Imagine living for decades in chronic pain. That has been Gary Goodlett's life. "I had no view of the parameter. I couldn't move my eyes. I couldn't bend my head. If I bent my head down felt like my head was going to explode."
Then Gary had a chance to be one of the first to try something different. Neurologist and interventional pain expert Dr. Chad Domangue was an expert at using internal nerve stimulation. On the market for years, an implant sends impulses along the nerves interrupting the pain signal to the brain with a pleasant sensation. But Dr. Domangue had a theory; instead of stimulating two nerves in the back of the head where people feel the headaches, he thought of stimulating two extra nerves where the headaches start in the base of your skull near your spinal cord. "So not only that I put the wires at the base of the skull but I put the wires actually in the neck because the headache center actually dips down into the neck."
His three-year study on 15 patients made the cover of a peer reviewed medical journal. "Everyone that I've put it in has done extremely well. I've never taken one of these systems out because they didn't like it."
Gary was one of those test patients. It worked so well he was eligible for updated new technology. Dr. Domangue removed the old implant and put in the new one. Immediately when Gary woke up in the recovery room the team from Boston Scientific, the implant company, tested the stimulation. Then just one week later a man who loved doing home renovation is refinishing his front door. "I told my wife on the way home I said I forgot what like to feel this way."
