Day 5

This spinal cord stimulator trial has been one of the best things I have ever done for my pain.  Tomorrow is going to be very bitter sweet for me.  It is gonna be bitter because it has given me so much pain relief in such a short amount of time and I know I am going to have to wait a while before it will be possible to get my permanent spinal cord stimulator implanted.  However, the sweet side is there as well because I can finally shower again after a week of “baby wipe” sponge baths and I can get all this tegaderm removed from my back which should ease the overwhelming itching that started on Saturday or Sunday!

I also still have the occipital nerve stimulator trial and permanent implant to look ahead to.  I feel that the occipital nerve stimulator trial has the biggest chance of my insurance company denying the procedure.  Usually, once insurance approves the trial, they approve the permanent implant, although there have been times where people have been approved for the trial, have a successful trial, and then are denied by insurance for the permanent implant.

I have been lucky so far, even though insurance took 6-7 weeks to approve the procedure, they did approve it.  It has been an overwhelming success.  In a normal day, I would take breakthrough pain medication 3 times a day.  The day of the trial implant, I was taking pain medications on schedule and probably more than I was before surgery.  However, Day 1 I was back to my normal doses of pain medications.

We unfortunately got hit by a snow storm Monday (Day 3), starting in the morning which made it dangerous to be on the roads for a 12:30p.  Both the Boston Scientific Rep and myself agreed it would be better to rescheduled for the next day.  I was especially glad about that since whenever it rains or snows my pain skyrockets.  However, my pain wasn’t nearly as bad as normal.  I still only took 2 doses of pain medications.  My Dr’s office was able to arrange for us to have a room in the same office suite at 9am the next morning (Day 4) to do my reprogramming as the other dr that uses that office space isn’t in that early on Tuesdays.  During the reprogramming she was able to get my right leg a stronger sensation as the stimulation to my right leg had decreased significantly.  She wasn’t able to tweak the program enough though to get the stimulation out of my side, but I can deal with that for until tomorrow.  My pain for Day 4 allowed me to even take only 1 dose of pain medication before bed.  Last night we had another snow storm and once again I still only needed 2 doses of my pain medication.

While the rep was reprogramming my stimulator, I got to see the relative relationship of my leads to each other.  One was very high with the next highest at least an inch below it and the last one a half in below the middle one.  My rep said this is usually seen when a dr has a hard time getting the leads into the epidural space and into the correct position.  We knew from when my dr talked to my mom post-op, that he had some difficulty, but I would have coverage where i needed it, which I do.  Therefore both the rep that was at my trial insertion and my main rep, who I email with and did my reprogram yesterday, have recommended paddle leads instead of percuteaneous leads for my permanent surgery.  Having paddles put in unfortunately means having a laminectomy which makes it a larger and more painful surgery, but they say its more durable and less chance of the leads migrating/shifting.