Unwinding Pain with Bonnie Lester

Unwinding Pain with Bonnie Lester. Episode 134
Chronic pain is not only debilitating, but also isolating. It can cause depression, feelings of hopelessness, and can be very difficult to treat. Often, doctors only try to manage the symptoms. But Bonnie Lester came up with a process to unwind the pain through neuroplasticity.
When you've experienced something, there's a there's a huge difference and I often hear from the clients I have my doctor doesn't know what it's like to live every day in pain If they'd only know and then when I meet doctors who have had bad backs or bad necks or some other challenge They are more empathetic And more understanding, that's for sure.
So what initially led to your issue with chronic pain?
Well, I was a 33 year old mom. I was newly remarried. I had a great relationship with my ex husband. We were co parenting, and my new husband was a great stepdad. I just purchased a house in California, driving home one night, a stop in traffic, and a drunk driver plowed into me and shook up my body.
And that my life changed in the blink of an eye. Yeah, I developed something called complex regional pain syndrome a few months later. That's a trauma to the nervous system. They at the time back in 1986, they had no idea of what to do with it. They did experiments on me, including surgery that spread the condition and the condition is agony and pain and burning and your skin texture changes.
You have temperature changes where my left hand, my dominant hand was icy cold. And even though it didn't feel cold to me, if anyone touched it, it would be icy cold. It would turn red and it swelled. And they did some surgery on me thinking they were going to cure the pain. And it spread that same condition throughout my body, um, all the way down to my left foot.
So what I had at that time was a wonderful doctor who looked at me and said, Bonnie, my mom has ALS and she has to have courage to live with it. And I'm telling you with complex regional pain syndrome, you're going to need the same type of courage. And that was the best thing he could tell me. You know, because that's what kept me going.
And it's only recently that the American Pain Association identified what pain is and it can have an emotional and psychological basis. Not that it's generating the pain, but it affects all parts of you that way. And when people say, Oh, it's all in your head, they get insulted that I'm making it up.
But actually, the brain is in the head part of the nervous system, your spinal column and your brain. So in a way, yes, it's in your head because the actual pain sensations are in your head. You're not imagining it. So I always tell people, your pain is real. And that's, that's what people say to me. I wish people would understand that it's real.
had things like old fashioned tricyclics, which are antidepressants, and that was for the nerve pain. And then I also had muscle relaxants. None of that touched the pain. But in 2006, they said, come on in, Bonnie, you're a good candidate for high levels of fentanyl. which you hear about nowadays, and Norco, and I was living on six different things like that.
And that's what I was living on, but it was prescribed, um, it was legal, and thank goodness I had great medical insurance because it's very, very expensive. And so I was on it for nine years. And that's why I say, look at me and say that I look alive because when people hear, you know, most people die, you know, after a year or two, it's a very dangerous medication to be used the way they wanted me to use it.
And so the way I understand it is, does it even really relieve your pain or do you just have Well, that's the ironic thing. Even when they, they kept upping the dose to see what would help the pain. It helped low back from, you know, I used to have, I did have back surgery years before I had my car accident.
And so I'd always get kind of spasms. They took care of those spasms quite nicely. but not the CRPS symptoms at all. And it came with a host of other horrendous side effects. Um, you know, hyperhidrosis, which is over sweating in the body. And of course, having to live on laxatives. And then always worried about getting the prescription refilled when holidays would come around and they couldn't give me, you know, refilled like two or three months in a row.
I had to go to the clinic every month. And then if I couldn't get it, then I'd start going into withdrawals because, gosh, you know, darn it, uh, Thanksgiving came and the clinic was closed for three days in a row and I was supposed to get my script three days, you know, before. So I was at the mercy of the medications, which really weren't helping me at all.
I've been off of all medications since 2015. I'm hearing many stories because the laws have changed and how doctors view prescribing that and they're all really suffering trying to, because they were, some people would do well on opiates. I have...