@martyk I'm sorry for taking so long to respond to your message.

I haven't had a DRG implant yet. I did have a spinal cord stimulator implant in June of 2017. I had been in terrible pain, and the SCS gave me around an 80% reduction. It was wonderful! It lasted for a year, then I needed a recalibration of the controller from time to time. Then, I had to get it adjusted every 3 months. Then it just did less and less, until last year, I turned it off for a month and couldn't feel any difference.

Now, the only thing that's touching my pain is morphine sulfate contin. I've tried so many medications - first, what my pcp prescribed (the typical meds for peripheral polyneuropathy, Gabapentin, etc), then what my neurologist prescribed, and then the pain specialist. There's nothing else to try. My pcp prescribed the morphine several years ago. Before the stimulator implant, I tried tapering off the mscontin, and after 2 weeks without any, I definitely knew that it was working. When I started it back up, I made a serious mistake of only going up to half of what I had been taking. I say it was a mistake because when the pain increased, he wouldn't raise the dosage. A few months ago, he grudgingly increased it an insignificant amount, and refuses to prescribe a therapeutic dosage.

Said all that to say why I'm hoping to get a pain pump implant. The specialist at OHSU told me that he requires a trial of a DRG stimulator. My thinking is that it would help for a while, then stop treating the pain like the SCS has.

Have you looked at the neuropathy discussion about stimulators? I only do my writing on my phone, so I can't do a lot of things that are done with a computer, things like giving you the link. There's been a lot of conversation in the neuropathy blog.

Pain is no fun, is it.

Jim

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