My surgery to be presented at national confernce
 

Saw my pain mgmt. dr. today, before seeing my rep. for my tweaking, and he informed me that he'll be presenting my surgery case at the national Neuromodulation conference in December. Evidently he's the first dr. to put all four leads (two for cervical and two for lumbar)into one incision area (lumbar), rather than making two separate incisions (lumbar and cervical).

He said he decided to try putting the two cervical leads in first, and was able to thread them up C4-5 and was able to anchor them in. He then threaded my two lumbar leads and anchored them to around T-8. He showed me photos he took during the surgery...was rather weird to see myself laying there, cut open and having leads being placed in me, but really drove home the point of how skilled one's surgeon needs to be:eek:

Fiona,
That is exciting! Are there any perks that come along with that? Not that you are letting him share the experience to get anything--just curious if you will get to go see him speak, get a video of it, or anything else cool like that.
That's awesome that he was the first to do that, and that you were the first person to be in that situation! :) How neat.
I need to go back and read some of your posts/replies.. I know you somewhat--I know your name and have read a bit about you, but would like to know more about your story.. so I will have to go back and do some searching. :)

I am glad that some people have such interest in medical things... because if everyone in the world was like me, we'd all be dead--I know quite a bit about my specific health problems, but that is mostly because doctors around here are clueless in lots of cases, so I have to know the information that they can't give me.. but man, I could NEVER be a surgeon. Glad there are people who not only enjoy that, but are good at it. :) Thank God for making us all unique!

No, unfortunately no perks, but just knowing he's a very good surgeon (he also trains other doctors in how to implant SCS's) is perk enough. I did ask for a copy of my surgery report so I'll see if it makes any sense to me when I read it. I'm very curious as to how he anchored in the leads in the cervical area when there was no incision made in that area.
Yes, thank the Lord that there's doctors out there like him.:D

Conference
 

How exciting! I wish I could have something like that done. I have a BAK disc at C-4 but cath for pump is at L4-5 as that is where the injury was.