@ab6540183

Alfred, I am going to ask you an important question, and if you do your homework and honestly work toward finding your truthful answer to this question, it can help you get past the anxiety and the fear. The question is:

WHY are you doing this to yourself?

In other words, identify the things you are doing, your thinking patterns, and how does it relate to your anxiety and high blood pressure? What is it that you believe about your spine condition that is triggering you, and WHY DO YOU BELIEVE IT?

One path to answer this question is to think about times in your past when you felt similar anxiety, and why did you feel that way? What happened? Where you in physical danger? Did you not feel like you were getting support during a fearful event in your life?

Believe me, I have been there too, and the day I asked myself these questions was the day I began to unravel all the reasons that FEAR WAS CONTROLLING ME, and in finding those connections, I deprogrammed the fear. I used to fear pain so much that I passed out anytime I got an injection. All it took to push my FEAR button was for a surgeon to tell me that I had significant spinal cord compression and I needed surgery as soon as possible, and then with his arrogance, he didn't have time to answer my questions, yet he was asking me to sign up for his surgery. Later on, he continued sending me quality of life surveys for 2 years sniffing for business. His position as a surgeon elevated his importance and he had been in a magazine for his fashion style and elegance unrelated to his medical career.

After that, every morning when I thought about myself needing spine surgery, my blood pressure shot up and my heart raced. I had to learn to stop having panic attacks because I knew I was in trouble and needed to have my spine condition fixed which could only be done with surgery.

Consider this..... the fear response is learned and remembered by your brain. Every time your brain sees a similar threat, it goes right to the fear response that it knows. That is a survival reflex that is meant to get you out of danger as soon as possible. You were not born with this fear and anxiety. Babies don't worry about what will happen. Somewhere along the way, you learned to be fearful and accepted fear into your life without thinking about it. Here is your chance to think about it now and deprogram it, and if you do this right, it will change your life. That was my greatest lesson in facing my biggest fears.

Fear will increase pain a lot. There are people who can endure pain while using their mind so they do not feel the pain. How do they do that? If I had to guess, I would think they have severed the link between pain and fear.

I think you know how others view you when you say that your spouse and doctors are "not supportive." Here is your quote: "I have been bombarding the doctors with phone calls and emails nearly every week. They are not being supportive."

What happens when you keep repeating everything all the time to everyone over and over?

People stop listening including doctors.

If you keep telling surgeons your pain is at a specific level, you are diagnosing yourself and in effect, you are telling them how to do their job. A surgeon has spent years learning medicine and may be offended by a patient who keeps doing this and making demands. The surgeon's job is to figure out if there is a structural reason for your symptoms, and if it is something they can fix. Often, they do not promise to cure pain because pain can be for many reasons out of their control. If they think your pain is coming from something else or if it is in your head, what can they do to help you? Nothing..... except refer you to pain management.

Surgeons jobs are stressful and they are overworked. As you say, there are not enough surgeons to meet the demand in your country and the medical system is flawed, but it is what it is. This is why you need to be the best patient you can be. Be the patient that everyone wants to help.

What do you think your doctor thinks if you second guess them by looking things up on the internet and you tell them what is wrong? It's true that doctors can miss things. In my case 5 surgeons missed the complete diagnosis. When I found the medical literature that described my condition, I posed it as a question and asked the new surgeon if they thought my case could be like this case in the literature? It's an important difference in the way you communicate. Let them be "the BRAIN" and you are there to learn from them; not to tell them what you think is the cause of your problem. Describe your symptoms instead.

I believe that you can lower your pain response and your anxiety if you commit to doing that. Working with a counselor can help a lot. Decide what it is that you really want.

You said, "I am currently in hell. I have been up all night, it is 5:13 am in Melbourne, I took all my tablets but they are not managing the pain at all."

The choice is yours. Either stay in your current mode, adrift without a plan and hoping to be rescued, or take steps to help rescue yourself and change your life. You are the only one who can do that. Make an informed choice so you can answer honestly to yourself WHY you made the choice. A journey begins with a single step.

Jennifer