Ted's Story

After years of working with his hands, Ted woke one morning with unfamiliar pain. His lower arms hurt, a sensation that was later accompanied by numbness and sharp discomfort. “It was a searing pain, like someone stabbing me with a red-hot knife,” he says. “It never let up.”

Medical exams revealed that Ted suffered from several conditions that combined to produce chronic pain. In the years that followed, he received standard pain care and even a drug pump, but his symptoms were never really brought to heel. Sometimes the pain was so intense that he had to go to the hospital to get intravenous medications for relief.

Over time, the pain affected Ted’s outlook and demeanor. He went from being an active person who jogged and lifted weights to someone who couldn’t hold an electric toothbrush. He became miserable and depressed and mostly watched television all day. The stress of the ordeal changed his personality and put his marriage in jeopardy. “My dogs didn’t even like me,” he says. 

The pain was so bad that Ted and his wife moved to Arizona, hoping that the climate would improve his condition. The warmer weather seemed to help, but not enough for them to stay there being away from family and longtime friends. After moving back home, Ted saw a pain specialist who recommended he try neurostimulation. Ted thought the doctor’s explanation of the therapy seemed hard to believe. “I thought he was nuts,” Ted says. “It sounded like science fiction.”

Yet the desire to lower his pain, and therefore his need for pain medication, motivated Ted to try a temporary stimulator for a few days. The decision paid off at once. “It worked wonders,” he says of the device. “There was immediate relief.” Ted soon had a permanent stimulator implanted.

Now nearly two years later, Ted no longer uses pain medication and can  do many things that were beyond his reach before. He fishes, spends time with his dogs, and helps around the house; activities that he says are possible because of his neurostimulator. “Thank God it was made available. My wife says it gave her a husband back. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

*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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