How Quality of Life is Better With a Neurostimulator - Video Diary

Day One

It's been a little over a month since getting my permanent peripheral nerve stimulator (PNS) implanted.  Before having it done I was experiencing Chronic Daily Headache (CDH), Chronic Migraines (CM), and Intractable Migraine.  That pretty much meant that I had a daily headache along with fifteen or more migraine attacks per month that became tolerant to treatments and unable to be eradicated.  So you can pretty much assume that there was no quality of life for me. I spent most days in my bed trying to stay away from light, noise, smells, chaos....I was avoiding life.  Receiving this PNS has saved my life.  I had gone from daily pain to almost no CDH and the CM has been reduced to between 4-8 per month.  Those consist of full blown migraine attacks which aren't affected very much by the stimulator.  It usually brings the pain level down to a tolerable enough level (around a 6 or 7 on the pain scale) for me.  As I have been documenting this progress I thought that I should try one week with it turned off to see if my CDH and CM would revert back to normal and then one week with it turned on to show any differences in my quality of life.  It's sort of an experiment where I can truly see how much this PNS has helped in the management of my headache disorders.


I started out today without my stimulator turned on.  It so happens that last night I had the worst migraine attack I had ever experienced in all my 26 years of having this disease.  I had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance, that's how bad it was.  Ironically, it coincides with my little experiment so I was able to show how I look after a bad attack.  Here's my first video of life with Migraine disease....