Have you ever met a seven-headed dragon? Slaying it is
nearly impossible, because as soon as you cut off one head
two more grow in its place! I know this first-hand,
because I fought with this dragon for 20 years until I
found the chink in its armor and pierced its heart, once
and for all.
Misdiagnosis Abounds
Like many sufferers of fibromyalgia, I was misdiagnosed for
15 years. Maybe it was because the condition has no
specific or single cause, or because it has only recently
(1990's) been recognized as a "legitimate" malady. As late
as 1982, fibromyalgia was not even an entry in the doctors'
standard clinical reference book, the Merck Manual. Over
the years my doctors labeled my symptoms as: Chronic back
pain (lower, mid and upper), frozen left shoulder (two and
a half years), frozen right shoulder (one and a half
years), plantar fasciitis, sleep disorder, restless leg
syndrome—you get the picture. Finally, in 1997 I was
given the label "fibromyalgia" and told that the only
treatment was cortisone injections in every muscle where
the pain was intolerable.
"Damn!" I thought, "That's a lot of needles!" Not willing
to become a doctor's voodoo doll, I never went back to that
doctor. Instead I turned to holistic approaches. I tried
everything imaginable to "manage" my pain: excruciating
deep muscle massage, strict diets, herbal remedies...I even
tried a putrid brew concocted by a Chinese medicine doctor.
Admitting Defeat
After suffering for seven years under the futile belief
that I could affect my own cure, I gave up. Admitting
defeat, I found a new doctor and asked for help. His
theory was that fibro is a disease linked to depression. So
along with a non-steroid medication for pain, he prescribed
an anti-depressant and a sleeping pill. These seemed to
take the edge off the pain for a while.
I was "managing" my pain, pretty well until 2005 when I was
crushed by trigeminal neuralgia. Excruciating pain exploded
across the right side of my face—encompassing the
jaw, cheek bone and temple and behind my ear. It was
debilitating! I could do nothing but lie as still as
possible with ice packs. Aspirin with codeine did not begin
to touch the pain. I thought it might be a tooth, but the
x-ray did not reveal anything for the dentist to deal with.
I was sent to a neurologist who quite rudely told me,
"You'd better hope it is a tooth because it's not worth
cracking your head open to fix this." The trigeminal nerve
does not originate in the spine, but at the base of the
brain!
Gadz! I was a mess! So, my family doc prescribed an
antiseizure drug in the hope it would block the perception
of pain. As I was leaving his office, he said (rather
off-the-cuff), "It might help with the fibromyalgia too."
A month later I was undergoing a root canal which
eventually cleared up the facial neuralgia, but I stayed on
the antiseizure medication because it did take a further
"edge" off the fibromyalgia.
At the same time all this was happening, I was running two
companies, TeleClass International and the Law of
Attraction Training Center. I was happily turning every
aspect of my life around and experiencing success and joy
in everything I did—except THIS. I figured I just
had to accept THIS as "the way it is."
I was beaten down and felt there was just nothing else I
could do about it. Of course, my body was continuing to
deteriorate under the unrelenting pain.
Body/Mind Connection
My businesses started to suffer also and I decided to hire
a business coach. On the intake form, under the heading of
Health I wrote: "Ok, I wasn't going to address this, but if
it shows up as dramatically as it has this week, then I
won't ignore it. I was thrown flat on my back with a
muscle spasm around my entire chest. The spasm was
continuous for four days." My coach wrote back, "You are
pushing very hard on yourself. Nothing wrong with that,
except your body is telling you that something is wrong.
Therefore, part of your journey is learning how to flow
with ease and grace."
Hmmm, he had a point, but I really did not want to address
this seemingly endless, impossible health challenge!
Nevertheless, I surrendered to my coach and prayed for a
solution.
A few days later I was reading and meditating—well, I
was sort of reading and meditating—it was hard to
stay focused and my eyes were just glancing at the letters
in the book when these two sentences jumped off the page
into my heart: "If your affairs are out of order, it is a
reflection that your thinking is out of order. If your
body is out of order, it is a reflection that your emotions
are out of order." How to Use Your Twelve Gifts from God,
by William Warch
I'm a very orderly person—my house is in order, my
office is usually clean and orderly, my bills are all
paid—I'm very responsible and my affairs are in
order. But my body was definitely OUT OF ORDER and I had
no clue what emotion was causing this, I had lived with it
for 20 years. Whatever the cause, it was deeply buried.
Defining Event
At this point I decided to cooperate with my coach and an
extremely painful memory surfaced! I had been so
disappointed—more than disappointed—I was
really angry at my body for letting me down when I had to
surrender Matthew back into the care of Social Services!
WOW!
In 1980 my husband and I had adopted a baby who had been
abandoned at the time of birth because it "wasn't perfect."
His natural parents would not bond, love or care for him
because he was Down's syndrome. My husband was an
obstetrician and when he learned the child was abandoned,
he was quite shaken. Our fourth child, Sarah, has Down's
syndrome and she has been such a joy to us that it was
quite disturbing to imagine this little boy without a
family. So we asked for and adopted Matthew at birth.
What we did not realize at the time was that Matthew was
also autistic. The combination of D.S., plus severe
retardation and autism was a horrific package, and in seven
years I was totally burned out.
That was when I felt such anger at my body. When I give my
word or make a commitment I keep it. I'm a person of
integrity. For my body to cave in like it did was simply
NOT in my realm of possibility. But it had and I had
carried this anger inside my body for 20 years!
Letting Go
NO WONDER I WAS IN PAIN! And my doctor was right! If
fibromyalgia is caused by depression, and depression is
"anger turned inward" as I learned in nurses' training,
then indeed I was depressed!
I LET IT GO! Once I "saw" the root
emotion—anger—I could understand why my body
was screaming in pain. And I let it go. Just like that.
In the moment I made my decision to let it go, it left. I
knew it. A few days later I started slowly weaning myself
off the medications. I'm not a martyr, so if I were
feeling pain, I would be back on the meds, but I'm not.
I'm free of pain, gaining strength, reprogramming my
thinking and adding activities back into my life. This
week I started two exercise classes at the local recreation
center—a gentle fitness class and water fitness.
THAT is a miracle!
Now, I would not presume to know what is at the root of
every case of fibromyalgia. But I wouldn't be surprised if
a long-held or blocked emotion would surface for most
sufferers. My hope and prayer in sharing my story is that
it will re-activate hope in your heart, and faith to
believe in a miracle for yourself or someone you love.
----------------------------------------------------
Rebecca Hanson, author of Law of Attraction for Business,
founder of the Law of Attraction Training Center, and
president of TeleClass International Services Inc., helps
people use the Law of Attraction to transform their life
and business. For more great tips like these, get your free
copy of The Museletter at
http://www.lawofattractiontrainingcenter.com/museletter.html
