All posts filed under: Quell

Boston Herald, Quell 2.0, Pain Awareness Month (and Some Thoughts)

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Hey kids! It’s been a while. Things have been busy with a new part-time job, so my attention has been diverted. Much has been happening. September came and went without me even mentioning Pain Awareness Month. Good job, me. My only contribution was being quoted in this Boston Herald piece about the Quell’s newly-released version 2.0. I think it explains wearables in a good way and how they can be added to a patient’s self-care toolbox. It won’t end the opioid epidemic, but it might help. Read the Boston Herald article here. Chronic pain patients are (rightly) suspicious of anything available over the counter. It always seems like someone is trying to take advantage of our suffering and pull a fast one on us. Considering Stephen Colbert’s recent pointed slap to the Sackler family, there is a basis to this collective suspicion. For those unfamiliar, the Sacklers own pretty much all opioids in the universe (OxyContin, most importantly, a drug for which they pushed a hellishly inaccurate marketing campaign), and they also manufacture generics of …

The Quell Pain Relief Device: One Year Later

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One year ago today, a beautiful relationship between man and machine began. I shall weave my disclaimer into the story: This day last year, FedEx delivered the Quell pain relief device that I’d bought during their Indiegogo campaign. I hadn’t been contacted by the company to try it, and I paid for it with money that I earned. I keep several alerts on my news feeds, and I found it in a story about new medical devices that contained this slim, mostly unobtrusive wearable. It sounded too good to be true — it could produce endogenous opioids within my body, like natural versions of the medications I fought so hard each month to receive? All-over pain relief by wearing an electrode on the calf? I didn’t care if it sounded too good to be true. I had to try it. And I have tried it for approximately 350 out of the past 365 days. About one week of that was when I transitioned to a work-from-home situation. My routine was so interrupted that I simply …

Pain News Network: Dressing for Comfort and Success

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Check out my latest column for the Pain News Network! Comedian Patton Oswalt once apologized for all the times he made fun of sweatpants. “I thought the pinnacle of mankind would be Mars colony or teleportation. Nope! Sweatpants! That was it. Sweatpants!” he said. “We started with fire and the wheel and writing, agriculture, penicillin, sweatpants. Everything else, we’re just on the downward slope. We did it. We’re all done.” Oswalt went on to say how one never puts sweatpants on after showering; they’re always worn over “un-deodorized flesh,” with which I disagree. Why? Because I just took a shower and then put my sweatpants back on. (That’s not the point of this post.) If you are one of the approximately 60 million people in the world with chronic pain, you know that regular clothes can just hurt. It becomes a burden to wear something as regular as jeans. We operate by feel alone. What is comfortable? What doesn’t compound our pain? What feels good against our tortured skin? Sweatpants! This obviously was a problem …

The Quell Pain Relief Device: 8 Months Later

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Hi, everyone. It’s been quite some time since I’ve shouted into the electronic void. I had such grand plans, too. At the end of 2015 I left my full-time job as an associate attorney. My bosses did so much for me, but the way our office was set up, having me work part-time just wasn’t possible. The month of December was my slow transition to working from home. I still have my freelance editing work, but primarily I am home. In my sweatpants. With my cat. I figured I would use this time to write a ton of blog posts, start my new website (to be formally announced at a later date), do yoga four times a day, walk an hour every day, finally go to the gym, hang out with my cat, wake up at 5 a.m. during the work week, do some personal writing for the first time in years, etc. I had grand, unrealistic plans. At the very least I still plan to discuss transitioning to working from home, but that’s not the point …

Pain News Network: The Quell Pain Relief Device

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Pasted below is the content of my first column as a regular contributor for the Pain News Network! When presented with the Quell pain relief device, people make one of two assumptions about me: 1.) I injured my knee, or 2.) I am a paroled felon wearing a very forgiving Velcro GPS. As I said in my recent guest column, I have made it my mission to test as many pain relief products and therapies as possible. Some of them might be familiar to you; others will be of the “new and bizarre” variety. Whatever they are, I will be your Friendly Neighborhood Guinea Pig and review them for your convenience. I only draw the line at “Made for TV” products that are out to swindle the desperate consumer. Pain patients are certainly desperate. We have a constant refrain humming through our bodies that plays a different tune for each person. Doctors are the musicians taught to hear those tunes — but how can they possibly learn all the music? How can they hear your …

The Quell Pain Relief Device: Living Up to Its Label?

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My long-awaited Quell pain relief device has finally arrived! As soon as I saw the FedEx truck rumble by, I heaved myself out of my chair and hurried to the front door, hoping to see that plain, unassuming box sitting on the front step. There it was, as I’d dreamed for months. I basically ripped it open with my teeth. I backed the Quell IndieGogo the moment I discovered it during the winter; it had already tripled its $100,000 goal. At this point my fairly useless pain clinic says I have exhausted most of my options in terms of what they can provide, unless I want to try an IV lidocaine/ketamine mix. I had the IV lidocaine infusion two weeks ago, and the aftermath was nothing short of a pain-riddled disaster. I’m grasping at straws here. Quell makes grand promises in its sleek promotional video. As PSFK said: TENS systems aren’t new in the market but Quell’s prescription-free, user-friendly and discrete approach is special. The Quell, no matter where the body pain is, could be left strapped at the calf where …