Stimulator Assessment 1

Disability and DVT, My Treatment Add comments

Apr 022009

I was referred to The Walton Centre in Liverpool to be considered for a Spinal Cord Stimulator. I live in Scotland but the procedure is not available here. This is why I had to travel so far. Unfortunately this also meant that an application had to be made to my local Health Board for funding. Obviously, this funding request was granted but it did delay the treatment I received. From my initial referral to me receiving the full procedure took about 18 months. I’m sure this wouldn’t have taken so long if I lived in the area.

Following my initial referral I was sent information about the possible procedures that could be offered by The Walton Centre. The information was quite complete and thorough. There were telephone numbers for both the Chronic Pain Team and Patient Information/Advocacy Services.

I was told that there would be three sections to my assessment. Normally, a minimum amount of time would be spent in hospital but because of the distance I had to travel, I spent much longer than usual as an inpatient!

The first section was for assessment by the different parts of the Chronic Pain Team. This included a Neurosurgeon, an Anesthetist, a Physiotherapist, a Specialist Nurse and a Psychologist. Normally these assessments would have been done in a series of outpatient appointments. To save my travel, I stayed in the hospital for a week!

All of these assessments were similar in nature. Everyone wanted to know about the pain I suffered, my best description of it, how it effected my life and that of my family. The Physio wanted to do some physical benchmark tests and the Psychologist asked more about my mental state and how I had coped with the changes to my life. The whole process was fairly relaxed and friendly. The only reason I had to stay in hospital so long was because of the difficulty in getting all these professionals together at the same time.

There was a unanimous decision from the professionals that it would be worth a trial run with the stimulator. This meant moving on to the second stage of the assessment. I believe that this would usually happen about three months after this initial assessment. Unfortunately I had to wait nearly a year because of a delay getting a further funding request granted.

For info. The Spinal Cord Stimulator is sometimes called: