Pain Institute of Southern Arizona

We still haven't quite nailed down the issue, but Dr. Bailey is pushing to figure it out. He has also created a very relaxing, enjoyable environment in the Procedure Center which is awesome since I'm going through procedures that are uncomfortable. I enjoy the atmosphere and appreciate his kindness, the kindness of his staff, his desire to find an answer.

If you don’t elect for surgery, all a doctor or nurse practitioner will do is prescribe medication based on the severity of your phantom pain attacks.

There is no discussion on the cause of the attacks, as doctors simply state that they don’t know.

The “Cure,” they say. is the surgery.

I was told by one doctor that having refused to undergo surgery, I was choosing to accept phantom pain attacks for the rest of my life, and that all he could do was prescribe medication that would hopefully limit those attacks.

After six years of attacks consisting of one-second shocks, I suddenly had an attack consisting of six-second shocks coming at me every twenty seconds for over 36 hours.

I wanted to know if this was unique to me, or if there were similar cases my nurse practitioner or my doctor could tell me about.

The nurse practitioner said she knew about six-second shock attacks but couldn’t discuss them due to confidentiality issues with her other patients.

I had never heard anything so ridiculous in pain therapy, explaining that I was interested only in general information on multi-second attacks—how common they were, and if they would continue.

Again she claimed confidentiality issues with her other patients, and clammed up.

Naturally, I dropped this young woman, and met with my doctor at the next meeting.

He told me he hadn’t a clue how I had gone from having one-second shocks to six-second shocks, that so much was unknown about nerve pain.

He was also unable to tell me how common it was for people to develop multi-second shocks—a statistic I felt might be useful to people like him, especially in predicting if patients would continue to have multi-second shock attacks in the future.

The more questions I asked, the angrier he seemed to get, so I decided to move on from him too.

I feel I will have a much happier relationship with my current nurse practitioner, Angela Marton. She’s very bright; she actually listens, and if she were in her late seventies (like me), I’d ask her out on a date.

I've been a patient of pain clinics for quite a few years. This office on River Rd. is the most comfortable I have been. Very nice nurses (Lucinda! You're amazing) and providers, Angela Marten is kind and considerate and they're all very professional. Thank you for taking care of me!