>> [Background Music] Welcome back.
A Johnstown man lived with chronic nerve pain for years.
It stemmed from a horrific motorcycle accident.
Here's Bob Chizmar's journey.
Bob Chizmar has been coaching the Shade Township High School football team for five years.
It's something he wasn't sure he would ever do again.
A ride on his motorcycle changed everything.
>> I was going up a hill and it's a bright sunny day.
And of all things, you know, you wouldn't think this would happen in a million years
but it was another motorcycle.
And we both sort of met at the centerline and we just hit.
And, you know, he went flying and I went flying.
The accident just like-- it just like tore my pants that it almost made them look like
shorts.
It just made a perfect cut and my leg was just gone.
>> Somehow, Bob was able to dial 911 on his cellphone.
Then he called his wife.
>> His exact words, I remember he said, "Chris, you're going to kill me.
I wrecked the bike."
And I said, "Oh my gosh, are you hurt?"
And he said, "Yes, I think I lost my leg."
And I said, "Oh, Chiz," and I call him Chiz, I said, "That's not funny," because he just
sounded so normal, you know?
And he said, "No, I'm serious."
>> And I said, "If you hurry, I can hear the ambulance is coming, I can hear the sirens."
I said, you know, "You can make it down here," because I just wanted her if-- so much to
be there because, you know, it would just make things so much better with her around.
>> And I saw him on the side of the road and he-- you know, he was very coherent.
He yelled for me.
He was laying down.
And as soon I walked over, I saw, you know, his leg was missing.
>> Surgeons immediately took Bob into surgery.
>> We were so hopeful that they could save the knee.
That's kind of-- We went into surgery thinking that.
And afterwards, you know, they said, no, you know, that it's going to require several surgeries.
>> After Bob recovered, doctors fit him with a prosthetic.
Four months after the accident, he was walking.
Then Bob developed phantom pain.
>> Phantom pain is a medical condition when a patient who lost most typically a limb,
we'll say an arm or a leg, is continuing having pain in the limb that is absent.
>> I can feel my feet and my ankle and my toes every day.
>> There are areas in the brain that are responsible for feeling in that part of our body.
And in spite of the fact that this part of our body is missing, this-- the neurons, the
nerve cells are still there.
>> It's amazing the power that your body can create.
It's always like an electric shock, an intense, intense electric shock that would make your
leg just jump in the air.
>> He was experiencing the same type of pain that occurred during the initial accident
when he had a motorcycle accident, which was sharp, shooting, really torturing pain related
to severing the nerves and the extremity as a whole.
>> And when you get those 24-hour, 36-hour phantom pains, I mean, it was just intense
because you couldn't-- it affected your sleep and everything.
>> It just drained him and he was on the couch, you know, we tease with him and said he turned
into a couch potato.
And, you know, he just had-- it just zapped his energy.
He had no energy.
>> You know, you see him overcome this and then you see him overcome, you know, walking
again and balancing again and he just overcomes all these obstacles, and then there's just
one you can't get over.
>> After years of trying numerous medications and even surgery, doctors referred Bob to
Hershey Medical Center.
>> When we had our meeting, the dorsal root ganglion or DRG stimulation was just being
approved by FDA.
So I immediately thought that he would be a good candidate and I referred him to Dr.
Sather.
>> So, dorsal root ganglion stimulation is what it's called and it's basically stimulation
of the dorsal root ganglion, which is an enlarged part of the nerve that sits just outside the
spine.
So it's delivering very low-level electrical stimulation to that dorsal root ganglion.
And that stimulation is just-- is blocking the pain sensation as it travels through and
sort of filters out the bad information before it's getting up to the spinal cord and the
brain.
>> It was going to be a stimulation that I would feel in the part of my leg that doesn't
exist that would block this pain.
And I said, "Boy, that sounds like-- that sounds great."
>> I think we just felt like this is the answer.
This is what we've been looking for.
>> I always tell patients it's a two-part procedure.
So the first part is the trial, where we place the electrodes.
So in Bob's case, this the L3 nerve, this is the L4 nerve below it, and this is the
L5 nerve below it.
So he's going to need basically each of these three levels.
>> One goes to my foot, one goes to my chin area, and one goes to my upper leg.
So, it's got everything covered.
So it's really great how it works.
>> It has the ability to turn certain electrodes off, turn them all off, turn the whole device
off, adjust the settings, higher stimulation or lower stimulation.
>> I knew like after the first day when I went home that it was working.
I could feel it.
They had a surgery set up for the following week that I could back and get this permanently.
So, that Monday came and, you know, we said, let's do this.
>> Dr. Sather implanted the device permanently.
What a huge difference such a small device has made for Bob and his family.
>> It's just been a godsend that, you know, things went the way they did.
>> I have my dad back, you know, I have the positive, goofing around, doing things with
me again like going on family trips.
Everything that was before the accident is kind of how it is now.
And that's this-- it's a really cool thing to see.
>> He seems like a different person.
I keep saying, I got my husband back.
And the one that I married, the active one is a jokester.
And his personality, it just rolled right around, you know, to how he used to be.
>> And I'm just so happy how this turned out, because it's been making such a difference
in my life.
>> Bob says he has cut back on his pain medications.
His goal is to get off of them altogether.
>> Now joining us is Bob's doctor, Michael Sather.
As we saw, Bob had great success with this.
What else can this stimulator be used to treat?
>> Yeah, so Bob had a really great success with this.
The good news is that not only phantom limb pain but lots of other chronic nerve-related
pain conditions can benefit from the dorsal root ganglion stimulator.
So this includes things for example like peripheral neuropathy, postherpetic neuralgia, reflex
sympathetic dystrophy, now known as complex regional pain syndrome and peripheral causalgia
or other types of nerve injuries and conditions.
>> So a wide variety.
>> A wide variety.
>> Just fairly been just recommend-- or just approved within the past couple of years.
>> Correct, that's correct.
>> OK.
So you have a skeleton here.
>> Yup.
>> Tell us how is it implanted?
>> Yeah, so I have a spine model here.
So, this is a two-part surgery, so the first part is implantation of the trial electrodes.
So, here on the spine model, the implantation of the trial electrodes would involve a needle
placement through the skin between the bones of the spine.
And then through that, this guiding catheter would be placed with a wire electrode in it.
And then this would be guided out in between the bones and out through the nerve opening
which is here.
And the dorsal root ganglion sits right outside of the nerve canal, the enlarged part of the
nerve.
And that's where that stimulator wire sits.
And then this comes right out of the skin and hooks to an external pack that we monitor
for about seven days and the patient tells us how it works for them, gives us a thumbs
up and-- or a thumbs down and we forward with it.
If it was more than 50% relief, then that involves then implantation of this battery
pack here, which then sits basically right at the level of the belt line.
>> And what is the recovery like?
>> So in comparison to other types of surgeries and procedures, this is a fairly mild procedure.
The recovery is about six weeks.
The pain is pretty limited, a pretty small amount of pain.
And the success rate is variable from person to person.
But in general, the trial will tell you what kind of relief you're going to get with a
permanent implantation.
So if you have a very successful trial, you're going to have a very successful implant.
We know that about 85% of people have a-- when they have a success with the trial will
have long-term success with the implant.
>> Now we know that Bob wants to get off the medications.
Is this typical for all your patients?
>> Yes, I think it's very likely that Bob will get down on medications, if not off medications
altogether because of his high response to this treatment.