Technology similar to spinal cord implants?

I do not have a pacemaker, but I have a spinal cord stimulator implant by Boston SCientific. Research indidcates this was made possible after pacemakers and utilizes similar technology.

After a bad car wreck and l0 back surgeries, the doctors finally asked me if I wanted a morphine pump or a spinal cord stimulator. I prefer to be drug free thank you very much. However, during bad weather I am having great problems - particularly during electrical storms. I get shocked. Live near Dallas. Last night I got the heck shocked out of me in a nasty electrical storm. The company reps say they dont know anythig about this and the doctor says the same,. Original implant was 2006 and this started to happen after about l year. I fell and ripped a cord loose (tripped over the water hose - nothing dramatic like your frank and the jumper cables, although I did do that recently come to think about it), anywyam, they replaced the machine in June. Last night was so bad I started contacting lightening experts at NOAA, etc.

Does anybody get shocked from electrical storms or know a way to protect against these shocks? I was in my house. Last year I was shocked by my Delll Laptop and called the rep from company and they btold me that particular laptop puts out too much electricity and I can't keep it on my lap near my body. If they know a computer puts out that much voltage and could be a problem, why would they pretend that lighteing does not? It was so bad I finally took drugs and knocked myself out last night, but I cant live like that... have kids.... I was jumping like I had ants in my pants and it wasn't funny.

My husband used to joke that he would get the control unit and shock me if I'm bad! HA! Like to see him try! The control only works when it is very very close; that's why I dont understand why other electrical things 50 miles away (lightening) can hurt me.

He just found this group and told me you guys might have some idea. The guy from NOAA said it may be possible for the cords in my body to react to lightening. I need some kind of superman suit to put on during thunderstorms!

sherilee

11 Comments

Lightning problem

by ElectricFrank - 2009-08-29 01:08:05

There is one major difference between cardiac pacers and the spinal stimulators. With the cardiac pacer all the control circuitry is inside the body. The only external access is via a magnetic device that is placed directly over the pacemaker and is used to modify settings.

With your stimulator there is an external radio frequency controller that works sort of like WiFi. The control unit is a low power transmitter that sends signals to a receiver inside the pacer. Lightning even quite a distance away can cause interference (like it generates static on a radio) and if it it interpreted by the receiver as a command to send a shock then you feel it. This is also why a laptop computer sitting in your lap can do the same thing. The computer circuits generate radio frequency energy which is very low in power, but when very close can cause interference. I hope this makes some sense.

This sort of lightning interference will penetrate your house or other buildings.

Have you contacted the manufacturer of the device? If this is a problem you aren't the only one having it.

frank

LIGHTNING ?

by pete - 2009-08-29 03:08:21

Lightning flashes are a huge pulse of electomagnetic energy. I would be tempted to make a small underground shelter in my garden which preferably I would line with metal ( any metal) . When I thought a thunderstorm was imminent I would retreat to my subterranean abode until it passed. If I was away from home I would find an underground railway station of find a building with a basement or room below ground. I cannot guarantee this would work but its got a really good chance. You could try constructing a small room / box completely lined with metal on all surfaces including the roof door and floor with all metal surfaces bonded/ linked together and connected by a wire to a copper earth rod in the garden. This will conduct the interference away from you. You can test how well it is working by putting a radio in the underground shelter/box and see if you can pick up any stations
Cheers Peter

FURTHER COMMENT

by pete - 2009-08-29 03:08:58

I wolud also like to point out that this is a also a problem for NASA and the space program and also laboratory equipment. both on the ground and in the air. They are using the techniques I am suggesting . You of course would need a small fan operating through a u shaped tube (to block pulses, to supply air to the chamber. Use a quality copper earth rod and wire to link the metal to ground potential. Cheers Peter

YET ANOTHER COMMENT

by pete - 2009-08-29 04:08:55

Also you could buy a lightening detector hopefully to give you prior warning. They start from about 50 dollars (ON EBAY) for a portable 40 mile warning to over a 1000 dollars on the net for the exotic. Type in Lightning Detector in google and you will find quite a few on offer. Hope this all helps . Cheers Peter

Interesting....

by maryanne - 2009-08-29 12:08:33

I had a patient the other day who just had a spinal stimulator implanted...hers was a Medtronic....amazing things.....she suffered from severe back pain....and she was in tears of joy when she got the stimular implanted as she stated it was 15 years since she has felt so good, but better yet she finally felt like she had some control over the pain.

She was involved in the pain Management group and was considered a candidate for the implant....as i said what an amazing machine.....

Turning battery off

by ElectricFrank - 2009-08-30 01:08:59

The problem with this approach is that the turn off and turn back on command both come from an external control unit via radio frequency commands. So a lightning strike could turn it back on.

The strange thing about the whole scene is that I would expect the manufacturer would use encoded commands to control the device. Otherwise, it could respond to all sorts of transmitter signals. The lightning strikes don't affect garage door openers and they have more exposure than your unit.

Do they have any way of interrogating the unit to see what it has done?

And one last question: does the shock happen at the lightning flash or during the thunder. Try covering your eyes so you can't see the lightning and tell another person when you are shocked. They can correlate the two to be sure that it is the lightning doing it. I'm not implying that you are imagining it, but the brain can do funny things.

frank

turning battery off

by sherilee222 - 2009-08-30 02:08:15

I think he wants to confirm if the lightening is turning it back on. I wonder if each time the lighterning strkes it can turn it off and then the next one turns it on?

They can plug it into the reps unit and it downloads my usage; not sure how long it back-ups info; I will see if he can look this week before it runs through a week.

I was getting shocked before I heard either lighteing or thunder. I finally got up and opened the curtains and saw the storm coming in. More shocks so I turned it off. But shocking kept happening while turned off. (Did not look to verify if it was still off; never dawned on me.) However, when we get those storms here, it is wave upon wave of lightening and thunder; our area by DFW airport is particularly volitile. We had over 350 lighteing strikes in 2 hours on Ths night. It seems like its the waves that are getting me; it does not seem to strike at the exact moment the lightening lights up the sky. But there were other strikes around I could not see, so maybe there were others in area I didnt see but I felt. I wondered if there was some kind of electric field or waves being sent from lightening further away that I was overly sensitive to.

Another strange thing, I lost the control clicker for 3 weeks. The machine baqttery waw dead. I did NOT get shocked during lightening storm thqat week. The battery could not be triggered on during storm because it was dead. So then, I hoped it would not shock me later, after it was charged and after I turned it off, becaue it was "off" but not "dead". It seemed to have something to do with just the possibiltiy/source of power in the unit, and that gives more weight to the theory that storm is turning it on all by itself.... I was not shocked the week the battery was dead and I was shocked when battery was a alive but "off".

... hum. thank you for walking through this with me. I really just want to use it. Right now I feel great. I dondt want to get rid of it and go back to drugs! I really relaly want to find a way to make this liveable. I want to go back to work but this is major problem in tornado alley.

one other question about creating a metal room?

by sherilee222 - 2009-08-30 12:08:13

So sorry to bother you, but we live in DFW, one of the largest lightening locations in the country. I expect another storm within a week.

Can I simply get sheets of metal and put it on the walls of my washroom door, including the cieling? It's the smallest room in the house. Would need to be all 4 sides? But somebody told me I can't touch the metal- so I'd need to be on a bed or something? Can the room have electricity in it or does that defeat the entire purpose? Want no electricity of any kind - just flashlight? Would any electrical device in there give an entry point that would make the whole thing moot?

(Cellular phone? Regular land line phone with phone line? No electric fan?)

Thank you for your suggestions! Can it turn itself ON again by surge from lightening?

by sherilee222 - 2009-08-30 12:08:35

Yes, I want to keep the machine,. When there is no weather, I am almost 99% pain free. I have had it since the end of 2006

It was put in by metronic and they sold this portion of company to boston scienetific a year later. I called them last summer (one year ago) at HQ, talked to my rep and to my surgeon. THey all told me "they had never heard of this before,." Then I told them again since the reimplant surgery with new machine in june. Once again they tell me "we have never heard of this before." They should have said "we see you had this problem last year, NOTwe have NEVER heard of this problem." That makes me mad.

I want to use the device because it has been so helpful to me. But I am not sure if it is going to hurt me with these large energy blasts. Is it going to give me a heart attack? Will it harm organs?

The guy at boston sci told me Frirday to "be sure the machine is turned off from the control device outside of my body and that will shut off the battery internally" and then he said THERE IS NO WAY the machine could generate energy if the device was turned off, I turned it off after about l0 minutes and l0 shocks. It continued for about 2 hours. It seems to me that it WAS shocking me after turned off.

If this is the only problem, and it has no major health/life/death issues, I would like to solve the problem and not give up on teh machine. It has made a major difference in quality of life and I'm almost normal again -- except for storms.

Can I put metal walls in my closet? They would not be grounded in the wall though. A neighbor has built in tornado shelter under the ground, built out of metal, with hydraulic door, with electrical hookups that allow tvs and radio to work down there. If they have those devices working, woult that be allowing current IN? Or would I have to be down there with NO outlet that brings in electricity? I'm sure I could go to her house and try it out. Maybe we could build one of those little tornado shelters under patio too, but they cost about $10,000.

I am now just worried that the company isn't being honest with me. I'd be really really happy to work with them to fix any defect because it has really been a fabulous device. I would recommnd to anybody else, but NOT if they get shocked like this. I cannot go back to work right now because when weather comes in, I get shocked and bad things happen to my body. I can't carry a metal box to work and go jump into a closet/casket device in an office! Or can I? ; 0

Would really like to figure out how I could make some kind of clothig or cape... gosh, I would look skitzophrenic with tin foil on my head... maybe not a good idea. .... Thanks soooo much for explanatoins; the doctor and rep were telling me I'm crazy.


Texas Lightning

by ElectricFrank - 2009-08-31 12:08:50

I taught electronics at a college in Tucson a number of years ago. I had an engineer from the power company who specialized in lightning talk to my class. One of the things he mentioned was your area of Texas being the lightning capitol of the country (some claim it is Florida).

There's always another "cure" for the problem. Move to the California desert where I live. We only have lightning every several years and even then it's rare for it to get near enough to be a problem. I've had a Dish TV antenna on the roof for 10 years and just discovered that they didn't ground it. Can you imagine what that would do in your country.

I don't like like lightning. Being an electronics engineer I know just enough about it to scare me. One of the rules of thumb we use in high voltage circuits is that it takes approximately 10,000 volts to jump one inch. Just figure the voltage of a cloud to earth strike.

best of luck,

frank

Lightening

by Cgriffis6921 - 2014-11-22 04:11:07

I had mine installed last November. A couple months ago I was sitting outside(in a metal chair) when a lightening storm appeared. My stimulator turned on by it self. Ever since when it is on, I get a burning sensation where the lead is installed. Has anyone experienced this. I have called my BS rep with no return call. What should I do?

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