Hi Rachel,

Thank you also for your reply. What you shared was helpful for me in not being as fearful of the weaning off meds process. I am very interested in the program and do think that it would be a good fit. Basically, what my doctors have done in treating my chronic pain for the past five years is not working. I've instead continued to get worse. This is not a knock on my doctors. For some people, medications work great. But for me, I react to medications, so they may help me to some extent, but they also make things worse (by causing more pain). The PRC program offers a totally different approach to treating chronic pain and this is what I really need. I would love to be able to eliminate or at least reduce some of my medications. I feel like a walking medicine cabinet and I hate that!

However, I'm not certain if I will be accepted into the program. As I mentioned, they wanted me to work on adding more foods into my diet before being considered for the program. I've tried over the past few weeks, but when I've tried to add a new food in (I'm choosing bland foods and starting with the tiniest amount), I flare up with pain that's unbearable. It's been a discouraging experience. I have sought out help from my doctors, counselors, nutritionists/dieticians in the past as this issue has been going on for the past five years. My doctors' solution is to add more meds or increase the meds I'm on. I did CBT with a counselor for three years. It did help but was not enough to solve the issue. I've also met with a nutritionist and a dietician. They know how to give me a plan for introducing foods, but are at a loss for how to handle the flare ups of pain that I suffer when I do. I'm an oddity because most people don't react to food unless they have food allergies, which I don't have. I now understand that my reactions to food are part of the CSS. I reached out to the PRC today to see if they will consider taking me as a patient even though I haven't been able to add more foods back into my diet. I really believe that we have to tackle the CSS first before I'm able to successfully add more foods back in. We'll see what they say (fingers crossed).