Internal body vibrations all night

Hey. I want to throw in my 2 cents re: these neuropathy problems.

short version: Try Mindfulness and/or TM and spend time in a teahouse with and make friends with your pain/anxiety in tandem to seeking medical help. I found it massively beneficial for both mood AND accelerated physical healing.

(very) long version, the backstory: (can't help it... I'm a story teller)

I eventually found this thread initially searching for "spinal tremors." Wanna say: comfort in numbers.

I got slammed with Covid in February 2020 (no vaccines, no tests). Sore throat from hell, chronic cough I had to use an inhaler to stay on top of - and a rash of other bizarre symptoms including a periodic massive pain in one glute. Literally a big pain in the a--. After 8 months of coughing and misery I was finally given horse doses of prednisone and was able to more or less bounce back and start to regain my life. I have been left with vestibular damage (like I'm tipsy all the time) neuropathy in one leg always itching, periodic visual migraines, pretty heavy-duty CFS, perpetual brain fog and forgetfulness (I get about a minute of feeling "clear headed" and "alert" per week) all of which sucks because I was only 59 and I'm still working as a computer consultant and I NEED MY BRAIN to work and I NEED TO REMEMBER WTF I need to do next. My AHDH symptoms have gotten FAR worse. (like getting distracted and writing long-assed posts)

Increasingly, at night as I'm falling asleep I'll feel like there's an earthquake (I live in Marin County so sometimes it is!). I often am so exhausted that "am I dying?" is a more and more recent thought as I'm falling asleep - I feel like things are moving around me - terrifying - this morning I FINALLY woke up and realized that there was some sort of tremor happening beside my spine ... hard to describe - and I realized that's a big part of those feelings like I'm dying when I fall asleep. OK so now I conclude it's more auto-immune/neuropathy or whatever Covid/aging treats in store for me.

My parents are dying and my wife has severe post cancer ongoing un-treatable migraines and had covid too and has massive CFS and is only functional 12 hours every other day and also feels like she is dying.

So things can feel pretty grim.

I have a therapist was was a Buddhist monk for a time who's been working with me. Working with him, I was reminded that I already knew how to do TM from my my days of professional actor training. He has introduced me to mindfulness practices which are a fantastic parallel practice to TM. Pretty much ANYTHING that's messing me can be massively addressed with mindfulness, specifically not trying to run away from or suppress symptoms, but examine, really get close and EXPLORE them objectively (e.g. not from a place of revulsion or fear) and I ultimately find myself going INTO those symptoms - it's like I'm sort of exploring a new room and I'm looking at all the stuff in it. And then I realize that these symptoms are no longer bothering me. I've managed to deal with all sort of things including (unbelievably) reconciliation with some pretty serious childhood trauma.

Sometimes it's just a way to deal with it. Many with chronic pain know these tricks. Sometimes I actually get healing - emotional AND physical. I had really bad neck disk deterioration and pinched nerve and entering into that pain and making friends with it somehow accelerated the healing and allowed the PT to take hold and now I haven't had those problems for over two years. I have awful arthritis in my hands but Mindfulness got me through the devastation of losing function into finding a completely different way of playing my guitar so I can still enjoy that (lying on my back with the guitar on top of me, the frets just beside my head is the best position).

This morning I was SO depressed over this tremor - like deep shivering - thing in my back. And then I entered into it and when I was done with that exercise I got up feeling great and very happy and played my guitar and got a bunch of work done.

All this is to say that I HIGHLY RECOMMEND Mindfulness and meditation to help get through any physical and/or mental problems.

And, I might add, talk to your body. Acknowledge that there's a problem there. Gently suggest to it that maybe some of it's repair capabilities might be directed there.

And for those who feel like you're on Death's waiting list (rationally or irrationally):
Because I believe in afterlife/reincarnation/oversoul/infinity/heaven/conservation of energy or whatever it is... I find it very soothing to console and empathize with my body because IT is going to be left behind while WE get to go onto the next chapter. I remind it that it has its own form of reincarnation - it's just going to find infinite other lives to merge into on the molecular level, just as it is a collection of quadrillions of molecules once part of other living things. This exercise is helpful to ME to keep a good mood through all this aging, disease and physical deterioration because it helps me to discern that anxiety over and even terror of dying is coming from my poor body which is like a child that doesn't understand and needs empathy.

That revelation came when I was thinking about a second surgery I had to get rid of [post Covid recurring HPV Polyps growing in my sinuses - they had to grind my skull base down to get the roots out - a 4.5 hour surgery. I was thinking about how gruesome that was: "man, I'm so glad I wasn't awake for that!" and immediately I felt, like, this response from my body: "Maybe YOU weren't there for it but I F----ing WAS!" It was the first time I felt compassion for my body as like a separate entity. And I felt a tremendous GRATITUDE for all these 65 years it's endured me RIDING and PUSHING it so I could live the best life I could manage.

Good luck to everyone with healing and finding grace!

@mhmckee: I find your comments like a breath of fresh air! Pills and surgeries seem to invade most responses to a painful malady request on our Mayo Connect posts. I agree with your experiences giving credit to the patient’s mindful attention and determination to “let go” of the pain and see its true cause. I practice diligently and hope to perfect to the levels you enjoy!
I am a mere beginner in perusing the power of Mindfulness in our everyday lives. I encourage conversations like this to open avenues of communication that few patients even consider. They are asked the medical questions of symptoms and not inquiries of dissection of the pain itself.
I am a terminal NET cancer patient who has chosen Mindfulness/Meditation/Introsp-ection to assist me in my medical treatment decisions. This cancer has taught me so much!
Thank you for your 2cents - it was worth a million cents to me!
Best to you… dbamos1945