Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Surgery #2... spinal cord surgery

I had my spinal cord surgery this past Wednesday and everything went well.


This is going to be the biggest surgery that I have had in the past 10 years. This will be the make it or break it surgery with my pain control. If it works, meaning I am atleast 50% pain free than it will be considered a success. And the Dr. and I will discuss having this surgery done permantly.

The easiest way I can explain this surgery is that the Dr is going to insert 2-6 tiny leads into my spinal cord, and those leads will act like nerves sending pulses to my brain. So, instead of my brain recieving signals that I am in pain it will recieve tingling signals, and I should feel none to very little pain. If my pain starts getting worse, I will have a remote with me at all times that I can use to turn up or down the tingling viberations. If, in the week that this trial runs, I can get up and move around and have a life with little pain, or pain that can be contolled by the leads than we have success!!

This is the one surgery that I have been very cautious about since I found out I was a canidate. It's a very rare surgery, and is only done when pain patients are out of options, which I am. It's a very delicate surgery, the leads are no thicker than a pencil lead. I'm very hopeful that it will work, but I will not be upset if it doesn't work.

1 comment:

Whitney said...

Is the procedure you had done a Spinal Cord Stimulator? It sounds like the same procedure I had done to cure my Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome.