Nervous...scared...anxious...

enigma57 said
All the best to you, Doug! Hope the new unit will give you relief from your pain. When this trial study is completed, will you be able to choose whichever unit gave you more relief and begin using it?

Best regards,

Harry

The second device, the one that will be turned on today, is still in the clinical trial phase. If the FDA does approve the device it will be a few years before it is available.

Dartnut said
You are in my thoughts and prayers, Doug.
I sure hope you come up with a happy medium between the stim and meds to control your ongoing pain issues.
Over the years I have read your posts about your pain issues, and feel you deserve a good outcome finally.
Please don't feel that ''the opioid crisis'' includes people like yourself who need the pain management to deal with day to day activities just to be functional.
The ''opioid crisis'' to me is for targeting people who take them for ''kicks'' and does not apply to you..........at all.
Many people don't understand the full extent of what persons like yourself are going through just to move around and have a semblance of normal life without the aid of medications.

Personally, I too have issues with back pain and knee pain and it can be frustrating at times, but with anti inflammatories and rest as well as pacing myself, I have managed my issues to a point where I am functional.

Please keep on posting your results, as well as the trials and tribulations you face, there are a lot of people here that may be living in silence for fear of embarrassment for needing and taking the pain management that they need just to cope with life in general.

Thank you for your perseverance, you are helping more people than you realize!

You are correct about the "opioid crisis"...it is indeed more about the folks that use Opioids more for recreational use. Wish I had kept it but a friend had sent me a report that he requested from one of the government agencies under the "Freedom of Information Act". It was several hundreds of pages about the real crisis. The "street" Oxycodone. The stuff that the cartels are pushing, the stuff mixed with Fentanyl, Ketamine....there was several other drugs mentioned in the report, one of them was some sort of rhino tranquilizer.
I have had more than one conversation with my shrink about how I am feeling, how I really feel that the line between dependency & addiction is not so clear cut for me anymore. The last day I had the stimulator on, the one that will be implanted, I felt more alive than I have in years. I am hoping that with some patience...and the help of Sasha, the Medtronic Rep, Dr. Hatheway, my shrink and my primary care doc, my wife....and you folks tolerating my upcoming rants....that I will be able to get off of the narcotics. I know that this stimulator is nothing more than pain control. I also know that, just like every other human being on the planet, that my back is going to continue to get worse, degenerative disc disease is simply something that happens from the aging process. What I am hoping for is to be able to get off of the narcotics, even if it is just long enough to go thru the pain pump trial. The pump, if I understand it right, injects meds right into where the pain is origination from. Instead of taking oral meds, which effect the pain receptors in your brain the pump uses the receptors in your spine. The amount of meds used is a very small percentage compared to what is used when the meds are taken orally. From what I was told I will not experience the fog I am now from the oral meds.