John Ramsey, Fayetteville Observer

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (AP) - Staff Sgt. Zach Collett has a remote control to mute the crippling pain he felt for years in his back and legs.

During a house raid in 2005 in downtown Baghdad, Collett kicked in a door that led to a basement.

The 195-pound soldier was carrying 110 pounds of equipment, and his momentum carried him to the bottom of the stairwell 10 feet below.

Two discs in his lower back exploded. The 20-year-old military policeman wouldn't realize it until the raid was over, when he couldn't lift his legs to get back inside his Humvee. Two surgeries wouldn't dull the misery, which he described as bolts of pain shooting through his back and legs as if he were constantly standing on a transformer. Percoset helped him make it through the day, but the pain was constant.

But this remote - which controls a small battery in his back hooked to electrodes implanted in his spinal cord - made most of his pain disappear.

"This thing is a miracle," said Collett, who had the operation last month. "My friends noticed that I was a completely different person. I was pain-free. I wasn't grumpy and wasn't having mood swings or this or that."

The procedure is called spinal cord stimulation. About 10 soldiers decide to try it each month at Womack Army Medical Center's pain clinic.

Spinal cord stimulation has been around for decades. But as technology has made the parts smaller and smaller, it has recently become practical for soldiers. The procedure is used only if other options for reducing the pain fail.

Recovery time for the soreness from the surgery is about three months. But the pain reduction it aims to treat is instantaneous.

The idea is that different spots on the spinal cord carry pain from different parts of the body to the brain. An electrical impulse on the part of the spinal cord that corresponds with where someone has chronic pain can mask it, replacing the pain with a light shock.

"Whether it's the left leg, right leg, the back, neck ... we can basically stimulate anything on the body," said Maj. Thomas Weber, an anesthesiologist and pain management physician in the pain clinic. "This is the most technologically advanced stuff that we're doing for pain management of the troops."

Weber started the pain clinic in 2004. That year, the clinic had less than 500 visits. In 2008, visits topped 5,700.

The clinic will soon merge in the hospital with Fort Bragg's wounded warriors battalion, giving it more room and better access to the soldiers who need it most.

The idea seems to be spreading, Weber said.

Representatives from Fort Hood have visited Womack to see how the pain clinic operates, he said. And Fort Benning officials asked for help setting up its own pain clinic.

With better armor and initial medical treatment than in previous wars, Weber said, more troops are surviving attacks and coming home injured. The body armor makes injuries to limbs more prevalent, as well.

The pain clinic began using spinal cord stimulation two years ago. It is among several methods, including therapy and acupuncture, that the clinic uses as alternatives to narcotics.

Methods that reduce dependence on narcotics make overdoses less likely.

And the spinal cord stimulators allow some wounded soldiers to return to active duty who would never have been able to before. It improves the soldiers' life while saving the government money by not having to train a replacement soldier or make disability payments.

Weber said a handful of soldiers have returned to Iraq or Afghanistan with implanted spinal cord stimulators.

Sgt. Larry Ruiz hopes the operation will allow him to deploy again. In 2006, as a member of the 1st Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group, Ruiz had his lower leg smashed between an all-terrain vehicle and a tree while training to head to Afghanistan.

He toughed out a 10-month deployment in 2007. Like with Collett, nothing the doctors tried was helping get rid of his pain. He stopped running for more than two years.

Now, instead of pain in his leg, he said, the sensation is like pressing his tongue to a 9-volt battery. It doesn't cripple him the way the pain did.

Ruiz said he hopes to deploy again, and he wants to stay in the Army until he retires.

On a recent Friday, Chief Warrant Officer Jonathan Grogan waited in his hospital gown to be wheeled into the operating room. Grogan has had four failed back surgeries. His back would hurt and his foot would often feel numb. Epidural injections were giving him temporary relief.

Grogan wasn't sure about the surgery, but eventually he decided to try it.

In a half-hour outpatient surgery, doctors put a trial version in Grogan. In the trial, the wires run to a battery that isn't implanted under the skin.

An hour after he was wheeled out of the operating room, Grogan was convinced he would get the implant. He still had some back pain, but the leg pain was gone.

"It feels like your leg is asleep but without the pins and needles," Grogan said. "If it's going to be like this, I'm satisfied."