Now We Have a Plan

"I’ve never met anyone like you before. I never would have imagined someone could relax while being active."

But, he doesn’t understand me. I know he’s not right for me and I’m not going to take it anymore! How should I break up with him? 

We still have our next ‘date’ set up, but I won’t be going to it and will be letting him know about it soon. I still believe in biofeedback (BFB), but I know Mr BFB is not the right guy for me; especially after our last session.

I like to take things to the extremes. You know, like real life scenarios. So when Mr BFB said that I probably warmed better with my eyes open because I was a visual person, it opened up a whole new world of experimenting for me. This past week I tried warming while doing some activities I find relaxing. I’m sorry, I don’t find listening to soft music with my eyes closed very relaxing. This allows my mind to wander to all ends of the earth. No, not very relaxing at all for me.

I like to relax by thinking. Not the everyday intensive work problems thinking, but figuring out little things. Dorky me found I could warm very quickly by keeping busy with things like playing little games, reviewing notes, updating/coding spreadsheets, talking to Fido and reading different blogs to name a few things. I practiced the other good BFB habit things while keeping busy like not crossing my legs, having good posture, not crouching my shoulders and breathing with my belly while making sure my thermometer hand was always in the right position too. I stay as relaxed as I could while staying busy doing things I enjoy doing.

I told Mr BFB that I watched the finger thermometer shoot up very fast. I couldn’t believe how suddenly it increased. This was when he said that he never met anyone like me and never would have imagined that keeping busy would have warmed anyone. He rolled his eyes and made a comment about how he could never find it relaxing to code an excel spreadsheet. What can I say; that’s me!

I’m still trying to sort out many things that transpired during this visit. I was getting annoyed that he didn’t seem like he was going to do any BFB again during this session. So, I brought in a little competition. I mentioned that when I received the call from the Headache Center and Dr Psych recommended BFB that he mentioned how he performs his first BFB sessions with his patients. That he does mini tests in five different areas of BFB and then will work on the areas they feel need the most work.

Mr BFB immediately sat up and became interested plus gave himself away as not listening to different things I had been talking about. I know I’m boring, but he’s supposed to be a trained listener. He kind of lost his composure a little and probably needs to practice his own BFB a little more. 

He started drilling into me; what five areas? What five BFB areas did he do during your first session with him? Can you remember the five areas you did with him? After regaining his poise back while finally listening to how I was answering his questions, he started to ask if they ever mentioned the five areas that they test. Well how the heck would I know? I came in there telling him I didn’t even know how to spell BFB! 

I think he had a cheat sheet or something on his clipboard as he became all proud of himself for figuring out what he thinks the five areas of BFB my Headache Center covers when they do BFB with their Migraine patients. Then he told me that NOW WE HAVE A PLAN. Now we have a course of action. He would always talk about these other things we would try since the first week I was there, but he never brought anything out. And now he’s going to copy what he thinks another place does for their Migraine patients when he already ‘cures’ most of his Migraines patients?

There’s still more…

He kept talking about how BFB will train us to open up the vagus vein (that’s what he kept calling it) which would allow the blood to flow to the extremities like to the fingers and feet and away from the Migraine. Many of his patients never have another Migraine after they learn this again. Most of his patients are ‘cured’.

I couldn’t let the ‘cure’ word go. He actually hadn’t used that word during any sessions and only used it when we talked on the phone to setup BFB. During this session, he used the ‘cure’ word and the other ‘c’ word a few times! 

I said Migraine is a genetic neurologic disease and I believe that stress is an exasperating factor where it may exasperate some of the other triggers we have, but it will not trigger a Migraine on its own. 

He immediately started repeating his spiel about the vagus vain (you had to see what he kept demonstrating with his fingers next to his neck every time he talked about this) and then started throwing in a few ‘causing’ a Migraine. Of course when I started talking about no ‘cure’ and genetics being the ‘cause’ he would throw it out even more. Well, that conversation was not going to go anywhere quickly either.

Yes, still more to come…

He asked how my stress levels have been in the last two weeks. I told him stress has been nothing out of the ordinary except that my oldest son was diagnosed with a chronic pain condition. (I’ve never mentioned to him that my youngest son has Migraines too.) His response was to basically start going over his own chronic pain conditions - on my dime. Then, I think he caught himself again and gave me helpful hints on what my son can do to take care of himself. My son has an excellent doctor who gave him very good advice on what he needs to do.

One more thing!

He would like me to come into his office with a full blown Migraine all of the time. I think this is so he can show me that he can ‘cure’ me. It really set him off when he found out I had a six earlier in the day and was only around a three while I was there. He also doesn’t like my numbers in my BFB journal since many of his other patients have 8s, 9s and even some 10s. He feels my numbers don’t reflect the same numbers that are in my Migraine journal which I ended up showing him too. He ended up accusing me of underrating the intensity numbers I keep in both of my journals. I admit I don’t know how to put my pain to a number scale, but I believe I am consistent for me and think that is the most important thing to do. 

So you see my last session with Mr BFB was a very odd session. I will not go back to him. Just thinking about him brings on more stress than BFB is supposed to relieve. This whole thing sounds kind of counterproductive.

I do want to learn more about BFB and I am very disappointed in all of the techniques I didn’t learn. It was so hard to find him and I actually found him through two different sources. I also had problems with other people in the field not calling me back, but I am better off without than with him.

Have you had any interesting sessions you’d like to share? I almost feel alone in my experiences but then also wonder if I may have instigated some of it too…