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Calif. Woman Finds Pain Relief In Metro Detroit

ROYAL OAK (WWJ) - After more than four decades of debilitating pain, a California woman found relief here in Metro Detroit.

Doctor after doctor told 65 year-old Jon Rivers she would have to just live with the excruciating pelvic pain she'd had since giving birth to her daughter 41 years ago.

pudendal nueromodulation surgery
Dr. Kenneth Peters of the Beaumont Urology Center holds the device used in pudendal nueromodulation surgery. (credit: Sean Lee/WWJ)

"Your whole quality of life goes down." Rivers told WWJ Health Reporter Sean Lee. "You don't have anything left. You judge everything you're doing by how much pain you're going to have, and you don't do it."

Finally, Rivers was referred to the Women's Urology Center at Beaumont Hospital, where Doctor Kenneth Peters performed an outpatient procedure call a pudendal neuromodulation, which implants a kind of pacemaker that overrides abnormal the nerve signals that cause pelvic pain, urinary and bowel problems.

"By the next day, she had already had a remarkable improvement in her symptoms," said Peters. "Her pain was dramatically less; she was available to cut down dramatically on the amount of pain medication she took."

On Tuesday, Rivers was able to dance with her husband Ray to celebrate their anniversary — something she hasn't done in 30 years, because of her pain.


(Raw video by WWJ's Sean Lee)

For more information about Beaumont's Women's Urology Center, visit this link.

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