I had a Medtronics pain pump for 8 years, using a cocktail of morphine and a couple of other drugs to manage chronic lower back pain due to trauma. (2008-2016) My experience was this. It took a while to find the dosage and mixture of drugs to reduce the pain. Once it was found, I had about 75% relief with occasional break through pain that could only be managed by lying down. This was quite the improvement, however the trade off was brain fog and short term memory loss. But when you’ve lived with severe pain for years, even that trade off may be acceptable. The pump had a battery life of 8 years and I was within months of that when it mysteriously stopped working all together. My pain doctor just shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes. I suppose he thought I was just trying to get a higher dose. When I finally went to another pain doc, the first thing he said was that he needed to check the integrity of the line that ran from my pump to my spinal cord. He said that model of Medtronics pump was notorious for twisting and splitting. Long story short, it turned out that the line was indeed split and instead of going to the spinal cord, the meds were just spewing into my abdominal cavity (the pump was implanted in my abdomen). He said newer models had fixed the problem and since it was almost time to replace the pump anyway, he said we could go ahead and do that. However, he also gave me the option of trying a spinal cord stimulator instead. I liked the idea of ditching the heavy opioids, so we did the trial. It seemed to work OK, however I did feel a bit pressured by the doctor and gave the go ahead to replace my pump with the stimulator (the battery went into the same space where the pump was). Although he went through the motions of “weaning” me off of the drug, a day after the surgery to remove the pump I went into full blown withdrawal and had to stay an extra couple of days in the hospital. It was horrific and it took 5 months of methadone treatment to completely withdraw. I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst enemy! The spinal cord stimulator never lived up to its hype. After 6 years of fiddling with the program, the technicians never were able to get it to work for me. It was a huge disappointment and waste of time and money. So, you might ask if I would go back to the pump. At this point in my life, no. I am 63 years old and have lived with severe chronic pain for 20 years now. While it has wrecked my life (my husband left me and I can’t work), the idea of taking heavy a dose of opioids again is daunting. I currently take morphine and hydrocodone orally, but limit it to once daily (usually at night) because twice daily made it less effective. At my age and with no one around to help out, I just can’t justify bathing my brain in powerful narcotics with a pump anymore. That’s not to say that it’s not the answer for others. Just thought I should share my experience.