Daniel's Story*

Imagine being hampered not only by pain but also by the medication you needed to cope with it. That was the reality for Daniel before getting his stimulator. “I was drugged up most of the time,” he says. “When I was on the drugs, I didn’t care about a lot of things. Sometimes my wife couldn’t get me out of bed.”

A struggle with chronic pain was hardly what Daniel expected to have to handle. As a foreign service officer, he had worked in many intriguing places, including the U.S. Consulate in Mexico, and he looked forward to future assignments. Instead, Daniel was forced into early retirement by a chronic pain disorder that followed a series of surgeries.

“The worst pain was a burning sensation in my leg and hips,” he says. “If I didn’t take drugs, I was in excruciating pain.” Daniel recalls that simple things, like sitting and walking, were hard for him to do and that he couldn’t even visit with his friends. “I’d fall asleep because I was on so many drugs,” he says. He found himself depressed and sometimes thought of taking his own life.

When he finally tried neurostimulation, Daniel was on so much medication that he could hardly tell if it worked or not. But gradually he noticed that his pain was not as intense as before, especially when he moved around. He soon had a permanent neurostimulator implanted and eventually felt so much relief that he drastically cut his use medication and began to exercise and join his friends on outings.

“That’s something I never thought I’d never be able to do again,” he says. “I know that it [stimulation] isn’t for everyone, but there are a lot of things besides drugs that can help you. My life has been changed completely.”

*The above testimonial is the experience of this individual only. It is an individual result and we do not claim that it is representative of the experience that all or most patients achieve and is not indicative of future performance or success.

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