Sorry it has taken me so long to respond, but the mother board on our computer went out. Because of the cost to replace it, my husband and I had to save up the money to buy a new computer. Anyway, I'm back online and will try to respond to your questions.

I am not sure how my ON started. In February 2007, I woke up in the middle of the night in close the most severe pain in my life. The only worse pain I've ever had was that of natural child birth to a 10 lb. baby. Anyway, neither my doctor nor I have any idea what caused the pain to begin with. I wasn't in a car accident or had any head trauma. At the time, I worked as a paralegal and spent 9+ hours a day hunched over a computer. The only thing my doctor can think of was that my desk wasn't designed for a computer so I had to lean over and sort of hunch my back. Considering I haven't worked since this started & the pain hasn't gotten any better, I'm not sure that this was the cause.

After nerve injections, cryoablation therapy, radiofrequency ablation, physical therapy, and some other stuff, my pain management doctor tried the stimulator. The first time I had the trial stimulator, I had very limited relief and my health insurance would not approve the permanent implant. About a year later, my insurance changed and my doctor did another trial stimulator where he inserted the leads in a different spot. I had a much better result and the permanent neurostimulator was inserted in February 2011. Since then, the ON pain is much better because the stimulator is really helping. However, before the surgery, my pain had began to spread from the back of my head to my forehead, down the side of my nose and under my left eye. I've since learned that this pain is traveling along an entirely different set of nerves: Trigeminal nerves. So far, the stimulator hasn't helped with that pain at all, but I am getting some relief. For now, my doctor is of the opinion that the occipital nerves were so irritated that it caused the problems with the trigeminal nerves. He hopes that by allowing the ONs to calm down that the trigeminal nerves will settle down and the pain will go away. It's been 5 months since the surgery and I'm not sure how long he wants to wait.