Update on my neurostimulator

It's been quite some time since I've written anything about my neurostimulator or made any videos on how it is working for me.  I apologize for not being on top of it but the past seven months have been quite difficult.  After my hospitalization in November, I have been struggling with a lot of depression and anxiety as well as learning how to cope with my pain naturally.  The aftermath of being on so many medications has me very afraid to try anything else.  If what I was taking was able to come up in my blood work as cocaine then why in the world would I put anything else in my body?  Yet, I'm suffering in pain a lot and it's causing me a lot of emotional distress.  The migraines would be less of an issue if my neurostimulator was working for me.  Unfortunately, it is not.  After having less success over the summer, I went to have some new programs put in back in October.  It hasn't helped any.  I might get a small amount of pain relief during the milder attacks, but full blown migraines were made worse with it turned on.  So I turned it off and kept it off for about two months.  I turned it back on in February on my youngest son's birthday because I didn't want to ruin his big day of turning eleven.  It got me through the day but I felt all of the other symptoms of migraine much more.  With the pain minimized, the nausea, dizziness and lightheadedness was intensified.  That alone made me want to turn it off but I managed to get through it for my son's sake.

I was stuck in a conflicted situation of whether to try new programs or have it removed.  On one hand, new programming might actually help this time and I don't want to have another surgery.  On the other, why bother with it at all and just be done with it since it hasn't helped me since June?  My husband was coaxing me towards getting it reprogrammed again, but after what had just happened I didn't want to deal with anything.  Plus, my neurosurgeon is in another state and getting there is a huge pain, literally and figuratively.  I was leaning towards reprogramming but I wasn't ready to deal with another big medical decision.  By mid-February and into March I started experiencing pain around the wires.  My left ear would be throbbing in pain as if I slept on it wrong when I haven't even laid on it.  I began getting occipital headaches from the pain around the wires in my neck.  I rarely ever get headaches there and now it's almost daily.  The pain that was only focused around my left eye has now migrated to the right.  My neck feels stiff, sore and achy all the time.  This is not what I bargained for when I fought to have this surgery covered.

This new pain has motivated me to get an appointment with my neurosurgeon for next Friday.  I want it taken out.  I pray that he agrees with me.  I'm not optimistic about getting a new program.  I still need to have my representative from Medtronic be there but at this point, I'm ready for it to be removed.  As long as the wires are causing me pain like this, ten programs couldn't fix that.  I'm very disappointed that this hasn't been successful for me.  My hopes were up very high that this would give me some sort of life again.  Instead, I have a host of new problems.  Honestly, it feels like a death and the fact that I only had about two or three months of significant pain relief has driven a lot of my depression and grief.

I can't endure a lifetime of pain.  It would devastate any hope I have left.  Twenty seven years of pain is way too long.  How can a person survive another year or five or ten?  I truly hope and pray that something comes along that finally helps me.