July 17, 2024 • 22 mins
In this episode, Dr. David Hanscom talks with chaplain and pain coach Bonnie Lester. She shares her experiences with chronic pain, delving into the profound impact it had on her life. She details the various experiments she tried with alternative approaches to find what would work after conventional medical treatment offered little relief. Her breakthrough came when she became acquainted with neuroplasticity and the realization that she could change the way her brain processed pain. Chaplain Bonnie Lester, MA, Certified in Advanced Pain Rehabilitation, is a pain coach who has personally overcome CRPS after a 30-year struggle with this challenging chronic pain syndrome. Drawing on her own recovery and evidence-based research, she now specializes in teaching neuroplasticity techniques and comprehensive lifestyle strategies to help others overcome chronic pain. Bonnie has helped hundreds of clients significantly reduce their pain levels and improve their quality of life. She is the author of the book Unwinding Pain: Affordable and Accessible Ways to Feel Better Now (available on Amazon for preorder now). For more information, visit https://www.bonnielester.com/ .
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Please note that all XZBN radio and/or television shows are Copyright © REL-MAR McConnell Meda Company, Niagara, Ontario, Canada – www.rel-mar.com. For more Episodes of this show and all shows produced, broadcasted and syndicated from REL-MAR McConell Media Company and The 'X' Zone Broadcast Network and the 'X' Zone TV Channell, visit www.xzbn.net. For programming, distribution, and syndication inquiries, email programming@xzbn.net.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Back inControl Radio with Doctor David Hanscombe. Hello
everybody, and welcome to another episodeof Back in Control Radio with Doctor David
Hanscombe. I'm your host, TomMasters, and our guest today is Chaplain
(00:25):
Bonnie Lester, a pain coach whohas certified in Advanced Pain Rehabilitation. She
has personally overcome complex regional pain syndromeafter a thirty year struggle with this challenging
chronic pain condition. Drawing on herown recovery and evidence based research, she
now specializes in teaching neuroplasticity techniques andcomprehensive lifestyle strategies to help others overcome their
(00:53):
chronic pain. She has helped hundredsof clients significantly reduce their pain and improved
the quality of life. Welcome pigreTom. I like to welcome Chaplain Bonnie
Lesser to the program today. Shecold called me, which is great and
I heard her email. Caught myattention because she had she was separated from
(01:19):
it was called chronic regional pain syndromeor otherwise known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy,
and she is a chaplain certifying inAdvanced pain rehabilitation. I just found out
today. She lives in Dublin,about thirty miles from me here in Oakland,
and she had a thirty year strugglewith chronic regional pain syndrome. And
when people contact me about chronic regionalpains in rome is considered in medicine,
(01:42):
even from medical school day, it'sone of the worst diagnosis in medicine.
She have really advanced vascular changes,skin changes, but hernda's unbelievable pain.
And so she came out of it. And I'm always fascinated about what people
how people come out of it,And basically is as of learning to regulate
in colminary physiology, which is notwell except in the medical world. So
(02:06):
she's written a book. First ofall, welcome Bonnie. Hello, can
you can you introduce the name ofyour book for us? My book is
called Unwinding Pain, Affordable and AccessibleWays to Feel Better Now. It'll soon
be up on Amazon for pre order. And the good news is I'm also
(02:27):
having a release of an audible copybecause I know when you're in a lot
of pain to sit and hold abook is very uncomfortable. So that will
be available at the beginning of September. Right, we'll jump out this into
the program. She also does healthcoaching, and there's lots of things we
can do here. So anybody IJody through your book. I know we
don't want to talk a huge amountabout the pain. We want to talk
(02:47):
more about the solutions. But Iwould like to briefly know how it all
started. This is nineteen eighty sixor something that you were in a car
accident. Correct. I was thirtythree years old. I had a six
year old son, and I asecond marriage, and so my life was
you know, changing, and itwas comfortable, and I was coming home
from work one day and suddenly Iwas hit and I heard a big roar
(03:09):
and I shook like a rag doll. And it turns out a drunk driver
had plowed into me. And that'swhere my journey started. I thought,
maybe if I recall your book quickly, it sort of started out sort of
as diffuse body pain, and thenat some point it went into your left
arm. Right soon after the accident, you know, three months passed and
(03:31):
they thought I had soft tissue,and you know, we were going to
heal my left hand, which ismy dominant hands. It felt numb,
it felt very numb. It didn'tfeel like it was part of my body.
And the doctor kept saying, well, don't use it if it hurts,
you know, immobilize it, whichnowadays they know that that's not great
when you come to CRPS. SoI immobilized it. And then one day
(03:53):
I was walking in the neighborhood andit felt like my hand was on fire.
And that was the very first simpleI had that now we know it's
from complex regional pain syndrome. Thatthe burning, it felt like it was
under a sun lamp. And thenit disappeared, and then it came back
within the day, and then itcame again, and then it came again
(04:14):
until I finally I actually this wasthe time before they had Google. We
didn't have a computer. I couldn'tgo online to say what is this burning?
But I did go to a bookstoreand I found a pain management book
where somebody talked about there was adoctor had written it, and she had
one half the paragraph about well,there are some pain conditions where your nerves
burn and this and that, andit's called reflex sympathetic dystrophy. Because this
(04:36):
was back in nineteen eighty six whenthey called it that. So I took
that book to my doctor, myorthopedist, and I said, this is
what it feels like. And hesaid, oh, I was worried about
I was worried about that, andyeah, it sounds like I think you
have this. And he said,there's really no test for it, but
your symptoms that are going on withyou now mean that you probably have it.
(05:00):
And they discovered it in the CivilWar. That's the first time was
written about. Okay, Yeah,and they still didn't have a cure in
nineteen eighty six. Yeah, sothat's yeah. So I will emphasize in
the medical world as chronic regional painsand rome is considered uncurable and using the
principles that will delineate in this podcast. And the next one is that it
(05:20):
is solvable. And my friend LesAria in Secramento has a couple of people
with it with phantom limp pain,which is also a different problem. Have
it resolved. He also has chronicreflex sympathetic DISTRIBT patients resolve and by understanding
the basic problem and actually approaching tocertain principles that actually is a solvable problem.
Do you want to describe the pathof physiology of it for a second,
(05:42):
I mean, I know, I'lljump in here in a second about
what actually happens in regional sympathetic distriphy, because doctor's historically look at this,
well, there is a quote sometype of psychological issues that's just not true.
It's an imbalance of the sympathetic nervoussystem, you know. And actually
when I explained it to people,I call it stars. The symptoms you
have. You can get swelling,you get temperature changes, you have agonya
(06:06):
for stars as agony, and youcan get redness or other changes even kind
of bluish, and then your skincan get shiny, thinned out. The
hair growth pattern changes also, soit affects many things. It's not just
one little area of where your injurywas. And also it's important to say
the pain you have is disproportionate towhat the injury or the surgery that you
(06:28):
had. And I want to backup with David just said it is people
I've worked with people who do haverecovered, you know. And if you
go online and look at RSD orCRPS, it's always negative. They always
tell you how bad it is andit's a suicide disease. But there is
hope for people. Yeah, there'sa lot of hope actually want you understand
the problem and the principle there's actuallypredictably solvable. Is that a first damen?
(06:50):
Yeah, that is. Yeah.So if you treat this glot psychological
or again, I don't know ifyou had the experience of going to different
positions, but I'm assuming you didnot get a lot of answers as you
went along. Nobody had answers exceptevery doctor quoted to me from the history
that it was diagnosed in the CivilWar, but nobody had history. But
(07:10):
it was a wild West time andthey were experimenting. Anesthesiologists came in and
gave me nerve blocks they did notlast, and that's where I ended up
going in for the radical surgery,where they said we'll take out part of
the nerve chain and you won't haveany pain in your arm anymore. And
that spread it throughout my body,and that meant I had the burning for
my neck all the way down myshoulder, my hand, down to my
feet. Oh my god. Sohow many years did you live like that?
(07:34):
The surgery was, the accident wasin eighty six, the surgery was
in eighty eight, and I livelike that until twenty ten. Wow.
Yeah, Wow, So I wantedto go back up to the diagnosis just
to explain about the sympathetic versus parasympatheticnerves system. So your body is very
delicate balance, and every millisecond yourbody's adjusting blood pressure, your blood flow,
(07:59):
the dilation of your blood vessels,heart rate, temperature, hormonal balance.
I mean, your unconscious brain processis about twenty to forty million of
information per second. And restly theautonomic nervous system. The reason why it's
called autonomic is it is automatic.And so you have the sympathetic which activates
your firefly physiology, and you haveyour parasympathetic system which calms it down.
(08:22):
And so is it disregulated sympathetic nervoussystem that actually causes the problem. The
principles are come around rebalancing it.So the symptoms you describe about swelling,
smooth skin, the sweating, allthese things are from the sympathetic nervous system
being activated and it doesn't shut down. It's a huge problem. And so
(08:43):
can you explain you had four blocksin your neck before you have the sympathectomy,
right, Yes, they lasted on. The idea was it was going
to the size. I can't saythat word very well, it's going to
make it numb. And it lastednot even twenty four hours. I kept
going back, and I want totell you that some people have success with
the blocks. When they were doingthe blocks with me, they were very
(09:05):
primitive. They didn't do any scansto find out where to do the injection.
They were squeezing me in between recoverypatients because they wanted experiment. I
was a guinea pig actually, butthey said because I responded at all,
meant I would be a good candidatefor that surgery. Right. And again
that's one of the principles will elucidatelater, is that I'm not a get
(09:31):
sympathetic blocks either, because you wantto if you can give people some relief
while they're healing, that's all fairgame. The sympathet to me is a
bit more drastic, or is you'retaking out some part of sympathetic nervous system
which is there for a reason.And so again you have a disregulated nervous
system and you want to reregulate it. That's actually the solution is reregulating by
physiology. So again throughat physiology isfight or flight. You have inflammatory sidic
(09:56):
kinds and metabolism or fuel consumptions increase, your nerves connection is increased, your
brain itself becomes inflained, your brain'shelp becomes hypersensitized, and so as you
calm this down actually makes a hugedifference. Then I want to highlight one
point that she brought out, whichis really critical, is that I'm a
spine surgeon. I quit spine hurtybecause we're making so many people worse with
(10:18):
spine churty. And I did notknow this until after I quit my practice
in twenty nineteen. I practiced forthirty two years. Is that when you
do any procedure in any part ofthe body in the presence of untreated chronic
pain, you can make the painworse forty to sixty percent of the time.
So what happens is that they sayyou have chronic neck pain, and
(10:39):
you have a gall bladder operation ora hernia repair, which are really simple
operations. You can induce pain atthe new surgical site forty to sixty percent
of the time and it makes itway worse. So your story is pretty
classic and I did not understand thisin practice. Is that you're an untreated
chronic pain and then you do theinjections and then you do a sympathectomy and
(11:01):
you went to total body pain.Yeah, that's a classic textbook example,
and unfortunately this is not well knownin medicine. When I read this data
about two years after I queen mypractice, they go, oh my god.
Because I would do some perfect operationsin the presence of entreaty chronic pain.
(11:24):
And I always thought, well,if I just get rid of the
pain, that is going to solvethe whole problem, and it actually makes
it worse. It was mind blowingto me, unbelievable. So how did
you deal with that? You wentfrom left arm pain? Was a left
arm still the worst? Or wasyour total body on fire? No,
my left arm in hand were theworst. But from my neck, yeah,
I was always on fire for myneck. This is twenty four to
(11:46):
seven. It wasn't that sometimes itflared, It was just boays turned on.
So everything in my life was doneagainst the shadow of me being on
fire. So how did you function? Well, the only thing I used
was I had tens unit and backthen, this was before the two thousands
where they weren't treating chronic pain withopiates, so I wasn't on any opiates.
(12:07):
I took a muscle relax and thenI had to go within myself to
start doing mind body activities. Sothat was the very beginning. I had
had some training when I was anundergraduate school about to maintain the quality of
life is physical, mental, social, and spiritual, and it was grabbing
those pillars. I restructured a lifeof just survival. Because you know,
(12:30):
my doctor shook his head. Iwent back to the original doctor and he
said, you know, you're goingto need courage to live this way,
and which thank goodness he said thatbecause you know, he stopped looking in
the books to say, we're goingto do this for you and that for
you, and I would be outthere exploring things in the community, acupuncture,
massage, anything that would be available. I was trying it out.
(12:52):
And again this is a time beforethe computers where you could find out all
these wonderful things. So I wason my own journey to see what would
help me make it through the day. I totally lost the use to my
dominant hand. And now with thedays, they know you need to mobilize
your body or everything that they've learnedhow you can improve from CRPS. I
(13:13):
did the opposite. So but thehope is after thirty years of doing the
opposite, I recovered and I'm sithere today in front of you at age
seventy two pain free. Wow.And yeah, I know it's fascinating that
you're able to deal with the totalbody pain like that. So I want
to edge into sort of the insightshow they emerge at because just be clear,
(13:37):
you're pretty much pain free now,right, Yes, Okay, I
want you to say it because mostof you know that listen to me,
probably more than you want to knowthat I had seventeen different symptoms at the
same time, including ring in myears, my grain, headaches, burning
to my feet, all sorts ofstuff, and I'm pain free. I
don't have any of that stuff.And so I was shocked. I never
(13:58):
thought the ring in my ears istwenty five years, my burning feet was
twenty years, and I just thoughtthat's the way I had lived my life.
And they are flat out gone.And what happens is your body chemistry
changes from fight or flight to safety. Your nerve connection slows, the brain
calmbs down. You start rerouting yournervous system. And you mentioned the magic
word of neuroplasticity, And we'll talkabout a lot more in the second podcast.
(14:22):
So what you tried everything, Youprobably traveled the planet. And I
just want to say one more thing, how bad this syndrome is. So
there's a paper done that's not wellknown. It's sort of a very dark
paper, but there's a case reportof a surgeon who had twenty four patients
who had upper extremity pain arm pain, perfectly normal arms. And you didn't
(14:43):
really specify whether they had chronic regionalpains in norm or not, but I'm
assuming they did, just had terriblearm pain. And what he did he
amputated twenty four arms. Guess howwell they did. Oh, I know
how horrible thing must have done.Well. Two of them got better.
(15:03):
The rest of them had the exactsame pain that they had before. Now
they had phantom limb pain. Andthe problem with phantom limp pain is as
even worse than the original pain becauseat least with the arm being there,
you still rub it, misade todo things to it to alleviate it.
With phantom limp pain, you stillfeel the pain and you feel the arm,
but you can't touch it. It'sgone. And again, to be
clarify one additional point, the definitionof chronic pain in general out of Chicago
(15:28):
with the new neuroscience that we have, chronic pain is defined as an embedded
memory that gets connected with more andmore life events and the memory cannot be
erased. And so this is actuallya neurological issue. It is not a
structural issue. And it's physiological thatyour whole body's on fire. It's not
just your is the sensation of yourbody being on fire, but just what
your rest of your body is onfire too. So it's a total body
(15:52):
response to stress and you have tofind ways to actually reroute that process in
order to heal. And you healand we'll talk about deep healing versus self
help on the second podcast. Buta meersha, what started to tip your
paradigm? I mean, I'm guessingyou never really thought you'd be pain free.
(16:15):
I was always always has hope.And actually my family and friends they
always recall that I would be optimisticand tell them I'm doing this now,
and they were all celebrating with me. You know that they knew that everybody
viewed me as because I had abackground in public health and clinical social work,
that I would know what to do. So they all supported whatever I
was doing, and they believed thatsomehow I would achieve. But I,
(16:37):
between you and me and the wallhere, I never knew that I was
going to be pain free. Becauseone thing that we haven't talked about is
in twenty oh six, yeah,two thousand and six, when the world
changed about treating chronic pain with Okids. My doctor called me in and
said, you're a good candidate forfnsional and Norco because your quality of life
could really improve. And I thought, okay, let me do that.
(17:00):
So I was on the up thedose of that. I was wearing two
fenional patches and I had Narco forthe breakthrough pain. I was taking the
tricyclics for the classic approach to that, plus a muscle relax and and we're
going to get into more of thestory about neuroplasticity. But the reason I'm
mentioning this about being on that medicationit actually kept me from doing some other
(17:23):
positive things I was doing to recoverthe use of my hand. I had
learned how to string big blocks ofwood that had a hole in it,
like for toddlers to do beads.So I was getting my grass back,
which was great, and desensitizing myhand. But when I started using the
opiates, I lost my creativity becauseat that point I had learned how to
(17:45):
do some beating and I was startingto make inspirational jewelry, which was so
exciting. It hurt me a lotto use my hand, but it was
really important. Well, when Igot on all the medication, my creativity
went to dust, and so Istopped working. So I stopped using my
hand again, which was a mistake. I can look back now and say
I was also injured in this waythat I stopped doing what I needed to
(18:06):
do to recover the use of myhand. But well, did the opiois
help at all? Well, okay, they helped muscle spasms, but it
didn't do anything to my fire.Nothing. Yeah, for those of you
that have been through this process,I was in nineteen ninety when opird did
coming into place. This is wherewe were supposed to do. Factor is
considered almost malpractice to not use opioids. And then there's a whole Purdue Farmer
(18:27):
thing which turned out that all thiswas actually fraud basically right, So I
was part of the thing. Ifelt bad if I didn't put people on
opioids I was part of that wholeprocess. That's what we were trained to
do, et cetera. So anyway, so I want to finish this part
of podcast off with just a whatscene around twenty ten something change? Of
(18:47):
course, you'd been doing thirty yearsof work to come to that spot.
Didn't happen overnight. What was abasic paradigm or what caused that paradigm shift?
Around twenty ten a doctor told meabout neuroplasticity. My husband had an
event and he lost his memory andit ran into the emergency room and he
(19:08):
had something called transient global amnesia.It's a rare little blip when you do
exertion sometimes your brain just disengages,and he had no memory of what was
going on. And during the timehe's been examined, his brain rebooted.
And the doctor turned and said,this is neuroplasticity. The brain at any
age it can rewire itself. Andmy husband at the time was in his
(19:30):
late sixties. You know, he'sin his early seventies. So here he
was telling my husband could rewire hisbrain. And I'm thinking went home that
night. It was scary seeing myhusband, you know, detached in reality,
and he was taking care of alot of things in my life because
I was so incapacitated for my CRPS. So I thought, okay, this
is going to be the avenue forme. Neuroplasticity. And again I couldn't
(19:52):
google it because it didn't work ata computer. So I looked at a
Ted talk and some old stuffy scientistswas talking about it, you know,
how you could rechange your brain.And that's what I'll talk about in the
next section, how neuroplasticity won theday for me. So again, we
could talk for days almost on thisbecause I'm pretty darn excited. I mean,
(20:14):
this is a complish problem. We'redeeply in the medical world not getting
any answers, and here you are, since twenty ten, you know,
fourteen years later, doing just fine. And for those of you that can't
see her on the film, shelooks great. She looks normal, and
you know, it's hard to understandhow bad the sumparing was for so long.
So her book is called Unwinding Pain. You say it's going to be
published here shortly. Yeah, it'sactually being reviewed on Amazon before they'll post
(20:37):
it, so it'll be available forpre sale. The real launch date is
September five, and I want toalso again say that I have a great
voice actor who's recording it now,so it's going to be a really enjoyable
book to listen to. Great Andthen you have some of the resources you
do health coaching and how do weaccess your services Bonnielester dot com. And
(21:00):
I'm also affiliated with train Pain thathas an neuroplasticity app and true them I'm
out they're booking me also as paincoach. So okay, well, Bonnie,
thank you. The second podcast,we're going tall a lot about what
you're actually offering, what you doand why you think it works, and
so anyway, thank you very muchfor being on this portion of the podcast.
(21:22):
Well, thank you for chatting withme. It's been delightful. I'd
like to thank our guest Bonnie Listerfor being on the show today and for
sharing her personal journey through complex regionalpain syndrome and the insights she gained that
helped her to heal. I'm yourhost, Tom Masters, reminding you to
be back next week for another episodeof Back in Control Radio with doctor David
(21:45):
Hanscombe, and in the meantime,be sure to visit the website at www
dot back incontrol dot com. Thanksfor listening today and join us next week
for that can control reading. H
Hello, and welcome to Back inControl Radio with Doctor David Hanscombe. Hello
everybody, and welcome to another episodeof Back in Control Radio with Doctor David
Hanscombe. I'm your host, TomMasters, and our guest today is Chaplain
(00:25):
Bonnie Lester, a pain coach whohas certified in Advanced Pain Rehabilitation. She
has personally overcome complex regional pain syndromeafter a thirty year struggle with this challenging
chronic pain condition. Drawing on herown recovery and evidence based research, she
now specializes in teaching neuroplasticity techniques andcomprehensive lifestyle strategies to help others overcome their
(00:53):
chronic pain. She has helped hundredsof clients significantly reduce their pain and improved
the quality of life. Welcome pigreTom. I like to welcome Chaplain Bonnie
Lesser to the program today. Shecold called me, which is great and
I heard her email. Caught myattention because she had she was separated from
(01:19):
it was called chronic regional pain syndromeor otherwise known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy,
and she is a chaplain certifying inAdvanced pain rehabilitation. I just found out
today. She lives in Dublin,about thirty miles from me here in Oakland,
and she had a thirty year strugglewith chronic regional pain syndrome. And
when people contact me about chronic regionalpains in rome is considered in medicine,
(01:42):
even from medical school day, it'sone of the worst diagnosis in medicine.
She have really advanced vascular changes,skin changes, but hernda's unbelievable pain.
And so she came out of it. And I'm always fascinated about what people
how people come out of it,And basically is as of learning to regulate
in colminary physiology, which is notwell except in the medical world. So
(02:06):
she's written a book. First ofall, welcome Bonnie. Hello, can
you can you introduce the name ofyour book for us? My book is
called Unwinding Pain, Affordable and AccessibleWays to Feel Better Now. It'll soon
be up on Amazon for pre order. And the good news is I'm also
(02:27):
having a release of an audible copybecause I know when you're in a lot
of pain to sit and hold abook is very uncomfortable. So that will
be available at the beginning of September. Right, we'll jump out this into
the program. She also does healthcoaching, and there's lots of things we
can do here. So anybody IJody through your book. I know we
don't want to talk a huge amountabout the pain. We want to talk
(02:47):
more about the solutions. But Iwould like to briefly know how it all
started. This is nineteen eighty sixor something that you were in a car
accident. Correct. I was thirtythree years old. I had a six
year old son, and I asecond marriage, and so my life was
you know, changing, and itwas comfortable, and I was coming home
from work one day and suddenly Iwas hit and I heard a big roar
(03:09):
and I shook like a rag doll. And it turns out a drunk driver
had plowed into me. And that'swhere my journey started. I thought,
maybe if I recall your book quickly, it sort of started out sort of
as diffuse body pain, and thenat some point it went into your left
arm. Right soon after the accident, you know, three months passed and
(03:31):
they thought I had soft tissue,and you know, we were going to
heal my left hand, which ismy dominant hands. It felt numb,
it felt very numb. It didn'tfeel like it was part of my body.
And the doctor kept saying, well, don't use it if it hurts,
you know, immobilize it, whichnowadays they know that that's not great
when you come to CRPS. SoI immobilized it. And then one day
(03:53):
I was walking in the neighborhood andit felt like my hand was on fire.
And that was the very first simpleI had that now we know it's
from complex regional pain syndrome. Thatthe burning, it felt like it was
under a sun lamp. And thenit disappeared, and then it came back
within the day, and then itcame again, and then it came again
(04:14):
until I finally I actually this wasthe time before they had Google. We
didn't have a computer. I couldn'tgo online to say what is this burning?
But I did go to a bookstoreand I found a pain management book
where somebody talked about there was adoctor had written it, and she had
one half the paragraph about well,there are some pain conditions where your nerves
burn and this and that, andit's called reflex sympathetic dystrophy. Because this
(04:36):
was back in nineteen eighty six whenthey called it that. So I took
that book to my doctor, myorthopedist, and I said, this is
what it feels like. And hesaid, oh, I was worried about
I was worried about that, andyeah, it sounds like I think you
have this. And he said,there's really no test for it, but
your symptoms that are going on withyou now mean that you probably have it.
(05:00):
And they discovered it in the CivilWar. That's the first time was
written about. Okay, Yeah,and they still didn't have a cure in
nineteen eighty six. Yeah, sothat's yeah. So I will emphasize in
the medical world as chronic regional painsand rome is considered uncurable and using the
principles that will delineate in this podcast. And the next one is that it
(05:20):
is solvable. And my friend LesAria in Secramento has a couple of people
with it with phantom limp pain,which is also a different problem. Have
it resolved. He also has chronicreflex sympathetic DISTRIBT patients resolve and by understanding
the basic problem and actually approaching tocertain principles that actually is a solvable problem.
Do you want to describe the pathof physiology of it for a second,
(05:42):
I mean, I know, I'lljump in here in a second about
what actually happens in regional sympathetic distriphy, because doctor's historically look at this,
well, there is a quote sometype of psychological issues that's just not true.
It's an imbalance of the sympathetic nervoussystem, you know. And actually
when I explained it to people,I call it stars. The symptoms you
have. You can get swelling,you get temperature changes, you have agonya
(06:06):
for stars as agony, and youcan get redness or other changes even kind
of bluish, and then your skincan get shiny, thinned out. The
hair growth pattern changes also, soit affects many things. It's not just
one little area of where your injurywas. And also it's important to say
the pain you have is disproportionate towhat the injury or the surgery that you
(06:28):
had. And I want to backup with David just said it is people
I've worked with people who do haverecovered, you know. And if you
go online and look at RSD orCRPS, it's always negative. They always
tell you how bad it is andit's a suicide disease. But there is
hope for people. Yeah, there'sa lot of hope actually want you understand
the problem and the principle there's actuallypredictably solvable. Is that a first damen?
(06:50):
Yeah, that is. Yeah.So if you treat this glot psychological
or again, I don't know ifyou had the experience of going to different
positions, but I'm assuming you didnot get a lot of answers as you
went along. Nobody had answers exceptevery doctor quoted to me from the history
that it was diagnosed in the CivilWar, but nobody had history. But
(07:10):
it was a wild West time andthey were experimenting. Anesthesiologists came in and
gave me nerve blocks they did notlast, and that's where I ended up
going in for the radical surgery,where they said we'll take out part of
the nerve chain and you won't haveany pain in your arm anymore. And
that spread it throughout my body,and that meant I had the burning for
my neck all the way down myshoulder, my hand, down to my
feet. Oh my god. Sohow many years did you live like that?
(07:34):
The surgery was, the accident wasin eighty six, the surgery was
in eighty eight, and I livelike that until twenty ten. Wow.
Yeah, Wow, So I wantedto go back up to the diagnosis just
to explain about the sympathetic versus parasympatheticnerves system. So your body is very
delicate balance, and every millisecond yourbody's adjusting blood pressure, your blood flow,
(07:59):
the dilation of your blood vessels,heart rate, temperature, hormonal balance.
I mean, your unconscious brain processis about twenty to forty million of
information per second. And restly theautonomic nervous system. The reason why it's
called autonomic is it is automatic.And so you have the sympathetic which activates
your firefly physiology, and you haveyour parasympathetic system which calms it down.
(08:22):
And so is it disregulated sympathetic nervoussystem that actually causes the problem. The
principles are come around rebalancing it.So the symptoms you describe about swelling,
smooth skin, the sweating, allthese things are from the sympathetic nervous system
being activated and it doesn't shut down. It's a huge problem. And so
(08:43):
can you explain you had four blocksin your neck before you have the sympathectomy,
right, Yes, they lasted on. The idea was it was going
to the size. I can't saythat word very well, it's going to
make it numb. And it lastednot even twenty four hours. I kept
going back, and I want totell you that some people have success with
the blocks. When they were doingthe blocks with me, they were very
(09:05):
primitive. They didn't do any scansto find out where to do the injection.
They were squeezing me in between recoverypatients because they wanted experiment. I
was a guinea pig actually, butthey said because I responded at all,
meant I would be a good candidatefor that surgery. Right. And again
that's one of the principles will elucidatelater, is that I'm not a get
(09:31):
sympathetic blocks either, because you wantto if you can give people some relief
while they're healing, that's all fairgame. The sympathet to me is a
bit more drastic, or is you'retaking out some part of sympathetic nervous system
which is there for a reason.And so again you have a disregulated nervous
system and you want to reregulate it. That's actually the solution is reregulating by
physiology. So again throughat physiology isfight or flight. You have inflammatory sidic
(09:56):
kinds and metabolism or fuel consumptions increase, your nerves connection is increased, your
brain itself becomes inflained, your brain'shelp becomes hypersensitized, and so as you
calm this down actually makes a hugedifference. Then I want to highlight one
point that she brought out, whichis really critical, is that I'm a
spine surgeon. I quit spine hurtybecause we're making so many people worse with
(10:18):
spine churty. And I did notknow this until after I quit my practice
in twenty nineteen. I practiced forthirty two years. Is that when you
do any procedure in any part ofthe body in the presence of untreated chronic
pain, you can make the painworse forty to sixty percent of the time.
So what happens is that they sayyou have chronic neck pain, and
(10:39):
you have a gall bladder operation ora hernia repair, which are really simple
operations. You can induce pain atthe new surgical site forty to sixty percent
of the time and it makes itway worse. So your story is pretty
classic and I did not understand thisin practice. Is that you're an untreated
chronic pain and then you do theinjections and then you do a sympathectomy and
(11:01):
you went to total body pain.Yeah, that's a classic textbook example,
and unfortunately this is not well knownin medicine. When I read this data
about two years after I queen mypractice, they go, oh my god.
Because I would do some perfect operationsin the presence of entreaty chronic pain.
(11:24):
And I always thought, well,if I just get rid of the
pain, that is going to solvethe whole problem, and it actually makes
it worse. It was mind blowingto me, unbelievable. So how did
you deal with that? You wentfrom left arm pain? Was a left
arm still the worst? Or wasyour total body on fire? No,
my left arm in hand were theworst. But from my neck, yeah,
I was always on fire for myneck. This is twenty four to
(11:46):
seven. It wasn't that sometimes itflared, It was just boays turned on.
So everything in my life was doneagainst the shadow of me being on
fire. So how did you function? Well, the only thing I used
was I had tens unit and backthen, this was before the two thousands
where they weren't treating chronic pain withopiates, so I wasn't on any opiates.
(12:07):
I took a muscle relax and thenI had to go within myself to
start doing mind body activities. Sothat was the very beginning. I had
had some training when I was anundergraduate school about to maintain the quality of
life is physical, mental, social, and spiritual, and it was grabbing
those pillars. I restructured a lifeof just survival. Because you know,
(12:30):
my doctor shook his head. Iwent back to the original doctor and he
said, you know, you're goingto need courage to live this way,
and which thank goodness he said thatbecause you know, he stopped looking in
the books to say, we're goingto do this for you and that for
you, and I would be outthere exploring things in the community, acupuncture,
massage, anything that would be available. I was trying it out.
(12:52):
And again this is a time beforethe computers where you could find out all
these wonderful things. So I wason my own journey to see what would
help me make it through the day. I totally lost the use to my
dominant hand. And now with thedays, they know you need to mobilize
your body or everything that they've learnedhow you can improve from CRPS. I
(13:13):
did the opposite. So but thehope is after thirty years of doing the
opposite, I recovered and I'm sithere today in front of you at age
seventy two pain free. Wow.And yeah, I know it's fascinating that
you're able to deal with the totalbody pain like that. So I want
to edge into sort of the insightshow they emerge at because just be clear,
(13:37):
you're pretty much pain free now,right, Yes, Okay, I
want you to say it because mostof you know that listen to me,
probably more than you want to knowthat I had seventeen different symptoms at the
same time, including ring in myears, my grain, headaches, burning
to my feet, all sorts ofstuff, and I'm pain free. I
don't have any of that stuff.And so I was shocked. I never
(13:58):
thought the ring in my ears istwenty five years, my burning feet was
twenty years, and I just thoughtthat's the way I had lived my life.
And they are flat out gone.And what happens is your body chemistry
changes from fight or flight to safety. Your nerve connection slows, the brain
calmbs down. You start rerouting yournervous system. And you mentioned the magic
word of neuroplasticity, And we'll talkabout a lot more in the second podcast.
(14:22):
So what you tried everything, Youprobably traveled the planet. And I
just want to say one more thing, how bad this syndrome is. So
there's a paper done that's not wellknown. It's sort of a very dark
paper, but there's a case reportof a surgeon who had twenty four patients
who had upper extremity pain arm pain, perfectly normal arms. And you didn't
(14:43):
really specify whether they had chronic regionalpains in norm or not, but I'm
assuming they did, just had terriblearm pain. And what he did he
amputated twenty four arms. Guess howwell they did. Oh, I know
how horrible thing must have done.Well. Two of them got better.
(15:03):
The rest of them had the exactsame pain that they had before. Now
they had phantom limb pain. Andthe problem with phantom limp pain is as
even worse than the original pain becauseat least with the arm being there,
you still rub it, misade todo things to it to alleviate it.
With phantom limp pain, you stillfeel the pain and you feel the arm,
but you can't touch it. It'sgone. And again, to be
clarify one additional point, the definitionof chronic pain in general out of Chicago
(15:28):
with the new neuroscience that we have, chronic pain is defined as an embedded
memory that gets connected with more andmore life events and the memory cannot be
erased. And so this is actuallya neurological issue. It is not a
structural issue. And it's physiological thatyour whole body's on fire. It's not
just your is the sensation of yourbody being on fire, but just what
your rest of your body is onfire too. So it's a total body
(15:52):
response to stress and you have tofind ways to actually reroute that process in
order to heal. And you healand we'll talk about deep healing versus self
help on the second podcast. Buta meersha, what started to tip your
paradigm? I mean, I'm guessingyou never really thought you'd be pain free.
(16:15):
I was always always has hope.And actually my family and friends they
always recall that I would be optimisticand tell them I'm doing this now,
and they were all celebrating with me. You know that they knew that everybody
viewed me as because I had abackground in public health and clinical social work,
that I would know what to do. So they all supported whatever I
was doing, and they believed thatsomehow I would achieve. But I,
(16:37):
between you and me and the wallhere, I never knew that I was
going to be pain free. Becauseone thing that we haven't talked about is
in twenty oh six, yeah,two thousand and six, when the world
changed about treating chronic pain with Okids. My doctor called me in and
said, you're a good candidate forfnsional and Norco because your quality of life
could really improve. And I thought, okay, let me do that.
(17:00):
So I was on the up thedose of that. I was wearing two
fenional patches and I had Narco forthe breakthrough pain. I was taking the
tricyclics for the classic approach to that, plus a muscle relax and and we're
going to get into more of thestory about neuroplasticity. But the reason I'm
mentioning this about being on that medicationit actually kept me from doing some other
(17:23):
positive things I was doing to recoverthe use of my hand. I had
learned how to string big blocks ofwood that had a hole in it,
like for toddlers to do beads.So I was getting my grass back,
which was great, and desensitizing myhand. But when I started using the
opiates, I lost my creativity becauseat that point I had learned how to
(17:45):
do some beating and I was startingto make inspirational jewelry, which was so
exciting. It hurt me a lotto use my hand, but it was
really important. Well, when Igot on all the medication, my creativity
went to dust, and so Istopped working. So I stopped using my
hand again, which was a mistake. I can look back now and say
I was also injured in this waythat I stopped doing what I needed to
(18:06):
do to recover the use of myhand. But well, did the opiois
help at all? Well, okay, they helped muscle spasms, but it
didn't do anything to my fire.Nothing. Yeah, for those of you
that have been through this process,I was in nineteen ninety when opird did
coming into place. This is wherewe were supposed to do. Factor is
considered almost malpractice to not use opioids. And then there's a whole Purdue Farmer
(18:27):
thing which turned out that all thiswas actually fraud basically right, So I
was part of the thing. Ifelt bad if I didn't put people on
opioids I was part of that wholeprocess. That's what we were trained to
do, et cetera. So anyway, so I want to finish this part
of podcast off with just a whatscene around twenty ten something change? Of
(18:47):
course, you'd been doing thirty yearsof work to come to that spot.
Didn't happen overnight. What was abasic paradigm or what caused that paradigm shift?
Around twenty ten a doctor told meabout neuroplasticity. My husband had an
event and he lost his memory andit ran into the emergency room and he
(19:08):
had something called transient global amnesia.It's a rare little blip when you do
exertion sometimes your brain just disengages,and he had no memory of what was
going on. And during the timehe's been examined, his brain rebooted.
And the doctor turned and said,this is neuroplasticity. The brain at any
age it can rewire itself. Andmy husband at the time was in his
(19:30):
late sixties. You know, he'sin his early seventies. So here he
was telling my husband could rewire hisbrain. And I'm thinking went home that
night. It was scary seeing myhusband, you know, detached in reality,
and he was taking care of alot of things in my life because
I was so incapacitated for my CRPS. So I thought, okay, this
is going to be the avenue forme. Neuroplasticity. And again I couldn't
(19:52):
google it because it didn't work ata computer. So I looked at a
Ted talk and some old stuffy scientistswas talking about it, you know,
how you could rechange your brain.And that's what I'll talk about in the
next section, how neuroplasticity won theday for me. So again, we
could talk for days almost on thisbecause I'm pretty darn excited. I mean,
(20:14):
this is a complish problem. We'redeeply in the medical world not getting
any answers, and here you are, since twenty ten, you know,
fourteen years later, doing just fine. And for those of you that can't
see her on the film, shelooks great. She looks normal, and
you know, it's hard to understandhow bad the sumparing was for so long.
So her book is called Unwinding Pain. You say it's going to be
published here shortly. Yeah, it'sactually being reviewed on Amazon before they'll post
(20:37):
it, so it'll be available forpre sale. The real launch date is
September five, and I want toalso again say that I have a great
voice actor who's recording it now,so it's going to be a really enjoyable
book to listen to. Great Andthen you have some of the resources you
do health coaching and how do weaccess your services Bonnielester dot com. And
(21:00):
I'm also affiliated with train Pain thathas an neuroplasticity app and true them I'm
out they're booking me also as paincoach. So okay, well, Bonnie,
thank you. The second podcast,we're going tall a lot about what
you're actually offering, what you doand why you think it works, and
so anyway, thank you very muchfor being on this portion of the podcast.
(21:22):
Well, thank you for chatting withme. It's been delightful. I'd
like to thank our guest Bonnie Listerfor being on the show today and for
sharing her personal journey through complex regionalpain syndrome and the insights she gained that
helped her to heal. I'm yourhost, Tom Masters, reminding you to
be back next week for another episodeof Back in Control Radio with doctor David
(21:45):
Hanscombe, and in the meantime,be sure to visit the website at www
dot back incontrol dot com. Thanksfor listening today and join us next week
for that can control reading. H
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