Autism Thoughts

As some of you know, I have been deeply researching TENS and Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation for a few years now. Yes, I admit it is a bit of an obsession with me, I am quite fascinated by the idea of using electricity to manage pain.

Sometime last year I had the idea to try this out on my unruly bladder. As it is with many with autism, I find urination to be most painful. And there really isn't much you can do about it. I mean, it isn't like you can just not pee.

I've tried that. Just ask my mother.

But I have always been a bit nervous of feeding electrical current into the bladder. I know others have done this, some even with success, but to my knowledge no one with autism has ever tried.

And so it is that I document this experiment because it may prove beneficial to someone (or many someones) down the road.

The problem I had with this was the possibility that the current might contract the bladder. I won't go into measured capacity here in public, let's just say I did fear there was a chance for quite a mess to happen at any time, at any place. So I kind of stayed away from it.

Meanwhile I continued to explore the use of TENS for autistic sensory integration dysfunction and also for fibromyalgia. Results of this are for another blog or if you are interested you can email me.

Last week there was an incident, which again I won't go into out here in public, that changed my mind and made me decide it was time to give this a try. And I figured it would probably be okay as long as I stayed home in case anything happened.

So I started doing my research. I looked at programming parameters, asymmetrical bi-phasic wave forms, I read up on the bladder, and tried to find the programming that would best suit the job.

(See, TENS works by creating a "gate" to control pain. A very mild electrical current goes between two electrodes (attached to the skin) and the pain signals between those two points are blocked. They stop at the point of the current. So you are still in pain, you just are not aware of it because the pain signals, though they are still there, are not reaching the brain. They are "gated." This is why TENS is often referred to as "a non-drug alternative to pain management". TENS is legally available only by prescription here in the States. We are the only place in the entire world where this is true. All other countries you can go to a pharmacy and buy one off the shelf. One reason for the prescription here may be in the programming. Programming a TENS is both very easy and very difficult. You must know what you are doing or you could do some damage. Fortunately after a few years of playing with these, I do know what I am doing. I asked the doctor for one and he did not feel my pain was bad enough. So I got mine, all four of them, by cheating.)

The challenge here was to block the pain signals while allowing the two other signals to get through. In other words, for this to work, the signal that you need to go needs to reach the brain, and the signal to actually go itself needs to reach the bladder.

For most people, this wouldn't be a problem. But as sensitive as people with autism are, it might be.

What I came up with was to use a particular TENS, this one being the TENS 6000. What I did (very dry technical information to follow) was use the MRW (Modulated Rate/Width) mode. This modulates between the programmed Rate and the programmed Width every 0.5 seconds, going between 50 and 100 percent alternating of the Rate and Width. I programmed the Rate at 80 and the Width at 60. I took the two electrodes (pads) from channel one and placed them on each side just above the hairline. (No, don't bother to try to picture it...) Channel two I put on each side of the spine on the lower back.

I put the pads on around 6:00pm or so and drank around 32oz of water. By 8:30pm I still had absolutely no urge at all to go. I began to wonder if maybe I had made a mistake in the programming?

So I went into the bathroom and turned off the TENS and tried to go.

Nothing.

Maybe I was dehydrated? I turned the TENS back on and left the bathroom.

At 9:00pm I started drinking another 32oz of water. Even this alone would be my complete eight glasses of water for the day.

By 9:30pm I had all 64oz of water and still no urge to go.

10:30pm I finally felt a small urge to go and I went into the bathroom but needed to turn the gadget off before I was able to actually urinate. The good news is it didn't hurt at all as much as usual.

So I'd say it was both a success and a failure. I may just need to tweak the settings or place the pads somewhere else. I'll work on that tomorrow. I'd like to be able to do this without turning the TENS on and off. I also want a better response from the bladder when it is time to go.

Keep in mind that all of this still doesn't mean this experiment will work. Using a TENS is awkward even in the best of circumstances. Placing the pads where they are is even more so. So even if this works, it still may not be a solution to the problem.

Also it is necessary to understand that just because I find parameters that work for me, that doesn't necessarily mean they will work for someone else.

Thus ends my first day.