William Phipps, Hickman, KY

My Life Before Coming To The Incurable Pain Center.....
  I have been a diabetic for 20 years.  13 years ago I woke up with a severe headache, and every day thereafter it grew worse. I saw our family doctor, and then a neurosurgeon, and went to the finest hospital in Tennessee.  After all their tests, everything came out clean.  They could find nothing wrong with me, and said, according to the tests, there was no reason for the headaches.  I have been a hard worker all my life.  The headaches changed my life entirely.  Before I started treatments at the Incurable Pain Center, I slept in a chair, unable to sleep in bed.  When I did get to sleep around 3 AM, it was  just for a short time.  I was also depressed and overweight.  My whole life revolved around the pain.

My Life After Treatment At The Incurable Pain Center.....
After my very first session at the Incurable Pain Center, I woke up the next day without a headache, the first time that had happened in 13 years.  I can go out and eat dinner with my wife, do my woodcarvings during the day, and enjoy my life again.  I sleep soundly throughout the entire night. I have lost 20 pounds.  I have my life back now.

Teresa Waldrop, Brownsville, TN: Pelvic Pain/Adhesions

My Life Before Coming To The Incurable Pain Center.....
I had been having pain for several years, endometriosis, which caused problems, and I had to have several surgeries, and they did a total abdominal hysterectomy.  And even after that I had to have surgery a few times for adhesions.   It had gotten to the point where they really couldn't do surgery anymore because the surgery causes the adhesions.  Anyway, it was a vicious circle, and I had just gotten to a point where I didn't know where to turn.  A family member had seen an interview of Dr. Parker on the news, and we thought that we would give it a try since we had tried so many other things, including acupuncture and different pain medications, and things like that.  My life before coming to the Center was hard, real hard.  I see how desperate I was then, and how good life is now.  I can remember going to bed at night and praying that if I didn't wake up that it would be okay.

I would go to bed and sleep maybe 15 minutes, sometimes I might could actually sleep for 30 minutes, if I was lucky an hour, and then I was up for several hours because of the pain, and just couldn't sleep.  I couldn't lay down very long at a time, I couldn't sit very long at a time, I couldn't stand very long at a time, so I was constantly having to switch around.  My constant pain affected my husband too.  It was really hard on him, as it was on everyone who loves me.  With him it was so hard because he wanted his wife.  He would come home on his days off, and I wasn't a productive wife.  He was having to come in from work, and not only was he having to see me hurt, he had to do the things around the home that I normally do.  I can remember him telling me one time, whenever I would cry out because I was hurting, he would just hold me and say "I know, and I can't fix it." He felt like he should fix this for me, and he couldn't, so emotionally it had a real strong impact on him also, but he stood by me, he was my champion, and always there for me.

My pain affected my children too. That's what bothers me more than anything. They would make comments about me not being able to do the fun things with them anymore.  Not being able to get in the back yard and play ball with them, and not being able to help them with their school assignments, or attend some of their functions at school, and things like that.  It was hard real on them to see a mother who was feeling bad, a mother who was hurting.   I was always hurting.  I didn't know what it felt like not to hurt.  It had just gotten to the point to where I would hurt all of the time.  I would take the pain pills, and the pain pills might take the edge off from time to time, but they didn't get rid of the pain, and by the time it got to the point where it took the edge off, then I was pretty much in a zombie state, so that wasn't life anymore.  I couldn't stand up straight.  I couldn't get out of a chair, or I would have to be real easy, and I would have to hold myself up, and things like that.   My husband described it as almost a limp.  Whenever I walked, I bent over, and kind of limped.  I felt so sad because I had had six operations to get rid of the pain within a period of less than four years.  I really had no life.

My Life After Treatment At The Incurable Pain Center.....
On February the 23rd, 2001, my life began.  I get tears in my eyes thinking about it.  That was my first session with Dr. Parker.  I walked in his office, and I had taken a pain pill a couple of hours before I had got there, and so by the time I was getting there, I was hurting pretty bad.  I walked in.  I was doubled over, and was hurting from the pain.  I cried most of the way.  Most of the way up there I cried from the pain.  The first session was great.  I was wonderful.  I went into the session, and I was of course skeptical thinking that this might not work, or what if he can't really hypnotize me.  I went in extremely skeptical, but the first session was serenity. My pain was gone immediately.  It was miraculous.  Since February 23, I have been sleeping like a log, something I had not done since the pain began almost four years ago.  I have family members, my mother, my sister, call and they say "So you're still not hurting?" and I am like "No, I'm not."  It is amazing.  It is nothing less than a miracle.  I still walk standing up straight.  That first visit that I had with Dr. Parker, I said I walked in doubled over, and we all got to the door and were shaking hands and doing the meeting thing, and tears came to my eyes because I realized I was standing up straight, and I've been pretty much standing up straight since.  This made me feel pretty again.  It is truly miraculous.

  My husband is thrilled with my recovery, absolutely thrilled.   Life for him is so much better too, because he comes in on his days off and I am feeling good, and I am laughing and I am in a good mood, and we're going places and doing things.  We went out for the first time in I can't remember when.  It had been a long time since we had been able to go out and have a good time without me having to come home early because I was hurting, or something like that.  I'm doing everything with my children now!  Everything.  I am actually enjoying helping them with their homework.  I didn't realize how much I had taken for granted what it was like just to feel good.  So I help the children with their homework, and my son has started ball practice, and we're doing the ball practice, and we're playing in the back yard, and we're just going and doing.  I've just got one foot on the road all of the time.  It's nice.

  My friends just can't believe it.  They can not believe it.  I had one girl tell me "It's like you're better than ever.  So it's wonderful.  Life is grand, and I cherish it now.  I realize the little things, the  little things that I didn't notice before.  I am in a chat room with other people who suffer from the pain of adhesions.  Now that my pain is gone, I really hate to hear about them hurting so bad.  They are hurting, and they're writing in, and I can tell their desperation, and I know where they are because I've been there.  I feel like I need to stand on a mountain top and scream to everyone that there is help.  There is, there is help.  I just wish that everyone would give it a try.    I know that everyone is different, but it worked for me, because I had exhausted every other thing.

   I have my life back now.  I am going to go back to school.  It is something that I have been wanting to do for a long time.  I had gone to a community college close to where I am from, and completed one semester and tried to go two more semesters, but I had to drop out.  I couldn't carry the backpack, I couldn't walk from class to class.  Because I suffered so long, and am now healthy, I want to be a nurse and really give patients the love and caring they deserve.  On May 29, 2001, I was accepted into nursing school. I am on my way. 

   Anyone in pain who would like to talk to me can get my e-mail address through the Center.  I almost feel guilty that I am pain free when I know so many who are not.  I will be happy to share with anyone.

Ruth Gwin. Union City, TN

My Life Before Coming To The Incurable Pain Center.....
When I was 18 years old I woke up one day with bad pain in my muscles, with fatigue, and a stiffness in my joints.  The pain was excruciating.  For the next five years I went from doctor to doctor trying to find out what was wrong with me.  I felt humiliated and ashamed during this time because I was accused of being a pain pill seeker, and needed a psychiatrist because nothing was wrong with me physically.  Finally a kind doctor diagnosed me as having fibromylagia, an incurable disease.  He said the good news is it won't kill you, but in 10 years you'll wish it had because the pain will be so bad.  Later I found out he was right.

I spent the next 18 years trying to find a cure.  In the meantime the pain was in my lower back and the muscles in my legs.  It seemed like it happened overnight.  It spread to my spine, neck, shoulders, arms, chest, and sometimes to my face.  When it got to the back muscles of my neck, my neck tightened up and caused me to have migraines.  They were so excruciating that I'd be sick to my stomach, and have such severe pain that I would have to lay down for two or three days before they got better. 

My day to day life was a nightmare.  The worst part was trying to get up in the morning, after I'd been up and down all night in pain. I would sit up in pain, sleep a couple of hours, then spring back up in pain, put a warm cloth to my forehead, and lay on the couch hurting, day after day for 23 years!  Some days I could not get out of bed at all because of my joints locking up.  It was just humiliating.  I was not able to keep a job. I lost my ability to do fun things.  I used to play basketball with my kids, I couldn't do that.  I used to go bowling, I couldn't do that.  I used to go dancing with my husband, dancing the slow ones because the pain was so severe.

During the last six years I have been put on muscle relaxers, pain pills, and sleeping pills.  I was lucky enough to meet a kind and caring doctor in Paducah who has been the most supportive of all I have seen.  In all fairness, I realize that fibromyalgia is an incurable disease, and I do not blame anyone for not finding a cure that does not exist in normal medical treatments.

 My Life After Treatment At The Incurable Pain Center.....
By chance I happened to see a television news story about the director of the Incurable Pain Center, a man whose work appears also in the newspapers and on radio.  I learned that he was also featured on Oprah.  I contacted the Center immediately, and my life changed almost immediately after starting treatments there.  It seems like the pain is leaving me in the reverse order in which it came.  The pain in the knee joints seemed to go first.  Then it left from my back, shoulders, arms, and chest.  There is still pain in my hips.  I was taught self-hypnosis at the Center.  When the migraines come that would normally knock me out for days, I hypnotize myself, knock them out, and am back on my feet after one or two hours of rest! 

After my first session, I slept through the whole night like a baby, for the first time in 23 years!  I have slept every night since then, which is for about two months up to now.  I can also sleep during the day, for my body seems to crave sleep, to be starving for what is was deprived of for so many years.  Getting the rest I need has made me look and feel like a different person.  My friends are trying to figure out what on earth I have been doing lately.  They barely recognize me.  When we stood around my husband's coffin at the wake last year, my friends told me that he looked better than I did.  Now they can't believe the active, energetic, smiling, and positive Ruth I have become.  Everything in my life is different.  I have my life back now. 

Since suffering has been a way of life for me, if there is anything I can do to comfort someone suffering now, please feel free to contact me through the Center: (731) 587-9008, day or night.