It’s a pretty exhausting process, and it’s not as simple as just hitting an ‘on’ switch.
It’s been a week since PJ’s second surgery.
“He’s never taken one pain pill or one aspirin, not one,” Green said.
They’re excited as they get ready to have everything fine tuned.
Dr. Joseph Legacy explains the lead inserted in PJ’s brain has four electrical contact points on it, and he’s going to explore them all.
“What we do is we test out a thresh hold,” Dr. Legacy said. “That means we’re gonna keep gradually increasing stimulation, one by one, each of those electrodes.”
Until they find what they call a therapeutic window: Where he gets maximum benefits from the system without side effects.
“..like muscle pulling, or numbness, tingling, some of the things you might have experienced in the operating room when they were testing out the contacts, kinda like we’re gonna do today,” Dr. Legacy said.
It’s a familiar process to him, but this time, it’ll be much more in depth.
“We’ll start on the lowest one and go up, and you just let me know,” Dr. Legacy said. “We’re just gonna focus on the left side of your body.”
With different levels of stimulation at different contact points, sometimes PJ felt discomfort and tingling. Others, he was numb.
Dr. Legacy had him do several physical tests with his hand and leg and verbal tests, until they found the optimal setting. PJ will come back every month for the next few months to see if they need to fine tune things more.
