Days of My Life

Looks like I’ll have go in for another battery replacement as I’ve found out yesterday that the DBS implant in my right chest plate is dead.  My condition has been getting progressively worse, I believe, for the last two weeks. I’ve an appointment on Tuesday for a scheduled adjustment, so I’ll wait until then.  It’s not something like a pacemaker anyway.

We’ve planned two trips in July and August, one of them will be for over a week.  So it’s good that it died now while I’m home. It was due anyhow.

UPDATE: It was a false alarm.  It was the battery of the controller that was weak; as for my condition, I’ve no idea.  Instead of surgery, I had a setting adjustment: pulse width was lowered even more.

We undid the previous change, as I’ve been doing pretty bad after about 2 weeks of it, but increased the rate (frequency) a little.  Other patients in New York apparently received some improvements with low pulse width, high rate and moderate voltage, according to my neurologist.  I don’t expect much, though. Continue reading ‘Settings Change, Etc.’ »

On Tuesday, I went in to see my neurologist  for another adjustment of my implants.  Pulse width on both side has been increased to 450 from 400, which I believe has improved my ankles from turning inwards.  I”m going back in 2 months.

As for my MRI, they couldn’t come to an agreement; therefore, they’re gonna send it to the  neurosurgeon at UCSF who performed my initial operations.  Hopefullly, he’ll think that it warrants a redo.

I had an appointment with my neurologist this afternoon, and he suggested that we stay on the plan; i.e., keep increasing the voltage. He did so by .4 this time. Continue reading ‘Settings Change, Etc.’ »

I was at the hospital for nearly 8 hours yesterday for an MRI that my neurologist ordered. Why so long? Since I can’t stay still especially with all that loud noise from the machine, I told them I wanted to be sedated with anesthesia. This sedation took longer than I’ve expected because of the lack of coordination within the hospital. Continue reading ‘New MRI at OHSU’ »

This is what I have…

Those devices in the chest plate control the voltage, rate and pulse width of electricity sent to the brain which then block synapses from firing excessive “signals” of their own.

I had another appointment with my neurologist this afternoon for a routine adjustment. He increased the voltage by only .1 on both sides since I’m seeing him more frequently now. In fact, I’m going back in about 5 weeks. Continue reading ‘Settings Change and MRI’ »

I was quite pleased that neurologist agreed to see me in every 2 month the last time I saw him. I had an appointment on the 20th which had to be canceled because of an insurance issue. Continue reading ‘Delayed Appointment’ »

The pain is back. This time, one of the vertebrae in the cervical curve is out of alignment — C5 or C6, I think. On top of that, the muscles around there have been strained because of my arms and the way I use my on-screen keyboard / hand trackball.

The only treatment is neck extraction or hanging up-side down, but I’d certainly freeze up. Fortunately, an electronic massager seems to help a little; otherwise, I’d have to hang myself and kick the bucket… for re-alignment. Heh.

EDIT: For misalignment of cervical vertebrae, roll up a towel thick enough to support your neck when you put it behind your neck while you sleep laying on your back. Don’t use a pillow, and have your head tilt back about 20-30 degrees.

I went in to see my neurologist this morning. Since I’ve been doing really bad for the last 4 month, we decided to undo what we did last time; instead, after consulting with another doctor, we decided to increase the pulse width to 400 and frequency to 160 while decreasing the voltage to 2.2 (right) and 2.3 (left). Continue reading ‘Settings Change’ »