pregnant, they are renovating their new house at the same time and her (now) husband have planned and organised a lot around our wedding two years ago, this was very difficult for me. I couldn’t let the anger out because I was afraid it would hurt my head.
At some point I felt as depressed as I’ve ever felt in my life. I forced myself to make a little walk, but I could feel no joy. I had been crying so much the weeks before and I was afraid to make my head aches worse by crying more. So I held it back. Until I decided to start crying again because it was better than the depression. My god, I feel for anyone who has to go through real depressions… Also, I had been talking less and less because by then even talking made my head ache worse. I was so afraid of the pain.
When my mum came on Monday I noticed we had so much to talk about. I just couldn’t hold back from it. So we talked and talked and talked…. I decided I’d rather have a head ache than get so depressed again. Then the head aches actually stopped! I had been more active than the weeks before and I had been talking way more as well. And still I felt much better!
I went to the acupuncturist the Wednesday after and was exhausted afterwards. The next day the head aches were back and I felt awful again. I was puzzled by that. Upto that day the acupuncture had made it better. On Friday our best friends got married. My husband arrived early in the morning from the States and was home later than expected. There was a lot to do, he was exhausted (and jet lagged) and I felt terrible. I had decided though, that I would go to this wedding.
I felt a voice inside saying: you should stay home. Choose for YOU. But my ratio didn’t think this was an option. I showered, dressed, packed – feeling awful and dreading this day. My eyes were killing me. And the wedding would be in open air. It was a very sunny day. We were already on our way when I was breaking out in sweat. I felt horrible. Sick in my stomach, pounding head ache. I had taken many pain killers, and more sleep medication than was good for me and still hadn’t slept well.
Then the moment came that I asked my husband to turn around and bring me home. I felt so strongly: this is the moment you have to say yes to yourself. I felt so much peace. I went back to bed. I was so relieved. Also very sad… I listened to the ceremony on the phone. This was beautiful and tough at the same time.
I spoke to my mum on the phone. She had a message for me. Her best friend had been in touch with her to give me some advice around “whiplash” that came from her sister in law. One of the things she said was: don’t be afraid of moving, don’t be afraid that moving will make it worse. For her this had been key in her recovery. On the one hand, I thought, not the movement, but the light makes it worse and this made it impossible to move, to go outside. I was wearing sunglasses even inside the darkened room. On the other hand, this advice sounded familiar as I recovered completely from severe chronic pain (fibromyalgia) 4 years ago by a method by the American physician John E. Sarno.
***He has healed thousands of patients with chronic pain (including whiplash, IBS, etc etc). Patients who show no structural abnormalities in x-rays and MRI and after thorough medical research, but suffer from (mild to severe) health issues nonetheless probably suffer from TMS (Tension Myositis Syndrome) His TMS - theory in short:
The unconcious mind is aware of suppressed anger that wants to surface. At the moment the repressed rage is – for some reason - close to erupting out, the unconscious mind experiences this as a life-threat and creates severe pain by minor oxygen deprivation. (In one Swedish and one German published medical research it’s shown that at the place of pain in a fibromyalgia patient, there is indeed reduced oxygen. This is why movement and massage can give temporary relief from the pain. The reason for the oxygen dept however has not been found in the regular western medical world so far). Mild oxygen deprivation is not dangerous, but can cause extreme pain, and even weakness and other symptoms (read the book for details).
The pain is created as a defense mechanism – it is a distraction from the seemingly dangerous (culturally unaccepted) emotion. The patient will focus on the pain / weakness / other symptoms, the fear of movement and the fear of the pain and this very effectively distracts the patient from the emotion. ***
That Friday evening of the wedding I called my husband because I wanted to congratulate my friends. They were at dinner and were obviously having a good time. Somehow the rage came up because of some silly thing my husband said (I don’t even remember what). I became so fucking angry. And afraid of the anger because I didn’t want it to increase the head ache.
The anger that came up reminded me once more of John E. Sarno’s method and books. I decided to listen to his audio book “Healing Back Pain” once more. During listening I realized that once more I had developed serious TMS.
Until the accident in February I had been mostly pain free. If any kind of pain or inconvenience like digestion problems would surface, I would treat it as TMS. Even my severe allergy I treated like this with succes. So, the first thing I thought when I got out of the car after the accident, was: I won’t have TMS again! But I did. Interesting enough I hardly had any muscle pain (which is the main complaint for most whiplash patients). Probably because I had decided this was TMS. But I had an actual concussion and there was definitely something wrong with my eyes. This was – I believe- purely physical.
The symptoms really scared me though so there was a lot of fear involved. And I had consciously repressed my anger because I feared to harm my head by getting angry. I think the concussion was healed when the dizziness stopped. And the eyes were probably healed with the light therapy. After that the letters were not “dancing” anymore. The horizon was straight again, so to say. But the light sensitivity became worse and worse. And so did the head aches and the pressure on my head. The therapies would work first, but would then make it worse or not have any effect. This was the case during the fibromyalgia as well. ***
When I listened to the book again on that Friday, I decided to remove all the “Get well” cards at my bedside. I removed all the pain killers out of sight. I removed the extra side table. I decided to make the bedroom a bedroom again. And to be downstairs during the daytime. I decided to lie on my back (which I hadn’t been able to for months) and to not be intimidated by the pressure on my head that I felt, nor by the pain. I woke up the next morning at 6am, the head ache was gone. The pressure on my head as well (it did help that I had found out that the pressure was actual muscle tension of the muscle that covers the head. I found this out a week earlier when I asked the neurologist about it).
I had hardly slept because I didn’t take a sleeping pill for the first time in months. I went to the grocery shop to get fresh croissants. I talked to my neighbour for 15 minutes, standing in the sun telling her I was recovered, haha! (by then I was still wearing a hat and sunglasses). I made breakfast for me and my husband. I made another walk. We went to the supermarket together. We invited our newly wed friends over for dinner. I bought them flowers. I bought me flowers. We had a blast. What a celebration!!!Of course I overdid it that day in my excitement. Of course my body is still building up even now, after all those months in bed and in the dark, but I am off medication now and am basically recovered.
The eyes were still light sensitive at first, but when I came to a chapter about the cranial nerves in Sarno’s other book the MindBody Prescription I realized that the eye problems were due to TMS as well. This was on the next Thursday. That day I removed all the darkening fabric and cycled for 7 km’s without sunglasses (OK, this was after the sun was down). Of course, again, this was a bit exaggerating, but that is simply my nature. I am grateful that I have a physical therapist that is helping me to build up and that is holding me back from going crazy ;-)
I want to add that I don’t think that the treatments of the acupuncture, BSR, physiotherapy, regular medication are all placebo. I think everything has been a piece of the puzzle. But ultimately, the TMS approach has helped me, and for that I had to let go of the treatments in order to give my unconscious mind one message: there is nothing structurally wrong with my body.
I hope this will help some of you dealing with your own physical problems.
