When more than a year passed and none of the pain in my body had decreased, I decided to take a different approach: give up. I’ve spent thousands of dollars and countless hours seeing dozens of healers and doctors—time that might have better gone to hiking my favorite trails or reading my favorite books or spending more time with friends. In the meantime, I got behind on all my chores and projects, and I’m still trying to catch up.

 After I told one of my three physical therapists that, after a year of therapy, I wasn’t doing any better, she asked “Are you having a lot of stress?” As a matter of fact, yes. I was going to at least one appointment a day, sometimes two. This required reading all my notes from the last appointment, making a list of questions for the healer/doctor, and then afterward typing up the notes from the doctor, so I would have them for next time. Often, I did my own research: how did spinal stenosis result in sciatica? Why did the nerve pain in my hands indicate neuropathy but the joint pain mean I had arthritis—but of what kind? 

I thought that if I could just find the right healer—the one who would connect all the dots and figure out what was causing the pain in my body—I would be cured.  But the neurologists and rheumatologists had different opinions or diagnoses –often conflicting—that didn’t help. I so desperately wanted a savior, someone to take care of me, or at least my health, it took a long time to realize that none of doctors, at least, could cure me, or even knew why my body had turned against me.  Not only did I give up on them, but several gave up on me, including one neurologist.

Even my acupuncturist was honest enough to tell me that my body pain would never get better, that she couldn’t do anything because it had been going on too long, that it had settled in my body and that’s where it would stay. All I can do is to prevent the pain from getting worse.  

I felt I had to figure it out on my own, but I was never good at science and am still working out how glucose and cholesterol levels differ and how each affects my heart, which apparently is still in danger of a heart attack, even after a stent. Or that my fingertips have nerves while the rest of the hand has joints, further confusing a diagnosis.  

So I enlisted alternative healers, who gave me exercises, supplements and strong encouragement. They seemed to genuinely take an interest in my inscrutable pain. Ultimately, they didn’t cure me, but they gave me more tools than my neurologist and rheumatologist, who alternated different medications that were supposed to get rid of the pain but never did.

My naturopathic doctor gave me a list of supplements that would help the pain and hopefully calm down the inflammation and bolster my immune system. In addition, she told me to rub my hands in castor oil and insert them in gloves that I put into a heating pad. Another healer advised Epsom salts in hot water. I alternate between the two and manage to hold off the pain for a while.

My hand therapist showed me how to move my hands and fingers to deal with the pain—exercises I still do every day—and stressed that I needed to be gentle rather than push myself.  

A physical therapist who worked on my spine gave me exercises that stopped the pain in my left leg. Better yet, she showed me how to crouch without making the sciatica worse. In her words, bend down like I was aiming for the toilet.

My rolfer carefully examined my posture, which could affect the pain in my body as well as the spinal stenosis. She showed how my back, knees and head didn’t align, which could be causing the pain. She encouraged me to stand up straight and overcome my childhood tendency to stoop by opening my arms wide in a gesture of pride in my body.  

The chiropractor chided me when I came in for a session and saw me slouching, and I hear his voice every time I’m standing at the kitchen sink or in a grocery aisle: “Stand up straight!”   

A yoga teacher once told our class that laying on a yoga bolster every day for a half hour would straighten out our spines. Not only do I feel my back settling into its rightful position, I relax into the earth just as I should.  

The best advice was from a natural healer who said the only way to get rid of the inflammation was to lose the stress. I’m trying.