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 www.lawofattractiontrainingcenter.com/museletter.html.
