Stephanie Jones has a long-standing, personal relationship with pain. Now she’s using her experience to help others feel better.
Jones, 40, herniated her L4 and L5 spinal discs and has a condition that causes her joints to slip out of place. She’s had a ligament sprain and strain on the right side of her body from her neck to pelvis. That injury took her out of work for nine months and kind of led her to her current job.
After her work hiatus, Jones was hired by NW Pain Relief Center as the clinic’s nurse practitioner. In September 2017, Jones purchased the clinic, named it Pain Relief Partners and moved it last month to its new location, 406 S.E. 131st Ave., Suite 203, Vancouver.
Pain Relief Partners is a pain clinic that specializes in treating patients without addictive narcotics — a timely approach given the country’s opioid epidemic.
Jones received stem cell treatment from the clinic in April for her back troubles. It not only greatly decreased her pain but allowed her to work 10- to 14-hour days doing “things I never thought I’d do again,” she said, mentioning that she painted walls and scrubbed the floor to get the new location ready.
Her experiences with pain have prepared her for the position she’s in now.
“I think it gives me more compassion and empathy for the patient,” said Jones, a graduate of Fort Vancouver High School. “I understand what they’re going through when they’ve had pain for decades and can’t get out of it.”
Pain Relief Partners accepts most health insurance, except for Kaiser Permanente and state insurance. No insurance covers stem cell therapy, but Jones said the clinic charges less than what’s recommended for stem cell therapy.
The clinic’s chiropractor, Tom Kessinger, specializes in non-narcotic treatments. The Clinic provides stem cell therapy, such as trigger point injections, joint injections and ankle blocks for neuropathy. The clinic helps improve quality of life for people who have chronic neurodegenerative diseases and autoimmune diseases that don’t have cures.
Opioid epidemic
From 2011 through 2015, opioid poisoning was the leading cause of injury-related death among Clark County residents, according to Get Healthy Clark County. Synthetic opioids cause nearly 30,000 overdose deaths per year in the United States. That’s risen from less than 5,000 deaths per year in 1999, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Jones said she’s seeing an increasing demand from patients and providers to treat pain without prescribing narcotics. Just last week, a bill introduced by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., passed the Senate that would authorize $5 million a year to “support hospitals and other acute care facilities that manage pain with alternatives to opioids,” according to a press release.
“There’s a big opioid crisis in our country, especially in the Northwest between Seattle and Eugene,” Jones explained. “There’s been a lot of addiction and overuse. We have a lot of patients coming to us who want to be off of their medication and don’t know how. So we’re helping them get off pain medication and actually treat the cause of the symptoms instead of just masking the symptoms.”
Sometimes patients can begin to taper of their medication within a week, while others might need months. When someone visits Pain Relief Partners, Jones said there’s an initial, complimentary consultation that lasts 20 minutes to an hour, usually with Kessinger.
While Jones swears by Pain Relief Partners’ approach, there is a downside when the patient receives successful treatment, especially with something like stem cells, which can keep helping a patient years down the road.
“We have amazing patients,” Jones said. “I love seeing them, and one of the sad things about stem cells is we treat them and don’t see them much because they’re doing great. It’s wonderful for them but kind of a bummer for us.”
