No Trouble With the Curve – A Spinal Cord Stimulation Story

If you think about it, life is kind of like a game. Let’s say baseball for example. There are a lot of players with different roles. You start out not knowing much, but over time you get better as you practice. You learn to take pitches as they come. Sometimes you knock it out of the park, sometimes you strike out. The goal is to be happy and fulfilled. We’ll call that “winning” the championship of life.

But no matter how good you get, no matter how focused and prepared you feel to take on whatever life throws at you, sometimes you come up against a pitch that you simply are not ready for.

Troy Thielen knows exactly what this is like. Not only is he an actual baseball player, coach, and superfan, but he was also an all pro in life, hitting almost everything thrown his way. Until one day he came up against a very nasty curveball that changed everything.

Reviewing the Roster

Troy Thielen was born and raised in Eden Valley, Minnesota, a small farming community of barely 1,000 residents just southwest of St. Cloud.

“It was your typical small farm town,” Troy describes. “There wasn’t even a stoplight nearby. Just a little downtown area with a few shops, eateries, and schools, all surrounded by acres of farmland as far as you could see.”

There was also a baseball diamond in town, which was a good thing because the Thielens are passionate baseball fanatics.

“I had been playing baseball since I was two years old,” Troy recalls. “In the Thielen household, from the moment you could swing a bat, you were outside playing ball in the yard.”

Troy played baseball all the way through high school. He had planned to continue playing when he attended Central Lakes College in Brainerd as well. But shoulder issues ended his career early.

However, Troy’s love of the game led to him becoming a baseball coach throughout his adult life. He began as an assistant coach for his stepson’s local team before becoming head coach for three years. He then spent the next seven years in the Babe Ruth traveling baseball circuit, once again starting as an assistant before becoming head coach. Eventually, Troy became an assistant coach for his local Minnesota townball team, the Eden Valley Hawks.

Baseball was life, and Troy was good at it.

The Curveball

Let’s rewind a bit here though, to just before Troy began his meteoric rise in the world of coaching baseball. Though he couldn’t play baseball in college, Troy still went on to earn his associate degree from Central Lakes.

After graduating, Troy took a job selling cars. Turns out he was good at that too, and after several very successful years in the business, he took a job as Finance Manager at a Twin Cities area Toyota dealership. He built a new house in Woodbury in 2005, got married in 2006, and by 2007, was expecting his first child.

Yes, everything was looking up for Troy. Until one day, life threw him a major curveball.

The Strikeout

On April 6, 2007, Troy proudly brought his daughter home from the hospital.

However, what should have been a joyous moment suddenly became very concerning when Troy felt a sharp pain in his stomach.

“It was very unusual,” said Troy. “I was never really one to have any health issues. In fact, I had only missed one day of work in five years. I mean, I have had stomach aches before, but nothing even close to this. I knew right away that this was different; this was wrong.”

Deciding to play it safe, Troy went to the ER. There, the doctors found an infection in his stomach and admitted Troy to the hospital. It was at this point that Troy began to experience a series of increasingly unfortunate events.

While in the hospital, doctors were concerned he may have Crohn’s disease, so they put him on steroids. But those did not mix well with the morphine he was on for his pain, and he developed terrible migraines. After a brief return home, Troy was back in the hospital with more severe pain.

Shortly after this second stint in the hospital, Troy had to have his gall bladder removed. But as a result, bile started leaking out and eating away at his tissues, dramatically worsening his condition. To add insult to injury, he also developed pancreatitis.

By this time, Troy’s pain had become debilitating. Not only could he not work out like he used to, he could barely even move. He gained a lot of weight and the damage to his system forced him to take medications through a feeding tube.

He could not spend time with his daughter like he wanted. Meanwhile, coaching baseball was pretty much out of the question. Troy’s life as he knew it was over.

The Late Game Rally

Luckily, small town Minnesota boys are built tough, and one day Troy cracked his knuckles and decided to do something about all this.

He had been taking medications for his pain, and though they did give him some relief, he also experienced several very difficult side effects. So Troy decided he was done with pain medications and went in search of another solution. After other conservative options failed to pan out, his physician told him to visit a pain management specialist. She referred him to Twin Cities Pain Clinic.

At first, Troy was hesitant.

“I admit, I was dreading going to a pain clinic,” Troy recalls. “I was afraid they wouldn’t believe what I had been going through. But thank heavens, I was pleasantly surprised. They were incredibly understanding and really listened to me.”

During one of Troy’s follow up visits, he learned about spinal cord stimulation (SCS), an advanced, minimally invasive treatment for chronic pain. Troy was adamant about not having any major surgeries due to the inherent risks and long-term effects. This seemed like an intriguing alternative.

With this new idea floating around in his head, Troy mentioned SCS during a family gathering. It really is a small world after all, because Troy’s uncle actually had his own SCS implant to manage his lower back pain. He told Troy all about it and the feedback was promising.

Around this same time, Troy was experiencing back pain as a result of disc degeneration. A common treatment to rectify this issue is a spinal fusion. But fusions are invasive procedures that can’t be undone, and Troy was not ready to go through that.

During his next visit to Twin Cities Pain Clinic, Troy learned that SCS can simultaneously treat back and stomach pain. He decided move forward with the implant.

Taking a Practice Swing

Troy was approved to trial the Proclaim SCS system by Abbott in Fall of 2021. The SCS process begins with a brief trial, allowing the patient to test the effectiveness of the procedure before getting the implant. When Troy was brought to the post-op area after the procedure, the Abbott rep was waiting there to turn on the device.

“After everything I have been through, I am not an easy man to impress,” Troy admits. “But the moment that battery was turned on, my pain almost disappeared. Just like that, I felt significant relief in my back and stomach. I had no words to describe my joy. Not that I could have said them anyway because I was too busy holding back tears.”

Troy admits that the hardest part of the whole process was having to turn the device off at the end of the trial. But there was not an ounce of doubt in Troy’s mind that he would proceed with the implant.

It was time to knock this curveball out of the park.

No Trouble with the Curve

After the holiday season, plus a few more months of getting some things in order, Troy had a shiny new Proclaim Plus stimulator implanted in June of 2022.

“Once again, the results were simply unbelievable,” Troy recalls. “I admit, the post-op recovery period was kind of tough. The summer baseball season was in full swing and I was unable to fully participate in my coaching duties. I mostly hung out in the dugout. But I was just so overjoyed with the relief I was experiencing, there was no way I was going to risk messing it up. I followed every post-op instruction to the letter and did not complain.”

In a perfect example of what happens when you play ball with your procedure recovery plan, Troy’s body healed up perfectly and he came out the other side feeling like a champ. He could get up earlier in the morning and didn’t have to nap nearly as much. He started going back to the gym again for the first time in three years. His daughter was in competitive dance and he could now go out and watch her competitions. He also plans to participate in her studio’s daddy/daughter dance.

And, of course, he sprinted right back into coaching baseball.

“Coaching at the traveling level is an intense process and for a while I was terrified that I would not be able to do it anymore,” Troy states. “But my stimulator made me confident that I would have no problem sticking with the rigorous schedule. I am just so immeasurably grateful to be back doing the things I love most. This stimulator has reopened doors that I thought were shut forever.”

Baseball is Troy’s happy place. Finally, he is back where he belongs.

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The content and patient quotes in this testimonial story describe true personal experiences, reflecting real life stories from an individual who was treated at Twin Cities Pain Clinic. This story is for informational purposes only and should not be considered typical of all patients’ results. Individual experiences may vary, and Twin Cities Pain Clinic cannot guarantee specific outcomes. The subject of this story contributed of their own free will and was not provided any monetary renumeration in exchange for their participation. This testimonial story does not constitute medical advice and you should consult a healthcare professional for medical diagnoses and treatment recommendations.