Have you ever walked out of a specialist’s office without an answer for your pain? If you have, take heart. You’re not alone.

In this interview, I talk about how healthcare providers can mean when they discuss test results.

Summary:

“There’s nothing wrong with you” is good news. If you’re told this by a specialist even though you have pain, take heart. What this mean is your test results don’t show any serious, irreversible conditions. And that sure is good news.

If the tests don’t show a serious condition, gradual healing can be the next step. That’s the approach I use with my patients and with my own pain. When I learned I didn’t – thankfully – have a serious, immediate condition, I knew the answer to pain could come from diet and lifestyle.

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Transcription:

Dr. Heather Tick: Often when patients get told “there’s nothing with you” by the neurologist, the orthopedic surgeon, the physical medicine rehab doctor, they feel crestfallen. They feel like “ugh, I just got told there was nothing wrong with me.” But what they were really told is “there’s nothing that I as a neurologist could find in my area”, “nothing as an orthopedic surgeon that I need to operate on”, and “nothing as a neurosurgeon that I need to operate on”.

That’s really what the message is. So when they come back to my office after one of those very frustrating meetings, I translate the language for them. I say that this is actually good news. There’s nothing seriously wrong with your nerves that’s irreversible. There’s no serious lupus or rheumatoid arthritis that’s irreversible. When you have things that are irreversible, we have to figure out how to heal you.

I went through the same process when I was in pain as well. I would try and find out if people could come up with explanations for what I had. And when I learned there was nothing irreversible and awful, I knew I had to look at healing. That’s my approach to pain now.