My Special Thanks to Dr John E Sarno, MD!
I’ve wanted to write you for several years just to express my gratitude for you healing my back pain but I’d always set it aside for one reason or another, then when I googled your name to help out someone else recently with your info, I found that you had retired and that there was a letter writing campaign for you. Well, this is my opportunity to thank you personally…
Just some background first, I work in the building industry selling new homes and in 1993 I stubbed my toe when I hit the plastic mat under my office chair while assisting some clients. It hurt so bad that I wanted to scream but I had to wait until they left and then when they did, I started experiencing back pain in my lower right hip, a severe stabbing-like pain! A co-worker suggested that I go and see a chiropractor that she knew, he was able to get me pain-free temporarily but little did I know at the time that I would be visiting him off and on for the next 10 years!
Next, I went to my family physician who prescribed over time anti-inflammatory drugs, anti-depressants, painkillers, physical therapy, various exercises for the back and possible future surgery and/or steroidal shots to the spine which I objected to since the pain moved around and would change in intensity on a daily/weekly basis. In the meantime, I’m trying acupuncture, traction, chiropractic adjustments, electro-stimulation, heat and cold therapies etc., from alternative medical providers.
Around 1999, I decided to change professions and rent office space and begin work as a business broker. It just so happens that the office manager named Juli, tells me about your books after a discussion of our various back ailments and how she was bed-ridden on some days and that the book had cured her!
Well, after much skepticism I eventually went out and bought the book, Healing Back Pain and went straight to the chapter regarding the cure and wondered how this book would cure me without any medical procedures. So, when nothing happened I put the book down and proceeded to have back pain over the next 4 years.
It was 2003 and I had gone back to selling new homes again, but one day came down with a severe back and sciatica attack down my right leg it was so bad that I had to crawl up the stairs to my loft at home and have my wife bring food to me! I told my boss that I could no longer drive the hour plus trip one way to my job each day and that I would wait the 3 months for something closer to home to open up. At this point, I ended up buying Dr Sarno’s two other books, Mind Over Back Pain and The Mindbody Prescription and read them all. It was like the information was jumping off the pages because everything that I was experiencing was there. Yes, I had an MRI earlier which showed a bulging disc in the L4/L5 area but as Dr Sarno explains it was just aging of the spine.
His discussions of personalities, especially perfectionism and goodism hit me right between the eyes they were so right on! Also, some of the equivalents like eczema, stomach discomfort, frequent urination and respiratory infections among others were common with me. So, to get cured I started writing out all of the things that could be causing my internal unconscious rage and ended up with several legal-sized pages starting from childhood to now….
Most of it work-related since I’m in an imperfect business selling new homes where I have no control over interest rates, construction times and quality, loan approvals, buyer qualifications, monthly sales totals, etc.,
Needless to say, I was cured in just two or three weeks! I could now do the elliptical and stairmaster at the gym which I had stopped doing for years due to the back pain. I can say now that I’m entirely pain-free except on occasion when I’ll get that nerve pain again but I can usually figure out what brought it on right away.
So Dr Sarno, I wish to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your dedication and determination to find THE CURE for BACK PAIN thru your TMS diagnosis and going against the established Medical Profession and risking your very livelihood in order to help us! You were a God-send to me and others and I know that you have been blessed immeasurably by all of your patients who’ve gotten their lives back!
Eternally Grateful,
Wayne