foot pain - Thank You, Dr. Sarno

Joni’s Thank You

Dear Dr. Sarno:

I want to express my double thanks for your work, which has cured me not once but twice now. About 12 years ago, after typical back problems, I found Healing Back Pain in a bookstore and, thunderstruck, read it for more than an hour in front of the shelf, unable to stop and with hope for the first time in months. My back pain vanished within days. I eventually bought three more copies, including two I gave to doctors.

I’m even more grateful, however, for a more recent TMS resolution. I was diagnosed with plantar fasciitis nearly three years ago and tried everything short of surgery. Since I was (wait – am!) a runner, hiker, and long-distance walker/trekker, this devastated my lifestyle and health. The coincidence (or not) of my 50^th birthday added insult to injury. I was always troubled by the logic of the diagnosis and treatments, as even minimal research uncovers as much medical bafflement and impotence for PF as for back pain. Then, just as my PF finally seemed to be healing, shooting pains began in one of my ankles. (Um, yeah. I should have realized then…) In desperation, I stumbled on something online that suggested PF might be a TMS manifestation. I bought both your latest books and started running again the next day. Though I’d given up hope of ever doing long-distance walking again, I’m now planning for the Camino de Santiago in Spain.

I’ll be thinking of you the whole way. Resolving my back pain was good, but by giving me back my feet, you’ve really given me back my life, and I feel 10 years younger. I just have to remember TMS as the first answer, not the last answer, next time something hurts!

Thank you doesn’t cover it. Gratefully,

Joni

Howard’s Thank You

Howard's Thank You Dear Dr. Sarno,

Thank you for making it possible for me to wake up and get through each day with the relief, amazement and joy that something significant is missing from my life: the PAIN in my right foot that had plagued me every single day for six years and impacted my lifestyle, physical fitness and psyche! And all I did was read the Divided Mind and grasp the dynamics of your mindbody approach to medicine!

Earlier this summer I reconnected with an old friend who told me he met with you many years ago after failed back surgery, and that you changed his life. I started to read your book the next day. By the time I finished the book, my pain had vanished!!! You helped me realize that lifelong unconscious issues, a more recent emotional trauma, the vulnerability brought by a cluster of medical problems, confronting aging, and the fear of growing old with my chronic pain having an even larger impact on my life was triggering all this pain!!! It sometimes flares up a bit, but I tell my brain to stop fooling with me…that I’m wise to the trick…and it subsides.

In the last month, everything has changed for the better, including my mood and my outlook. Physically, I’ve increased my workouts and running, which had been reduced to 5-10 minutes, back up to 30 minutes!

So thank you for your brilliance, Dr. Sarno. For your understanding of the human body and mind, your commitment to the truth, your courage in the face of criticism, and your dedication to sharing your science with the world. You have surely made a difference in mine…and I hope for the many people I enthusiastically tell your/my story to.

I wish you the good health and peace that you have given me. And, hopefully, generations to come!

Most sincerely,

Howard

Laura’s Thank You

Dear Dr. Sarno,

You certainly changed my life for the better in so many ways!

I was 33 years old and the mother of two daughters, ages 15 months and 6 months of age, when “out of the blue,”I began to suffer excruciating lower back pain/sciatica– worse pain than the two natural childbirths I had recently experienced.

I found your book “Mind Over back Pain” and immediately booked an appointment with you at NYU’s Rusk Institute.

Within a month my back pain was gone.

Over the years I’ve had other TMS symptoms– Shoulder/neck pain, and foot pain, for example, and sometimes it took me awhile to realize that this new pain was just another manifestation of my old symdrome.

I think of any new pain symptom as my personal canary in the coal mine– alerting me that I am getting too close to the edge of my emotional comfort zone.

Your work not only gave me a life free of chronic pain and possible addiction to pain medications, but it also opened my mind to many other facets of mind/body medicine and emotional wellness.

I have traveled the world and enjoyed an active life all because of you– here is a photo of my husband Russ and me at the Great Wall of China in 2011!

I am eternally grateful! You are an amazing human being.

Thank you!

Laura