![]() "I went from being a user of opioids to a user of electricity," Busse said with a laugh, noting that the opioid use was always as prescribed. He needed another option, one that could be customized over time to fit his needs. But it became clear that every answer, even a complex surgery, was temporary. Debilitating pain.Įvery time his physical health was in question, he got an answer. Throughout it all, Busse had no choice but to take opioids and other heavy medications to try to counteract the pain he felt. The two vertebrae above his fusion had basically worn out. Indeed, Busse's spine got the NFL treatment: “My own little goalposts - two titanium rods and a crossbar." ![]() Busse went to see a neurosurgeon at the University of Pittsburgh, a doctor who also operated on the Pittsburgh Steelers. He required a third surgery in 1996, and by 2002 it was time for a spinal fusion. His parents had to visit him in the hospital instead. A second laminectomy came as he was supposed to be graduating from law school. Just trying to lift a heavy rock put him on the road to his first laminectomy, a procedure that shaves a small piece of bone off the spine to relieve pressure on the spinal cord or nerve bundles nearby. Pain followed him from his high school days, when he was shoveling blacktop for a summer job. His history includes five - yes, five - back surgeries between 19. Turn back the clock, and circumstances were drastically different for Busse. Whenever the alarm sounds, he can grab his smartphone and simply adjust the pain-blocking stimulation. ![]() To explain it in the simplest terms - time is precious, after all - Proclaim sends electrical signals to the spinal cord and brain telling it to tune out the pain it would ordinarily register. The spinal cord stimulator literally taps into Busse's nervous system. His hunt for chronic pain relief ended with Proclaim. ![]() What he wants to do is enjoy the outdoors, whether that's hunting deer with his son or going fishing for smallmouth bass. "I can't walk as far as I like, but I try not to let my back stop me from the things I want to do," he said, "and the stimulator helps a lot with that." Instead of hoping for pain to subside, he hops on his ATV for a ride around his sanctuary, a 200-acre piece of land he bought “out in the middle of nowhere” northeast of his home in Charleston, W.V. Now he is an outdoorsman, not a pain sufferer. ![]()
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