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Staff Sgt. Shawntel Lotson
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Nearly four years ago during physical training, Staff Sgt. Shawntel Lotson experienced a pain in her back so excruciating her legs gave out on her. The pain hasn’t stopped for the now-technical developer writer at Fort Lee, Va., and she has tried nearly everything to ease the pain that would force her to bed for days at a time. Physical therapy, MRIs, a spinal epidural shot, and water aerobics in addition to the list of pain medications so extensive Lotson has to take a couple deep breaths whilst rattling them off.
‘‘When my hair started to fall out from the pain, that was the point where I said, ‘Something’s got to give,’” Lotson said.
She agreed to go through a five-day spinal cord stimulation trial in December 2009 where a small wire containing eight electrodes is threaded up through the spine’s epidural space and intercepts pain signals being sent to the brain.
‘‘Those electrodes are stimulating nerves in the brain,” Anthony Puglisi, St. Jude Hospital Neuromodulation unit, said. ‘‘Instead of sending pain signals to the brain, this intercepts that signal and sends a more soothing, distracting signal to the brain. So now the patient feels buzzing or tingling instead of pain. It’s really tricking the brain. You’re not stopping the pain, you’re overriding it.”
The wire is connected to a small device that controls the settings and intensity of the signals and, if the trial is considered a success, is permanently implanted one-inch underneath the skin in the lower back during a later surgery. It would then need to be recharged through the skin for roughly two hours each day depending on the intensity of the settings.
Lotson’s trial was ‘‘like a rebirth.”
‘‘I hadn’t had a good night sleep in all those years,” she explained. ‘‘I actually slept all night, no problem. No tossing, no turning. People at work were like, ‘What did you do different?’ Immediate relief. But ever since they took it out, pain again.”
Lotson had her permanent spinal cord stimulation device surgically inserted March 1 by Maj. David Jamison, Walter Reed surgical department, during an hour-and-a-half procedure. He estimated Walter Reed does about six similar cases a month with about half being active duty Soldiers.
‘‘In her case, it got to the point where there wasn’t much more to offer,” Jamison said. ‘‘For people who are kind of hopeless, they’re on lots of opiates and narcotics, we can get them on one of these devices, see a big improvement and wean them off those medications. It can really improve someone’s life.”
During the surgery, Jamison placed the leads in the same position as during the trial. Lotson was then partially woken up to test the spinal cord stimulation device and make sure the leads were giving her the same feeling as in the trial.
‘‘You don’t want someone to go through with the implant and not have it meet someone’s expectations,” Jamison said. ‘‘She knows how good it felt during the trial so we at least want to get her to that point and try to exceed it. We want to get it right.”
The device was activated a few days later to much success.
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