Louis Zantema
20 April 2020
Louis is a GZ-Psychologist with a great passion for gaming. For him, a game training that offers therapy is the most valuable thing you can develop: especially for pain complaints, which are on the interesting intersection of body and mind. His aim is to make himself dispensable as a therapist.
This blog post is a series from Akkie. The serie consists of 6 blogs and will be published in the next two weeks.
Becoming my own therapist
My pain history started in 2001. I got shooting pains in my right buttock when I got on the tennis court. Later on I had radiating pain in my leg. This was the beginning of a search for cause and treatment that would take years. I was sent from one therapist to another specialist. And everyone had to say something about it. One of them gave me hope for a good result. Others asked me if my marriage was good. Or that I came to get a benefit without asking if I was still working at all. WHAT a hurtful remark to make! 'You just have to think about nice things' some doctors said with arrogant eyes. Anyway, if I don't know what's going on with my body...my heart screamed! And the doctors didn't tell me why I had to think about fun things.
Seeing all the doctors to be found
In good spirits I started a new process every time, but time after time a disappointing result followed. Twice I was operated on for stenosis, a narrowing in the spine. The second time the doctor promised me: this MUST be it. And again I started to work on my recovery in a very motivated way. That went well for a number of weeks, but even now I soon had a relapse and the "old pain" came back and I immediately thought that something was wrong in my back again. Unfortunately there was no attention at all to how chronic pain arises and how you can learn to deal with it. With the knowledge I have now, I had known that my brain and dealing with the pain play a major role in experiencing pain. But I didn't get any guidance on how to deal with pain and the disappointments I had had to endure for years. I'm sure if I'd known about pain as I know it now, I wouldn't have sunk that deep in a long time. The orthopedist who had operated on me twice approached my pain only physically. I had to have my blood vessels tested, my bladder, my uterus and after a few years of testing he noticed a rare abnormality in my SI joints but didn't know what to do about it. All the uncertainty drove me crazy and I only got more pain....
Part 2 of Akkie's story will be published Wednesday September eleventh