David VanDuzen still goes to the clinic every Friday morning for shots to his shoulder. He wakes up at 3 a.m. every morning, too, to take an assembly of drugs. And he has a strong diet of painkillers for when the hurting is worst — when, in the evening, it feels like a 220-volt electrical shock is zapping through what used to be his left hand and wrist.
It lasts for about three seconds, then fades. Minutes later, it returns. Without drugs, the pain can go on like this for hours. “It’d be like someone taking a paring knife,” VanDuzen said, “and ripping up the inside of your arm.”
