Pain Management Practice

I went to a Pain Management practice yesterday. I am going to try Spinal Cord Stimulation on top of my Oral Stimulation (Lyrica and Amitriptyline).

Does anybody have experience with this?

May 2024: the Spinal Cord Stimulation trial (7 days) is almost over. Very interesting but not very helpful. Abbott is the maker of the one I tried. In my case I keep having sensations in areas where they said it shouldn’t happen. My complication is that I had a thalamic stroke 11 years ago that has messed up my “wiring”. My first neurologist said I was a sensory mess - I am convinced that event started my erythromelagia. Regardless I can’t see where the Spinal Cord Stimulation would be beneficial.

May 2024: it is obvious I don’t know how to use the posting in this. I never get responses.

Feb 2024:
Sorry for the mistake in my first post - should have been Oral Protocol and not Stimulation.

Hey Charles,
My name is Merl, I’m a member of the Modsupport Team here on Ben’s Friends.
Personally, I’ve never heard of spinal stimulation being used for EM. My situation is neurological, I have a low grade tumour, causing a blockage and putting pressure on the hypothalamus. I’ve required a few neurosurgeries in which they passed through the hypothalamus and my body temperature is all over the place.

I get some awful, wicked headaches and after one surgery the medicos decided these were muscle tension related and they wired me up with a TENS machine, seemingly, to decrease said tension. But it didn’t work for me. For me, I think, if my issues had been muscle tension related, it may have been of benefit, but it wasn’t my ‘key’.

Having an underlaying medical condition, in your case a stroke (in my case the tumour), it complicates the diagnosis. For some people a diagnosis can be fairly clean cut, what I’ve Often called the A+B=C theory. Symptom (A) + Symptom (B) = Diagnosis (C), nice and simple. But my situation is far from simple. For me it’s more like A+B-C/DxE√F… and everyone of them is variable and they all influence each other. Trying to balance it all is like trying to juggle bowling balls, you just know your going to get smacked in the mouth by one of them.

I went through a process of elimination. If a dr suggested it, I trialled it. From a myriad of medications (heart meds, epilepsy meds, pain meds, psych meds etc) to relaxation to hydrotherapy to acupuncture to manipulative physio to TENS machine etc, etc, etc the list goes on. Some people are fortunate enough to find their key or what works for them. I trialled them all, but none of them were my key and even many years on from my last neurosurgery I still haven’t found my key. All I can do is manage for today.

Merl from the Modsupport Team

Thanks for your feedback! My one week trial ended today and I got the leads out. My feet are terrible today and I am doing the customary circumspection - did I not know how good it was until I had it out?

Again thanks for your feedback.

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