Pain pump

Hello Audreyanna & welcome to the forum. A pain pump has been my source of pain control since 2005. I am assuming they are talking about a Medtronics pump & you & your husband really need to go Medtronics.com & read up on the pumps. It is a very informative user friendly website. Medtronics pumps have a little device called a PTM, this is little machine is used for BT pain. Your husband can give himself what is called a bolus & it will enable the pump to release a small amount of medication. The PTM is programmed by the dr. So there is no way to get more medication than what its programmed to give in a 24 hour period. Its a great little device.

Your husband will have to have a psych evaluation first to make sure he is a good candidate for an implanted device & that he also has reasonable expectations of what pain control he will get. Some people just are not ok with having something foreign implanted in their body. Reasonable expectations of pain control means even with a pump the patient is not completely pain free. There is no way of being completely pain free unless the dr agreed to load a patient up on drugs to the point of being a zombie & that is not going to happen, lol. That is what the psych eval is about. Then he would do a trial & usually if the pain is reduced by 50% it is considered a success.

Now, about the pump covering both the neck & back, no it will not. Unless something new has come along just in the last month or two no. However, here is what we see a lot. The patient has to decide which is the worst of the two & have the pump for that area only. I had both neck & back issues & low back was the worst in my mind. One of our mods here, WhiteBeard had a big cervical fusion done, posterior work & lots of it. Prior to this last neck surgery he had an anterior cervical fusion. As you can see his cervical area has had a lot of surgery work. but his pain pump only covers his low back pain too. He wishes he had the pump put in a lot sooner. What many of us find with both areas involved and firing away at the same time, if you can get one of them toned down, some times the other one is not near as bad as we thought it was. I fell & broke my arm & my pump did nothing for that pain.

I think your husband should at least do the trial, he has nothing to lose & potentially a lot to gain. I know it sounds probably scary to him & thats normal. The only time I remember I have a pump is if I bump into my washer when trying to reach something from the back of it.You do become use to them like anything. I like the idea that I am saving my liver since the medication is not going through the liver. Sure he can increase the Fentanyl, but eventually he will hit what we call the proverbial brick wall & will be having a difficult time something to help with his pain. We build up tolerances to these oral meds & either need increases or something different.

I take care of my 10 yr old grandson before & after school. I do chauffeur him around & believe me, I would not get behind the wheel if I felt I was putting someone in harms way. I couldn't say that on some of the oral meds I was on.

Some PM drs require the patient to be weaned off of all pain meds for the trial. This is something your husband will have to discuss with his dr. I have been told the purpose of that is to get a true trial results & it also can help reset the pain receptors.

Your husband or you needs to ask his dr how many pump patients he has & how much experience he has with pumps. He really needs to ask these questions. A pain pump is only as good as the dr maintaining it. If the dr has very little experience with pumps & does not know what meds can be used & the dosages, then most likely the pump will be a disaster. Not just any medications can be used in a pump.

I have kind of got lengthy here, but if you or your husband have any questions please feel free to ask. Take care.

Audrey, I would not throw the towel in because the pump only covers one area. It is very much worth doing a trial to see what comes of it. There is a chance the pump could help your husband & its worth pursuing. At least by doing a trial he will know one way or the other.

Keep us posted.

Hi Audrey sorry to hear about your husband, but what Susie told you is true, I've had multiple fusions in my neck, and also have had lower back surgery, as in a Foraminotomy at L2 through L5. Last December I had a total right knee replacement done too. My pain pump was implanted in June of 2014. The catheter goes in my lower spine, it controls most of my lower back pain and sciatica pain extremely well! And I had to wean off all pain meds for several weeks prior to getting the pain pump implanted. It was activated right away and with having the pain pump all oral pain medications was discontinued. However when I had my knee replacement done last December, I talked with my PM doctor about it first, and he told me I would have to go back on oral pain medications for a while after the surgery to control the post op surgical knee pain, as the pain pump would not do anything to the pain in my knee.

I will tell you as far as the pain in my neck and arms, the pain pump does absolutely nothing, but fortunately my surgeries and fusions have taken care of the worst part of the pain generated from that area. Leaving my worst pain in my lower back and sciatica pain in my hips and legs. Which is now taken care of by the pain pump. For me the pain pump became a necessity because of my move from Illinois to Kentucky. I had been on oral pain medications for many many years while living in Illinois, however I found it difficult to almost impossible to find a PM in Kentucky that would continue with my previous spinal pain treatments, and travelling back and forth once a month to my PM in Illinois became more than just a hassle, especially in the winter months with heavy snows. So my PM doctor in Illinois made me a referral to the University of Indiana pain center in Indy to get a implanted pain pump. And the rest is history! I have said it many times and will say it again, I think it is the best thing I have done and wish I had done it sooner! Sure I still have some pain, and some days are worse than others, but I had the same thing when I was on oral pain meds! The doctors never really can get you a 100% pain free! and still be at least functional anyway!

I wish your husband and YOU well! and hope this information is of some help to you! Good Luck to both of you and also Welcome to Healing Well Chronic Pain Forum!

White Beard

Hi Audrey,

I can't offer much more of what White Beard has explained to you. I had my pain pump only since July. I lived in Illinois before moving here to Florida and I wasn't as lucky there, they only wanted to give me epidurals and weak pain meds and insisted i do therapy, how can you walk a treadmill when you can't get walk to the bathroom ?

anyway, long story short when we retired and moved to Florida four years ago my new primary doctor told me I had to see a pain clinic. It's when Florida went upside down and they were changing the laws regarding opiates and category 2 drugs. I didn't go, I just wanted her to give some norco and I'd do my pool therapy at the pool in our community here. She kept insisting I give them a chance and even called me at home and begged me to try it.

I was scared the first time because I just knew they were going to give me an epidural and migraines would start again and I took my MRI disc with me that was a couple years old. Just looking at the disc the doctor sat down with me and told me I had several options and started talking about cortizon steroid injections and i told him i didn't want that because of the migraines i got from them. he put his hand on my shoulder and swore to me what he was going to do was not the same, he would Never shoot me in the vein in my spine, but next to it to numb it. He got my trust that day. Later he did another MRI and the deterioration between the five years was severe. they started giving me stronger opiates and different types of injections, there's several different kinds and the one that worked best was the rhzoplasty where they burn the nerves but you can only have it one every six months, some people it lasts for years, but unfortunately it didn't for me.

We discussed surgery and was honest with me when I asked about the success rate for my case and my age and admitted it would probably only be a 50% chance that the pain would lesson on it's own. I have continued with this clinic for the last four years. Last year they started asking me if i wanted to try the pain pump and gave me the Medtronic literature. they also started me on morphine at that time and I hadn't felt that much relief in years so of course, i wasn't in any big hurry to go through the surgery of a pain pump. They kept increasing my dosages and between the various injections I've been able to do my water aerobics, garden and golf with my husband.

I was so afraid that putting an implant in me with a catheter going into my spine would be too dangerous to continue to golf and aerobics even tho they and a Medtronic's representative promised me that I would be able to continue with my life. Yes, I too have arthritis in other parts of my body and I also was afraid that once they took my orals away from me that I would suffer with the neck and shoulder pain as well. But like White Beard said above, you have to choose. The back pain is a level 10 always without meds, the upper part of my body is maybe a 5 on a rainy humid day.

I made the horrible mistake of looking up pain pumps on the internet and ran into a lot of misinformation and horrible stories so I kept dragging my feet about saying yes to the pump. I went the pyhch evaluation, got the approvals from Medicare and my primary but never gave them a date. Finally I was seeing another dr who they had reassigned to me because the clinic rotates their days in different offices, and she told me we were at the end of the road here. I could not go on with these massive doses of morphine and injections every 30 days or so because it was going to begin to take its toll on my body and give me even more problems. I also have what is called Gene Factor V which means my body has a propensity to make blood clots and i have to take coumadin every day and regulated and have several breakouts.

I've had a filter put in under my heart so I no longer have to worry too much about getting a stroke or another Pulmonary emulism but it's possible. I knew there was a lady i'd heard about tht lives in our community (we live in a retired over 55 community) who had a pain pump but I had never met her or knew which one she was. My 'pool buddies' knew i had been looking for her and put feelers out and finally showed me who she was and she happened to be at the pool. I introduced myself and we sat down and talked. She asked me what was my hang up? What was the deepest fears i had about the pump? I told her about what I read and how i was afraid it would ruin my quality of life and she stood up (shes a tiny woman) and started doing the twist and said 'Look at me ! I can dance, i can swim and i have NO pain !); she also had been in a car accident a few months before that and broke her neck and i asked her if they could give her meds for it and she said of course they did, silly ! turned out she goes to the same clinic as me. My next doctor visit I told them to schedule me, I was ready now. I'm not going to lie to you, there is surgical pain and recovery and each clinic has their own way of doing things which you will learn if you come back to this forum. Some get their pump already filled, I didn't. I stayed on my morphine for a week before they filled me then they weaned me off as they increased my dosage, I still had some withdrawal but it's over and i feel wonderful. I'm back golfing and i'm not afraid of twisting anymore, I know that it has adhered itself and was put in place to stay.

After my dosage was regulated i now go every three months, some folks go every six, depends on your PM. I had terrible sciatica pain shooting up and down my legs and in the mornings they would buckle under me, it seems the pump has cured everything from the waist down.

I mentioned I have Gene Factor V so i cannot take vitamin K nor can i take aspirin or Nsaids like advil or ibprophen for the upper back, but I'm going to make you laugh here, i go to the feed store and i get horse linament and it works ! It's great, if you go to any feed store the person will know which one to tell you to buy that won't burn your skin, it goes much much deeper than ben-gay and the arthritis pain is gone in about 10 minutes. An old woman (older than me that is) told me about it and she was right ! i hope you and your husband make the decision based on the doctor who will perform the surgery for him, that's important. A medtronic's representative called me in the very beginning of my considering it and told me my doctor performs this surgery all the timer and he's excellent at it. So if there's more than one in the pm you go to, pull a tech aside and ask them who does them the most or which one would they trust? Medtronic representatives are the nicest people and want it all to go ok for you and they can even tell you if you have selected the right guy for the job. Good luck to you, you have a lot to think about. Please keep us informed no matter what decision you make, CP is no joke and your hubby is lucky not to go through it alone.



I have made some paragraphs in your post to make it easier to read. Some of our members have tracking problems when reading. Thanks.

Post Edited By Moderator (straydog) : 10/5/2015 1:30:12 PM (GMT-6)