Health

EDINA, Minn. (WCCO) ― Lower back pain is the leading cause for missed work days and Americans spend more than $50 billion a year trying to treat it. But for some with debilitating pain, there has been little hope for relief until now.

Don't tell Dallas Keiker to give up fishing.

"It's something that I live for," he said. "I summer fish, I winter fish. That's what I work for, So I can go fishing."

Like any Minnesotan, being outdoors is in his blood. But his work as a diesel mechanic around heavy equipment most of his life has caused him debilitating back pain.

"I just had so much pain I couldn't stand straight. I was hunched over. The turning and twisting with weight caused a lot of my problems. I've got five herniated ruptured discs and two of them are degenerative," said Keiker.

He was taking heavy doses of narcotics and nerve blocking medication. But it didn't really work.

"Last year I fished one time for five days and I paid for it for six months afterwards," said Keiker.

Barb Wellington is in the same boat.

"It's miserable," she said describing her back pain. "It affects your walking. It affects your sitting, lying down. When I was working I'd be walking around and it would feel like someone stabbed me in the lower back and I would drop to my knees."

Wellington went to Fairview Southdale Hospital to try a neuro-stimulator for her back. It's kind of a pacemaker for pain. It triggers the nervous system like a pacemaker keeps a heart beating.

Dr. Andrew Will of the Twin Cities Pain Clinic specializes in treating pain -- especially back pain. He used a live X-ray called a fluoroscopy to watch as he moves electrodes along Wellington's spine.

"Barbara, there's going to be another poke here," the doctor said during the procedure.

Once the electrodes are in place, Will hooked them up to a battery. An electric shock basically tricks the brain from feeling pain. Wellington is awake through the whole thing to help guide the medical staff.

"I'm feeling it," she said.

"Feeling that in the right leg?" asked a technician.

"Yup," said Wellington.

The whole procedure takes less than an hour.

Despite the fact that 80 percent of all Americans suffer some kind of back pain, surgery is seldom used to treat it. The pain pacemaker is usually a last resort when everything else has failed and the pain is too much for someone's life.

"The good news is, as there are more things that we can do for pain, there's more for the doctors to offer," said Will.

He said about 75 percent of the people who get the neuro-stimulator implant have success -- meaning most of them are able to reduce or eliminate their medications.

"Some people say electricity is the new drug," said Will. "Electricity you can't get addicted to it and it can keep working for you for the rest of your life."

Keiker has been living with the neuro-stimulator for about six months. He says the relief has been amazing. And it's so easy.

"If I got more pain, I just put it to my back and I turn it up or turn it down right from the controls right here and everything is fine. The pain goes away," he said.

It makes it possible for Keiker to do his job and get out fishing. While this procedure only blocks pain, Keiker hopes it will buy him time until medicine can repair the damage in his back.

"My option of fixing my back is fusing my whole lumbar," he said. "And I'm not ready for someone to take me to the bathroom, dress me in the morning because I wouldn't be able to bend. I'd bend right about here and that would be about it. And at 46 years old, I'm not ready for that."

 

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