KITTANNING, Pa. -- Debra Painter once experienced such serious back pain that she thought she couldn't go on and took medication that caused her to have trouble functioning, but thanks to a recent procedure she's now pain free.
"Just about suicidal. That's how frustrated I was," said Painter.
Painter's frustration was the result of sacroiliitis, an inflammation of the sacroiliac joint that is one of the most common causes of lower back pain.
"It's like somebody is stabbing you every hour of the day. When you wake up in the morning, you hurt. When you go to bed at night, you hurt," said Painter.
She tried just about every pain pill that could be given to her, but nothing worked.
That's when she opted for a SR rhizotomy, a procedure covered by her insurance.
"This is what is new and innovative. This needle allows us to place it all along the sacroiliac joint. Once we're there, it takes eight minutes to perform this procedure," said Dr. Jack Kabazie, of West Penn Hospital.
Kabazie said the procedure is changing lives.
"Once it's in place and we've seen it on the X-ray machine under real time, we turn on the generator and we actually lesion the web of nerves that are in here to take away the pain," said Kabazie.
Painter said her pain vanished as soon as the procedure was over.
"I knew when I was in the recovery room that I was out of pain. He said, 'How do you feel?' and I said, 'Like I could jump off this table and run a marathon,'" said Painter.
Painter had the procedure done in March and was back to work two days later.
Nearly six months later she hasn't experienced any problems.
She's also been able to return to her passion, riding motorcycles with her husband.
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