Jeff: Sarno Medal of Freedom
Greetings from Jeff in Pennsylvania!
Foot pain was just the start - 20+ years ago. One day I woke up with burning, stinging pain in my heels and a dull ache in my arches. Where did this come from? I blamed it on playing basketball with my kids barefoot.
My family physician recommended that I see a physical therapist for inflammation from plantar fasciitis. The PT gave me stretches to do and made plaster casts of my feet for custom orthotics. I wore the orthotics. The pain persisted. I found a podiatrist. He was not impressed with my orthotics. They wobbled. He took them back to his workshop and tinkered with them.
Then the podiatrist suggested injections directly into my heels. He warned that this would hurt. He was right. He was very right! I’ll never forget leaving his office and driving to our son's school to pick him up from a Cub Scout gathering. I was practically crawling from my car into the school. The pain from the shot eventually went away. But the PF kept right on chugging.
Next up was a trip to the hospital. The hot new treatment was a nerve block that numbed the feet from the ankles down and then the same machine that blasts kidney stones to bits would be dialed up to eleven and aimed at my heels. Pow, Pow, Pow…hundreds of times! It was supposed to hurt my feet to such a degree that fresh blood would rush into the inflamed areas and cure me for good. Did it work? Not. At. All. The pain persisted. On and off for two decades. I was buying Costco-sized jugs of Ibuprofen.
Next, I started seeing ads for a new “foot and ankle” outfit. Lots of ads and locations...maybe worth a try. They also diagnosed the problem as plantar fasciitis. Time for another round of shots, therapy, and new orthotics. The therapy involved foot/calf massage and special exercises. And, nope, you guessed it - it didn’t work.
Then as a byproduct of the Dr Sarno mind-body work, I was doing for my lower back pain… it all just quietly went away. I had been diagnosed with an aggravated sacroiliac from snow shoveling. I also did PT exercises, and the back pain went away until…the day we were leaving for vacation. So, back I went to my friend, the PT man. He treated me with heat and slapped a Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS) device on me.
In short order, I returned to the PT for hip pain. The physical therapist was baffled and suggested I get x- rays from my family doctor. So, I got some x-rays and never heard anything back about the results for an entire year. But when I did see my doctor again, he looked at the x-ray images and said, “You’ve got a bad back. You’re gonna need surgery sooner or later and more PT in the meantime." During this time, I also had many trips to the chiropractor. He applied heat, then cold and there was a lot of cracking. Finally, he gave up and said, “Go see an orthopedist.” I held off.
The pain kept coming and going down south: hips, legs, feet, “sciatica.” Then the strangest thing happened one night. I was walking around in my house and my right hip just collapsed. I hit the floor. I knew the cause as I was now reading a Sarno book.
Funny story about how I came across Dr Sarno. I’d heard about him and bought a copy of his book for a coworker who had all sorts of chronic pain. Of course, he tossed it back at me. I stashed the book in a closet and came across it later at just the right time - during a flare up. And I knew right away I’d found what I needed. But I wasn’t one of those people who had a “book cure” Far from it.
I read Sarno’s books and watched all sorts of videos. Next, I signed up for a course that focused on journaling. After daily journaling, the pain disappeared for a time, but then it came and went over and over. And sometimes the pain was still very bad. With more journaling, I got it down to just some minor stiffness. This was a MASSIVE improvement. But I was just not totally free of the chronic pain grip.
I found the Pain Cure Clinic on YouTube. I felt I needed the physicality part of their program. I signed up. I watched all the videos TWICE. About halfway through the program on the second round, I realized that ALL the pain was gone. Even so, I moved ahead and did the exercises and committed to the daily work. I’ve been 100% pain free ever since, and I continue to do all the suggested actions: watching videos, reading books, walking, medication, using an elliptical machine and foam rolling. I just get up early each day and knock it out.
Thank you so much John and Laura! I wish you and all your clients the best!
Congratulations, Jeff! We appreciate your candid success story.
You're next - to get YOUR Sarno Medal of Freedom: Click Here
