A new beginning

After 4.5 years of being in pain and trying various remedies - homepathy, ayurveda, naturopathy, accupressure, acupuncture and ofcourse still on amitryptiline and physical therapy, I had come to the conclusion that I needed to change my approach to solving this problem. I was working primarily to fix the symptom, i.e, pain. I needed to fix this problem in a different manner.

I still didn't know the root cause of fibromyalgia (actually no one still knows for sure what causes it- some say it's genetic, some say is just stress, some say it's environment) and hence couldn't attack it. Only thing I had realised was that therapy and medication alone will not cure me. As I was searching for these answers, fate sent Hussain into my life. (No not DJ Hussain - though I agree that shaking a leg to his music does help me :)) 

Hussain was my new physiotherapist as last one who was treating me found another job and was finding it logistically tough to give me private sessions. At first I was vary of this change because I would need to go through my history all over again and explain what works, what doesn't and then slowly build a rapport that is needed when you spend an hour with someone on a daily basis, while screaming in pain most of the time! 

After 3.5 years of taking therapy I was speaking therapists' language like which muscles are paining or which ones were treated yesterday so shouldn't be treated today and so on. So once he went through my treatment history at a high level, I told Hussain to treat a particular area on my upper back. Most therapists would finish the treatment in about 30 min. But he took one hour and still we couldn't cover the entire area under question. I was surprised but I didn't say anything because every therapist has their own style. Next day again he took longer to cover another portion of upper back. I was tempted to ask him the reason but I chose to keep my mouth shut. As I woke up on the third day I found that pain in the areas treated by him was significantly lower than I had ever remembered. Now I was sure that he was doing something different but what exactly I didn't know that.

Armed with this positive news, I decided to find out why his brand of same therapy took longer and how it yielded better results. The answer was simple - most therapists focus on bigger trigger points to give pain relief in shorter time. But he treated on small ones as well because when left untreated for a long time they can undo the work being done on bigger ones. 

I decided to work with Hussain for some more time to see if his approach was really more effective in the long run. The cost in terms of money and time just doubled up for me. Now I needed 2 hours of therapy a day to ensure that we cover all key muscles atleast once a week. But the relief was noticeably more and was lasting much longer. To me, this was the first ray of the rising sun after a long cold weary night!