Can't wait for March 4th

...the day the Spinal Cord Stimulator is due to be powered on. Going to have it put in on Monday. Don't know what has happened but the pain is at a whole new level. My left leg is pretty much numb...

Hoping for the best for you Doug!

Good luck! Sure hope it works out good for you.

Hope it works for you Doug.

Best wishes for success

Doug always posts things like this, but never follows up on responses.

Seriously Doug, embrace and enjoy the good wishes with a response. It is good for your soul to embrace the good vibes from people who care.

Godspeed .. Good thoughts man.

Ddaddy said:

Hoping for the best for you Doug!

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Ddaddy said:

Doug always posts things like this, but never follows up on responses.

Seriously Doug, embrace and enjoy the good wishes with a response. It is good for your soul to embrace the good vibes from people who care.

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You are right....I never follow up. I just put a note on my calendar to update it after the stimulator has been running for a week....
I apologize for being a buckethead....

...and Thank You...

Well....surgery went well. Sasha, the rep from Medtronics, the manufacture of the stimulator, was there. She said that as long as I'm heeled sufficiently she will be giving me my initial tune on the 4th. Doc told me to be patient when it comes to lowering the dosage of my meds. I told him I won't be able to get an Oxy script until the end of March. He told me that will be enough time to get the stimulator dialed in....

Very good Doug...you are on your way to a new future!

I got a whole 90 minutes sleep last night...which I understood as I was in a bit of a freak out mode. But here it is...12:15a.m. and I can't sleep....perhaps it is this damn girdle I need to wear? Fat guys and girdles don't go well together....

Major misunderstanding on my side of the fence....go Monday for a follow up, but the stimulator will not be powered up until the 16th. Damn it...

While your waiting for the 16th, duct tape(duck tape) a dog bark collar to your back. Then when you need some relief, shout real loud.
SHOUT, zap, OH, zap, CRAP, zap.
After a while you will be limp as a noodle.
Good luck.

hope this gives you some of the relief you are looking for.

This thing.... .....well...what a pain in the *** it has become. Fat guys and girdles are not a good match. Started out ok, but it seems to be losing its elasticity. It bunches up...and moves around a bit. And it is not big enough to cover both of the incisions. The lower one, where the stimulator/battery is located....well...it is bleeding a bit. And has become VERY lumpy. Enough so that we called the on call doc yesterday. She had us send her some images. Said the incision looks fine. A bit of leaking, according to her, is normal. As to the lumpiness...again normal. Have quite a bit of bruising as well. See the doc tomorrow for a follow up, really hoping that it will be the end of the girdle. 2 more weeks and it will be activated...can't wait....

Well...in about 4 hours the Spinal Cord Stimulator will be powered up & tuned....hopefully. All depends on the doc feels about how the incisions, in particular the one over the device itself, looks. My wife thinks they have heeled nicely. I am hopeful that it gets powered up...I want to start at least walking some. The stimulator not being powered up is not stopping me, the pain is. Lucky if I can make it form the front door to the gate, which is about 200' without some serious pain setting in. Getting in a vehicle is more than a bit painful. If I am driving I need to grab my pants leg and help swing my left leg in. If I am the passenger...glad the Explorer has running boards...I put my left foot in, grab the handle over the door and get my fat arse on the seat, I then put my right foot on the board and push myself in. Normally I can not reach the door....so if we are leaving the house I just have Ernie start driving until the door moves close enough for me to grab it.

The blend door went bad on the Explorer. Have no heat, not good with my wife having some health issues. Felt so effing worthless as I was sitting in my friends garage while he swapped it out for me. One the verge of tears just typing this. Just grateful to have a friend like Skip. He has put up with me more or less telling him to go f.ck off for more than once...simply because I was not in a very good frame of mind and did not want to hear anything that I did not agree with.

Chronic pain, and the depression that rides its coat tails can really suck the life out of you.

Seen my doc the other day to get a refill on one of the meds I am hoping to get off. He asked me when the stimulator was being activated....and when I will be seeing him for my next Oxycontin/Oxycodone refill. He is planning, if the stimulator tune is correct, on starting the reduction of narcotics. I feel like I am about ready to explode from the excitement of it...yet at the same time I TERRIFIED. I just hope that, if I can get off of the narcotics, that the guy who comes out the other side of this is not that evil monster that I once was. I say I have only been on Opioids for a decade...truth of the matter I started taking them back in 2003 or so...just not for pain. I was taking them to sedate myself in order to avoid hurting anyone at the Post Office. I used to chug a 6 pack of Corona before going to work every day, the buzz normally lasted long enough for me to make it thru the bulk of work. But I had a sit down with a boss that....well...really cared for me. Enough so that if I were not such an asshole when she started with the PO she very well may have been my wife. This young lady told me that she had more than one complaint of me smelling like beer...and that if she could she would have been sending me down to Urgent Care for a piss test. My wife was already injured and had a script for Hydrocodone...which she did not take because they made her puke. So I started taking her script...and convinced my doc to give me a script for the same strength to help with my aches and pains. Took 16-18 of them when I was at work. Also took 6mg of Xanax at work....and if any of my "buddies" could spare any of their Perocets I would down a few of them as well. How my liver survived all that Acetaminophen I will never know.

My doc is a bit concerned as well. He knows that I don't do real well on anti-depressants and mood stabilizers...but said he has a plan of sorts that he will resort to if it is needed down the road.

So....here it is....the day I have been waiting for since I had a successful Spinal Cord Stimulator trial. The day that the permanent one gets powered up and tuned....and I am 100% terrified.

I just saw my shrink on Thursday. We often talk about the line between dependency and addiction. I told him how I felt about not my brain not caring about the line between the two when the drugs start going away...and he agreed, to a point that once the drugs start going away there will no longer be a line...beginning to wonder if I should perhaps find an NA group to attend.....

<~~~~Hopin' for the best for you.

Well....right out of the gate had a small problem. Normally they don't wait for 3 weeks to activate it...so the battery had very little juice in it. Just enough for her to get some "tuning" done. Thanks to the "virus" docs office is closing on the 18th, for at least 3 weeks. So I got a bit of a different setup than normal.
I have 3 separate general tunes. Each tune has 4 options under it. Sasha explained to me how to tweak each individual tune. Have to go a full week on Program A, then a week on B and a week on C. When the docs office reopens they will get me in to see if it needs some tweaking.
They took at least a dozen images yesterday, verifying that the leads had not moved, which they did not. I asked about what to do about starting to reduce my meds. They told me to base my decision on how I am feeling, pain wise. Sasha, the Medtronics rep, suggested that I wait until my first follow up...unless no matter where the device is set I am getting relief from it.
Woke up this morning, noticeable less pain than when I went to bed. Took a walk...and well...that changed quickly. Sasha did tell me that I need to wait a couple of days before worrying about pain relief.
When she was tuning she told me that I am very sensitive to changes made with the settings, that normally folks like me do very well with the device. Was watching her make adjustments, it was a simple slider on a tablet. Most of the time all it took was a 1% increase on the slider and I went from not feeling a thing to asking her what she hated me so much. I was sitting on the table as she was making adjustments...pretty sure I embarrassed her just a bit.....started laughing...she asked why....I told her my balls were tingling.....

"I was sitting on the table as she was making adjustments...pretty sure I embarrassed her just a bit.....started laughing...she asked why....I told her my balls were tingling....."

OK ! .. that's the perfect setting, leave it right there.. Good luck man.

44070dart said:

"I was sitting on the table as she was making adjustments...pretty sure I embarrassed her just a bit.....started laughing...she asked why....I told her my balls were tingling....."

OK ! .. that's the perfect setting, leave it right there.. Good luck man.

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My ribs are killing me...I have not laughed this hard in a while....Thanks....

This may fall under the category of to much information but.....just as I start to pee I get this very odd tingling sensation in the right side of my rather girthy, aka FAT, gut. It goes away after a second or two...

I just learned a ton about the Spinal Cord Stimulator....and why I have 3 programs in it. But seems like there is 0 interest in this....perhaps this simply confirms how many folks are truly concerned with my well being...so...will not be wasting my time explaining this. Damn shame...I was really hoping that the shitty, effed up experience I am going thru with my pain..and trying something different to manage it....well...I may have been able to pass on some helpful knowledge but guess not...It is what it is....

And here I was looking forward to you finding the suitable advance curve and initial timing.

I have been following your progress on this, just not posted otherwise. I think you should continue letting us know how your progress is going