Oklahoma Doctor’s Alternative To Popping The Pill

100 million people across the United States suffer from chronic pain.

Many of those patients depend on pain medication, like opioids for relief, but one Oklahoma doctor has an alternative to popping a pill.

Bianca Fergeson faces every waking hour with debilitating pain.

“I basically just kind of gave up on everything,” Feguson said.

“I was getting depressed, very, very depressed,” she said. “I was put on Oxycodone, which is really the only thing that kept the pain at bay,”

She survived breast cancer last year, but within a month of her chemo treatments ending, she developed neuropathy in her feet.

“It began to be my whole life, you wake up with it, it’s all day, and the only relief you have is sleep,” she said.

Out of options, her doctor referred her to Oklahoma pain management, where DR. Garrett Wright has found an alternative treatment to pain meds.

“This patient was a patient who had a nerve injury after a knew replacement,” Dr. Wright said. “They were going from 100, 130,165 milligrams of morphine a day to zero. That’s powerful, that’s a treatment that works.”

The treatment is a spinal cord stimulator. Suzy Hurtando had it implanted into her spine, after she hurt her back in a car accident.

“I don’t feel it. The pain that was there is not there,” Hurtando said.

Designed for back and leg pain sufferers, Dr. Wright believes the treatment could work for Bianca’s feet. But there is no guarantee.

“I just want to be 50 percent better, I would take 50 percent, to me that would be enough,” said Fergeson.

“So many patients end up where there is no solution, there is no cure, there is no fix, so this is a good option for them,” said Dr. Wright.

The day before her procedure, Bianca was very hopeful.

“I’ll probably just be counting the hours down,” she said. “I’m very excited, very excited, Woo can’t wait,”

The next morning, Bianca arrived early for her procedure.

 “Usually we can do these in under a half hour for sure and in the office, quick and easy, very little risk,” Dr. Wright said. “The stimulator is a small wire that’s implanted into the spine just with a needle. It sends electrical impulses into the spine and it helps turn off the painful signal from reaching the brain,” he continued.

“She did fine with everything, so now it’s the waiting game. The first day or two where we can see if this is going to work or not,” Dr. Wright said.

A few days into the trial Fergeson said, “I don’t feel like this is just pain all the time. I rarely think about my feet now.”