July of 2022 marked one of the most frustrating moments in my health journey. I was on a fun trip back home for a friend’s birthday and unexpectedly – with no warning – was unable to keep any food down. When I can’t keep food down it means I’m so full it has nowhere to go. My mother – who had covid at the time but had no choice but to me my strength – took me to emerg where I was emptied out over several hours and given a temporary medication for gastroparesis. I started taking them but the side effects were much too detrimental to my well-being I had to stop. By October, which was my 2 year anniversary of being chronically constipated with no answers, I was devastated and had run out of hope. But just like that, I got a call from Dr. Lemos in Toronto. Not the call you expect to have, but a great one nonetheless. He had said he firmly believed I had done everything, and he had zero answers for me. But, he offered up a referral to a urologist who was doing a new kind of treatment with sacral neuromodulation. You might say, ‘why not get some answers first before going through such drastic measures’, but I would rebuttal that I was out of options, severely depressed and willing to do anything.

Fast forward, I had a booking with Dr. Dean Elterman in early 2023, in person. I drove down to Toronto to meet with him, fully expecting the dismissal and the eye rolling that comes with having an explainable complicated case. To my surprise, as I answered his direct questions he provided me with the hope of the ‘stim’ working for an off-label use like constipation with the potential added benefit of pelvic pain. Having felt so validated I said yes to the 7-day trial which was booked in for April 2023.

The stim was inserted (with local anesthesia) internally connecting a wire from the outside of my body and feeding it internally to my sacral nerve inside my body. Once the electrodes were connected, a frequency was added to the wiring and I was to tell Elterman where the vibration was felt. The goal was to finally have the vibration either inside my rectum or inside my vaginal area by resetting the connecting point on the nerve. Finally, we got a point just inside my vagina, and we left it connected there for a week. Using a hand held device I was there instructed to turn on the vibration, and increase the ‘intensity of the vibration’ until I could feel it. Once I could, I go down one ‘volume’ and leave it there for a week. If you don’t follow me on tiktok that’s where you can find my videos during the trial. To say it didn’t hurt would be a boldface lie BUT within 48 hours I had the most magnificent poop. I could barely move (and I wasn’t allowed to shower) so I went outside to the back porch to tell my parents and we collectively did a happy dance. Over the 7 days I had 2-3 poops which was a cry from the one poop per 10-14 days I was used to.

On the day we were to remove the trial stim, I was supposed to bring in my poop journal but I forgot it. He didn’t care, he was just concerned if the trial went well and if it improved my BMs by 50% or more. Indeed it did. So … we agreed to get the permanent stim implanted … the next day!! Thanks to a covid cancellation and my plea to have this done before my wedding I took the cancellation slot and came back the next day. It was a short surgery and again it hurt but hey… I was back in Ottawa within a few days getting on with my life. For videos on the channels and volumes settings check out tiktok.

Anyways, …within the first three months I was to make sure I tried all the channels to see which one sat with me the best. Ultimately I kept going back to channel one – which means nothing to anybody reading this – at volume 5. During the follow up phone call I wasnt super pleased with the results thus far because I was still needing to take a stool softener once a week (still a far cry from two stool softeners every 10 days or a colonoscopy prep every 14 days). I was expecting more. She said to keep the stim on the most desirable setting and let it be for three months. Over time the need for stool softeners decreased but I still felt like there was a blockage (that everyone keeps denying that is there) that prevents poop from entering my descending colon. That means the stim was doing what is was supposed to but there was an issue getting poop to the point where the stim could be effective. I started seeing a nutritionist – a blog entry for another day – and all of a sudden I was having perfect BMs every day or every other day.

Now, if you’re reading this because of the pelvic pain issue let me preface this by saying I didn’t have the stim put in for this reason and I never really paid attention to it. However, I did realise recently that in the last 8 months I have had very very tolerable periods. The pain during menses is dramatically reduced (yet I still have brutal ovulation pain).

I had my follow up today with Elterman’s colleage and she was over the moon with the results. I asked her if I could tell others about the stim and she did say the stim is really only intended for those who have TRIED EVERYTHING but it is approved for pelvic pain in Canada. So there you go.