I am patient #21 in Dr. Yee Wing Tong’s paper.

After 2 previous suicide attempts, I was seriously planning a third after another afternoon of writhing on the floor in pain, when I came upon an article regarding Dr. Tong’s treatments.

For the first time in over 26 years, I felt hope that there might be an answer to the constant nagging, exhausting, and often debilitating pain which which I was forced to live.

The pain began in August 1965 from an injury that occurred during my 4th pregnancy. It was excruciating. I worked with a respected orthopedic surgeon in our area trying physical therapy, drug therapy, traction, a shoe lit, anything we could think of to avoid surgery. But in 1970 I had a L4-5 laminectomy and fusion and spent 3 months immobilized in bed in a full body cast and then 6 months in a walking body cast. I stopped dragging my right foot after surgery. The pain did not stop.

Over the next 21 years, after my surgeon told me that he thought the pain which which I continued to have was only in my head, I didn’t quit looking for help. I sought treatment in many different ways with various doctors:

• A neurologist
• John Hopkins Pain Clinic – one month
• Additional surgery
• Drugs – years
• Acupuncture – years
• Chiropractor – years

To name a few. Nothing that I tried worked in drastically reducing the pain until my first visit with Dr. Tong. I felt an immediate difference in the pain that had totally engulfed the right side of my body – head to toe – for half of my life! I left that office with my heart soaring with hope!