What's Going On?!

Ok, I've been asked by a few people to do a blog to keep everybody updated about my surgery so here we are. I'll start by explaining what in the world is going on. As most of you know, I can't tell a story without being pretty wordy, so brace yourselves :)

This whole thing stems from the snakebite I got 4 years ago. I have continued to have neuropathic pain (burning, numbness, tingling, aching) in my entire right leg. Recap coming later for those of you who haven't heard the thrilling tale.

I am having a neurostimulator (spinal cord stimulator or SCS) permanently implanted. SCS does not "fix" anything (alas, I am not fixable) but essentially confuses the brain into thinking that pain signals do not feel like pain. The pain signals from my leg go up through the spinal cord and into the brain where the brain interprets the signals as being painful (bad). The electrodes in a stim system give off tiny pulses of electricity in your epidural space that the spinal cord can "feel" that confuse the pain signals as they go past. Once these scrambled signals get to the brain, all I feel in my leg is a soft buzzing or tapping feeling (good). For more information go to www.controlyourpain.com.

Surgery was supposed to be this morning (Monday 12/12) but got kicked back to this Wednesday at 4:00pm. I am having this done at Heartland Surgical Specialty Hospital. Under epidural anesthesia, Dr. B will do a laminotomy at a certain level in my thoracic spine.

  

Then, he'll place a lead with 16 electrodes in my epidural space. Lead pictured below.

I am having the Boston Scientific Precision Plus system implanted. A rep from Boston Scientific will be in the OR as well and they will interact with me to see where the lead needs to be in order to cover my areas of pain. The lead wires will then be tunneled under my skin to a point in my back just above my belt line. Here they will make another small incision and place the implantable pulse generator (IPG) under my skin and connect it all together. A remote control programmer lets me adjust all sorts of aspects of the system whenever I want. Nothing is external except for the remote. Pretty fancy.

I am really excited about the whole thing. I have been a patient at the NKCH Pain Management Clinic for a while trying different things with Dr. A to clear things up a bit. I have been working in the same clinic for a few years (I love my PM friends!) and finally decided to try things out for myself. We tried a few sympathetic nerve blocks and meds without too much success so we decided to pursue trying out a stimulator. A couple weeks ago I did a stim trial. Very basically, a more simple lead was placed via a special spinal needle and all of the rest of the components were left external.

I tried it out for 5 days. It turned out to be amazing. I had from zero pain to minimal pain all week. I think I had that thing on just about the whole dang time! At the end of my trial week they pulled the lead out and left me with nothing but a Band-Aid on my back. I was quite sad to see it go! For my rad friends, here is a pic of the lead placement. Paul did a fabulous job getting such a lovely image!

So now we come full circle to the fact that I am having this lovely little device implanted permanently. The ultimate goal here is to have less pain and therefore be able to be more active. Again, I am very excited to get this thing going. Unfortunately, I cannot work for 3-4 weeks after surgery so I will be having some serious down time. Leave me a bunch of comments so I can have some entertainment!

I'll keep everyone updated...

--Haley