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Doc Talks: Intrathecal Pumps for Chronic Pain Management

Hello and welcome to another episode of Doc Talks. I’m here with a patient of DOC chatting about their experience with Dayton Outpatient Center Pain Management. Thanks for meeting with me today.

Tell me a little bit about yourself and what initially brought you to DOC Pain Management.

My name is Tommy, terrible chronic pain, other doctors’ closed-mindedness, and I needed to get control of my pain. I have had it since I was 45 and Dr. Mehta’s helped me a lot.

Has DOC PM helped improve your quality of life? So, for example, are you able to do anything now that you weren’t able to before starting your treatment plan?

Yes. Before I started here, I was doing good to just walk around the house, get of bed, get out the chair. If I laid the tv remote down somewhere, it’s easier for me now to go get it versus before back. In the past, I just had to lay there and deal with it. If I went outside before, it was outside to get the mail. Now I can walk down the street and can walk 3 or 4 blocks down to the grocery street and back. I can walk my dog (if he doesn’t kill me) I can walk my dog. People come and visit me now who didn’t ever come before. I can leave, I can walk around the house, we can talk, or I can go down the street with them or something. Before, it was bad emotionally and it was just emotionally draining. I don’t know that I was depressed, but I surely wasn’t happy. I’m not depressed now, I am very happy.

How long have you been with this practice? What have you noticed sets us apart from other practices?

Open-mindedness I think is the number one thing. My last doctor, pain doctor before this was a female doctor and she was very negative. I could go on about that but I don’t even remember her name so I’m not going to digress into that. She was a very bad person in my mind. But here, they were very cautious and didn’t want to just throw pain medicine out there to me. They allowed me to adjust myself to where it helped. 

Tell me a little bit more about the intrathecal pump. 

It was traumatic for a couple of days. I know what it’s like to be shot, and it felt like I was shot. They [DOC Pain Management] still didn’t give me a whole lot of pain medicine and they wanted me to deal with that, which was a good turned out to be better than I thought. It was a good thing not to take too much pain medicine. After I started getting used to it it was better, but they needed to adjust it and it took them a few months just to adjust. Finally, when we got the final adjustment, it made a big difference and we just supplemented it with a lower dosage of a different type of pain pill that’s not an opioid, I don’t believe its an opioid.

In your experience with DOC Pain Management, has there been a particular staff member that has helped you or impacted you? In what way? 

Dr. Priyesh Mehta is my doctor, he’s amazing. He helped me and he showed me understanding. That right there is I think the most important thing. He didn’t think I was lying when I would talk about my pain. He saw the pain that I was going through. Our visits weren’t in and out in a minute. If I had to be there for 15-20 minutes, we would talk for 15-20 minutes. In my mind, he’s just a good guy.

Hypothetically, let’s say someone you know or love is in pain – what would you tell them?

Whatever you do, not all doctors are educated enough to discuss, in my mind, opioids the right way.