Hi! Thanks for checking in on me!

My revision surgery recovery has continued to go well, and as of my latest programming session this past week, I am getting AMAZING coverage - from the middle of my back all the way to my toes. I can't tell you how happy this has made me!

Now, to be sure, I'm not pain free - because we all know that's not going to happen - but my pain is greatly reduced. That is definitely one for the "win" column!

However, I am having a problem that has the Medtronic's tech people and engineers stumped. This happened with my percutaneous leads, as well as with my new paddle leads, so they don't think it is a "lead" issue. The problem occurs when I go to bed at night. Now - picture this - I sleep propped up on seven pillows - three behind my head, two under my knees, and one on each side of me. This keeps me in a position similar to my recliner, and is the only way I can stay in bed all night. And, with all of those pillows, I don't move an inch during the night. What is happening is that when I go to bed and lie down, I can feel my stim just fine. In fact, I have it turned up a little bit higher because I know what's coming next. As I lie there, it's like someone is slowly turning my setting down, down, down. After about an hour, I'm feeling probably 50% less stimulation. After three hours, it's like my stim is turned off - I can't feel it at all. When I get up in the morning, similarly, it's like someone slowly turns the settings back up - after a couple of hours I feel the normal sensation.

Medtronic's techs and engineers said they have never heard of this happening before. The engineers asked my rep to get a separate card for her reader so that she can download two-weeks worth of everything my battery does on it, and then to send it to them. At the same time, I kept a two-week log of all the different times, settings, etc. When I saw her this past week, she had tech on the phone and was going through all the various steps to save all the reports to the card so she could overnight it to them. Unfortunately her machine messed up towards the end of that process and erased all of my data. So now I am once again keeping my log, and in a couple of weeks she'll try to download the data again and send it to them.

But, in the meantime, I am LOVING my new setting, and just feel very blessed to be getting the coverage that I'm getting!

Wishing you much joy and a blessed week ahead!

=Becky