For nearly 25 years, Juli Brockmann, 58, had debilitating facial pain that brought her once fulfilling life to a grinding halt. Even with powerful medications, Brockmann’s pain kept her mostly bedbound. In September 2025, Brockmann was implanted with a spinal cord stimulator at Duke Health. It quiets the pain signals coming from the damaged facial nerves causing Brockmann’s pain. “I am Juli again,” she said. “I can clean my house. I can take my dog for a walk. I can get up and shower. I never dreamt that I could be this person again.”
Oral Surgery Led to Facial Nerve Damage
Juli Brockmann was in high school when oral surgery damaged a nerve on the right side of her face, causing one-sided facial paralysis. Years later, Brockmann developed sharp, stabbing pain in her right ear that wrecked her life. “It felt like having a hot fire poker stabbing you in the ear, into the brain, and then an explosion going off inside your head,” Brockmann described. “Or I would just be walking, and it was like a lightning bolt would hit me, and I’d just fall to the ground because it was so intense.”
The pain made everyday tasks nearly impossible. Over time, Brockmann withdrew from loved ones, had to quit a job she loved, and moved closer to her parents in High Point, NC so they could help care for her.
Searching for Hope
Over the years, Brockmann traveled to major hospitals in New York, Ohio, and Florida trying to find relief. The only treatments that managed to help were heavy pain medications, including opioids and ketamine. Even those were little more than a Band-aid, making her so tired she slept most of each day.
In May 2025, Brockmann made an appointment with Blake Parente, a physician assistant at Duke Health. They specialize in treating neurological pain with neuromodulation devices, which use electrical impulses to calm pain signals in the nervous system. Parente explained to Brockmann that traditional surgery probably wouldn’t help her type of pain. Called “atypical facial pain” or “trigeminal deafferentation pain,” this severe, chronic, and rare condition is caused by damage to the nerve that is responsible for sensation in the face.
Because her nerve was so damaged, Parente suggested using a spinal cord stimulator to target an area in the brain stem called the nucleus caudalis. “A spinal cord stimulator is frequently used for low back and leg pain, but since it essentially changes the way the brain interprets pain signals, we wanted to see if that would provide some relief in Juli’s case,” Parente said.
Spinal Cord Stimulation Treats Pain at the Source
A spinal cord stimulator consists of a battery-operated generator and electrodes. The generator sends out electrical signals that change how targeted nerves behave and how the brain perceives their signals. The stimulator’s effectiveness is tested during a one- to two-week trial period. During an outpatient procedure, the electrodes are placed outside of the covering of your spinal cord and under the bone, and the generator is taped to your back. If the device proves to be effective, the full system is surgically implanted under your skin during a second procedure.
Living a Pain-Free Life for the First Time in Years
When Brockmann returned to Duke after her trial, she reported monumental improvement. “I am 80% better! I have had a life the last two weeks!” Parente also noticed the dramatic difference. “She was up, she was walking around. Her whole affect completely changed.”
Brockmann underwent the surgical implantation procedure in September 2025. Since then, she has been enthusiastically getting back to doing the things she enjoyed before, like going to the movies, spending time with family and friends, and exercising. She says she’s so grateful for the kind and compassionate care that she received at Duke. “Blake made me feel like a real human being. As soon as they walked into the room, you could tell they cared and that they knew what struggles I was going through,” she said. “It’s changed my life so much.”
