Columbia, S.C. • Desperate for relief after years of agony, Jim Taft listened intently as his pain management doctor described a medical device that could change his life.
It wouldn't fix the nerve damage in his mangled right arm, Taft and his wife recalled the doctor saying, but a spinal-cord stimulator would cloak his pain, making him "good as new."
Taft's stimulator failed soon after it was surgically implanted. After an operation to repair it, he said, the device shocked him so many times that he couldn't sleep and even fell down a flight of stairs.