TENS

First of all: I'm from Holland and my English is terrible, I'm sorry
I'm Jessie and I'm 23 years old. In 1995 I became sick: after 6 months of tests they found out it was generalized dystonia in combination with reflex sympathic dystrophy. Now I'm bedridden for two years. I only can move my eyes and use my mouth. My whole body is cramped. I'm always in severe pain and all treatments have failed. Still my therapist want to try TENS therapy, but she has never treated a person with dystonia before, so she is wondering whether other people have any experience with this form of therapy. Do you know anything about it? Please send me a message, I would be very glad to hear your stories.

Thanks and greetings,

Sorry to hear that you have generalized dystonia.

My understanding is that a Tens machine delivers a low strength electrical current to the area it is applied to, and it more or less works by distracting the nervous system into concentrating on it instead of the problem that is causing the pain. I'm not sure that it provides permanent relief. One situation in which it works quite well is childbirth.

You might want to also post your request to the main DMRF dystonia bulletin board - the url is http://www.dystonia-bb.org/forums/asd/

You'll probably get more response on that board (which covers dystonia generally) (and reach a wider audience?) than posting on this one which focuses mainly on SD = spasmodic dysphonia which is one form of focal dystonia. SD is laryngeal dystonia, and affects the voice.

Good luck in your search for answers.

David

PS - sometimes we get posts related to other types of dystonia on here - in some cases (not necessarily this one) I wonder if that's because our url is one letter (that is, a) different from the main dystonia board's url.

Ours is http://www.dystonia-bb.org/forums/sd/
Main one is http://www.dystonia-bb.org/forums/asd/