Spinal Cord Stimulator... anyone had this done for fibro?

Booklvr,

I have done some investigation into this and can share what I found. I also have CRPS and have been using TENS for that and later EMS for my Fibro for 5 years. Recently,i went to a support meeting for CRPS. The leader of the group had one of these devices embedded. She is a big fan and was trying to convince me to get one. She even made me feel where she has it. Bascially, it was an approximately 2"x3" hard plastic square under the skin. They embedded it and only need to go back in to change the battery, update it or fix it. There was a remote she had that ran the stim and could be set for level. They attached the stim to her spinal cord in the spots required to stim the nerves for your affected area.

On the way home, my husband joked thwt they would have to hook the thing up to my whole spine. I would look like a robot dinosaur. I think that might have been a slight exaggeration. ;)

My neurologist told me that there have been issues that overuse could permanently deaden your nerves. I havent verified this. For myself, I am not comfortable working with it. I am happy keeping my stim leads outside my body and under my express control.

I hope this helps. Good luck with finding a good solution for your best comfort.

I am actually having this done next week, but for me it is specifically for pelvic pain. Which depending on who you ask is directly related to the Fibro. I have heard it really helps some patients, so I'm very curious to try it and see how it helps. I know that when they implant the device they focus on a specific set of nerves depending on where your pain is, either back or pelvic area. I actually have both but already had some relief for my back w/steroid injections my PP is really bad so that's what I'm going with. Anyway, since Fibro is all over the body and really varies from person to person I wonder how this would work? Seems like there would be too many groups of nerves for them to cover! LOL

Anyway I am going to look into this more, and will let you know how this works for my pelvic pain.

~Louise

I am in the US, but it took almost two months for my insurance to approve it. Although this has been done for IC and pelvic pain for some time now, because its not the "typical" reason, insurance companies do tend to fight it at first. Not sure how it works in CA though.