"I haven't slept through the night for 20 years," Kevin said. "I haven't dreamed in 20 years."
During those years, he went to dozens of specialists and underwent multiple neurosurgical procedures, but nothing worked. He was close to giving up the search for treatment - close to accepting the pain that had become part of his life - when a new, more intense level of pain drove him to yet another specialist in Rochester, New York.
"The doctor said he was going to learn how to perform this innovative new procedure from a doctor at Harper University Hospital in Detroit and he told me to come back in six or nine months after he'd learned it," Kevin said. "I thought: 'Six or nine months! If he's going to learn from a doctor in Michigan, I'm going to that doctor!'"
The physician was Jeffrey Brown, M.D., a neurosurgeon at Harper University Hospital. The procedure, pioneered by Dr. Brown at Harper, was a motor-cortex stimulator - like a pacemaker for the brain - with the potential to eliminate Kevin's pain forever.
"Dr. Brown is a different kind of doctor," Kevin said. "Right away, I could tell how much he cared, how much he wanted to help me."
And he did help. Kevin had the first part of the two-part procedure in August 2003, just hours before the blackout that left much of the Northeast and Midwest without power. His wife of 25 years, Carol, and their now-grown daughter, Heather, were by his side. When he awoke from the surgery, the pain was gone.
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