A CT man was in such pain it felt like a ‘sledgehammer’ hit him. A UConn doctor changed his life

Hartford Courant – Friday, October 10, 2025
By Livi Stanford

The facial pain was so unbearable that it affected Dominic Frasca’s ability to conduct everyday tasks.

“It is like somebody hit you in the head with a sledgehammer,” Frasca, a Manchester resident said. “You would never want anybody to go through that type of pain.”

In 2020 after having a stroke, Frasca was diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia, a rare neurological condition that causes severe facial pain and is referred to as “suicide disease” because the pain is so horrific, doctors say.

While undergoing microvascular decompression surgery, which moved a blood vessel off the nerve brought relief for Frasca, the trigeminal neuralgia returned in 2022 when doctors found a tumor pushing against the trigeminal nerve.

Doctors did not want to perform surgery again in the same area. The pain was relentless, Frasca said.

“During that time I was living on painkillers and your whole life stops because you are in so much pain and you don’t want to do anything,” he said. “Your life slows down.”

Frasca was left with few options until he consulted Dr. Christopher Conner, assistant professor of neurology and director of Functional Neurosurgery at UConn Health, who provided him with an alternative procedure.

The procedure using a facial nerve stimulator has been a gamechanger for Frasca, who says he has little pain and is able to take part in day-to-day activities such as fishing and hiking.

Conner is the first surgeon to perform the procedure in the state, which involves putting wires underneath the skin of the face connected to a stimulator, similar to a pacemaker, that will scramble/jam the pain signals from the face.

He described trigeminal neuralgia as a debilitating condition.

“Women describe it as worse than childbirth and something you can’t run away from,” he said. “It doesn’t go away. It can have a profound effect on people’s mental well- being.”

Conner said he learned of the procedure while attending a year fellowship at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Mojgan Hodaie, professor in the department of surgery at the University of Toronto, said in an email that Dr. Conner joined the university for a one-year fellowship after he became a neurosurgeon in order to have additional focused experience in different surgical techniques in neuromodulation.

Neuromodulation is technology that acts directly upon nerves, according to the International Neuromodulation Society.

Hodaie said doctors studied the success of the procedure in the Journal of Neurosurgery published in 2022 finding that “85% of patients decided that they wanted to go to full implantation of the (simulator) after the trial and of those the majority felt that their pain was at least cut down by half. “

“The premise of neuromodulation is that ‘pain that is the result of nerve injury does not respond well to further nerve injury’ – this is why we choose to modulate the nerve (interfere with how signal is transmitted) rather than injure or cut the nerve,” Hodaie said.

Conner described the innovative procedure as life changing and empowering.

“It has a huge impact on quality of life,” he said. “It is really satisfying to help (patients) and even made sweeter that you are helping them with something that feels so simple.”

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