Jerry Lewis took out his Beretta pistol and laid it on the table in his bathroom. After 37 years of pain stemming from an on-stage pratfall at The Sands in Las Vegas, the comedian was ready to end it all.

Martha Rial Comedian Jerry Lewis demonstrates yesterday how he became able to lift his daughter after the implantation of a pain-relief device similar to a cardiac pacemaker. Click photo for larger image.

Then his 10-year-old daughter, Danielle, ran in. 'Daddy, can you help me with a problem from school?' She sees the gun. And thank God I do a gun routine in my act ... I told her I was rehearsing and she bought it, thank God," he recalled yesterday.

Lewis gathered himself up in front of his child and the impulse to suicide passed. "Reason returns, ya know? But when you get that close, it's frightening."

That was 2 1/2 years ago. Now, the 78-year-old entertainer says he's pain free and he came to Pittsburgh yesterday to talk with doctors at Allegheny General Hospital about how he found relief.

Lewis said he was helped by the implantation of a neurostimulator, a device similar to a cardiac pacemaker. The stimulator sends tiny electrical impulses through wires to his spinal column and is controlled by a palm-size box.

He adjusts the device by placing the controller over the battery pack implanted on his left side and pushing the appropriate buttons. "I can turn it on from here, turn it off, raise the stimulation depending on the pain I'm having, or lower the level," he said. "And it also opens my garage door."

Since getting the implant two years ago, Lewis has visited two dozen cities to talk with physicians as a paid spokesman for Medtronic Inc., which manufactured the device he uses.

"I need people to know that there's hope," he said, citing estimates that 75 million Americans suffer from chronic pain. He also promotes Tame the Pain, a public education campaign.

Lewis came to Pittsburgh from Washington, D.C., where he lobbied this week on behalf of a bill introduced by Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., that would establish a National Center for Pain and Palliative Care Research within the National Institutes of Health.

Neurostimulators have been available for pain control for about two decades, noted Dr. Donald Whiting, a neurosurgeon who regularly implants the devices at Allegheny General.

The device is placed under the skin and several paddle-like electrodes are placed in the space between the spinal cord and the bones of the spine. By adjusting the placement of the electrodes and adjusting the strength and amplitude of the electrical pulses, nerves can be stimulated in such a way that pain signals are blocked, Whiting said.

The devices, which cost about $10,000 for the hardware and about $10,000 to implant and adjust, can be effective for people who suffer chronic pain of the legs, upper or lower back, or the arms that is unrelieved by other methods, he said, as well as for chronic pain from diabetes-related nerve damage.

To see if a patient is a candidate for surgery, physicians perform electrostimulation using temporary, external electrodes for a week or two. Dr. Doris Cope, director of pain medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said about half of patients who undergo the trial say the stimulation reduces their pain by 50 percent to 75 percent.

"This is not the first thing you try," Cope said, noting that medications, weight loss and physical therapy are among the approaches used to treat chronic pain.

The neurostimulators work best for people with pain in one area. People who have pain throughout their bodies, or over large regions, or cancer patients whose pain is spreading are not candidates for the therapy, she said.

Lewis said he stopped doing pratfalls when he chipped his spine in 1965 and he tried a number of medications and steroid injections through the years, some offering a little relief and others none at all.

Few fans knew of his agony, however. "I performed and the adrenaline took me through that," he said. "But I had 37 years [of pain]. Every single day and every moment of the day."

The day he contemplated suicide in 2002, he said, the pain was no better or worse than it had ever been. "I'm sure that the pain on that Monday morning was no more than it was on Saturday morning," he said. "I just couldn't take it anymore."

His health was complicated further at that time by pulmonary fibrosis, a lung condition for which he was prescribed large doses of steroids. The steroids caused a massive weight gain, which attracted wide attention during his hosting duties for that year's Labor Day Telethon for muscular dystrophy.

"I dodged a couple of big bullets in these last three years," he said yesterday, contending his lungs are "almost back to normal" and that he expects to be completely weaned from steroids within a few weeks.

Lewis said the implantation has changed and renewed his life. "It's changed me to the degree that I can run and play with my daughter," he said, noting the pain had been so severe that he hadn't been able to lift her since she was 4.

"The day after the implant, she came home from school and ran to me. She [had been] hugging me around my thighs because I couldn't catch her anymore. On this day I yelled, 'All the way, Dani!' And she ran and jumped and I caught her.

"I didn't know there were that many tears on the planet. It was just great."