Case Study 2:
“A ruptured disc put me in a wheelchair for seven years – until a box the size of a small radio got me back on my feet”
When Audrey Gwillim went into hospital for surgery for a ruptured disc in her back, she ended up confined to a wheelchair for seven years. She thought she would spend the rest of her life as an invalid – until she discovered a new pain device earlier this year. Audrey is now up out of her wheelchair and walking almost a mile a day with her new puppy.
“The operation on my spine had been delayed, and by the time it was done the damage had got worse,” she says. “The surgery left me with more pain and discomfort than before the operation, because a nerve was damaged during surgery. Afterwards, the pain was so intense that walking even a few feet was impossible”.
This spring, however, she bought a small hand held device that has transformed her life. Electronic Nerve Modulation (ENM) was developed by Lancashire GP, Dr John Royle, after he broke his foot and found it hard to cope with the pain.
“This device has been a miracle,” says Audrey. “I was convinced that I would never walk again. I'd tried all sorts of painkillers, attended hospital pain clinics, and had physiotherapy – but all to no avail.
“I was on very high does of morphine and also on drug patches that are given to patients with terminal cancer. That's how bad my pain was”.
ENM works by sending minute currents of electricity into the spinal cord to interfere with the pain signals that travel along the spinal nerves to the brain. It is different to Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS), a popular form of pain relief that has been around for many years. TENS works by stimulating peripheral nerves just under the skin to interfere with localised pain. But some pain is so severe that TENS will not have any impact, and there is a need for treatment of pain via the central nervous system going directly to the brain.
Until the launch of Dr Royle's device there was no external device available that could bring relief to the central nervous system. Electronic Nerve Modulation is based on the same principles as a treatment offered by surgeons to patients suffering from pain which involves implanting a small device at the base of the spine to release electrical signals that block the pain signals travelling along the spinal nerves.
“I knew about the surgical procedure, which is used only as a last resort for those in severe pain,” says Dr Royle. ”What I set out to do was try to replicate that pain relief from outside, by seeing how far we could penetrate with the electrical signals so that we reached the spinal nerves. That's what makes it different from TENS and why it seems to help those with the most pain”
Audrey says that while she is still in pain some of the time, it has now become manageable. “Until I started using the device, I hadn't been to see my son for four years in his new house because I couldn't take the half-hour car ride. Now I can manage that and get out and about. It worked for me after only a few attempts and I am finding that it is still improving my ability to get about. The pain has got less over the months. I find that using it twice a day for half an hour is sufficient to give me the pain relief I need. I'm still amazed that after seven years in a wheelchair I am able to go out walking my dog each day. I was always an active person before, so to have seven years of your life taken away is a real blow. But my pain was so acute that getting up made it worse and so really the best option was to remain in the wheelchair because that way the pain was not as severe”
Audrey, who is married with two grown-up children, says “Life was so bad before that I was having constant bouts of depression because there seemed no end to the pain and my wheelchair existence.”
The above case study formed the basis of an article printed in the Daily Mail and Scottish Daily Mail on 17th August 2004.
Articles also appeared on 25th August 2004 in the Petersfield Post and Bordon Post and on 3rd September 2004 in the Romsey Advertiser, Haslemere Herald and the Hampshire Chronicle. |
