Weshon’s Story*

Surprise followed by excitement—that’s a common response from chronic pain patients who try spinal cord stimulation for the first time. Weshon Hornsby is one of them.

For most of his life, Weshon was fascinated by electrical systems, and when he became an adult he pursued a career as an electrician. One day, while using a trenching machine on a worksite, the machine jerked and injured his back. After months of pain, he had one back surgery and then another. Neither surgery fixed his pain, which spread from his back to his buttocks and legs.

“It affected everything,” he says of his pain. “I wasn’t outgoing anymore. I couldn’t run a recording studio that I have as a business. Last summer, I went with my family to an amusement park. I took the kids to have fun, but I couldn’t even get on the kiddie rides. Just walking around was extremely painful.”

After seeing a number of doctors, a referral led Weshon to a doctor who specialized in pain medicine. The doctor examined Weshon and suggested he try spinal cord stimulation, an established but lesser-known treatment that involves using a pacemaker-like device to stimulate spinal nerves to ease pain.

Weshon tried a temporary spinal cord stimulator at home and found that the therapy worked much better than he thought it would. “It was fabulous. I went home and all the things that used to aggravate my back, like sitting, didn’t hurt anymore. I was able to sleep through the night for the first time in a year. I was shocked at how well it worked.”

Now implanted with a permanent stimulator, Weshon is more active and able to spend quality time with his family. He’s planning on driving his wife and children across America on their next vacation, something he says he couldn’t have fathomed before getting his stimulator. “This is a very beautiful, very scenic country,” he says. “Driving across it is something everyone should experience.”

*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.