Grappling With PD

aka the soundtrack When I arrived for the battery implant operation on 5/7, I was doing the check-in dance for the third time. Get there on time (early, if I am able), undress and put on the gown, get an IV started, wait for transport. For some reason, on this particular day, when the transport dude arrived and started pushing me along the passages that lead to the OR section, I had a mental impression of "Ride of the Valkyries" (which I mislabled "Flight of the Valkyries"). I thought of suggesting it, but did not speak up. At first.  The transporter dropped me off in a holding area next door to the OR. It was staffed by one kind old nurse who came over to talk to me. We chatted amiably for a few minutes, after which she returned to her desk and got back to work. On a computer. "Are you allowed to play music?" I asked, half expecting to find it forbidden. Without missing a beat, she said that she had never tried. As I watched h...

Several people have asked if DBS is a cure for Parkinson's (it is not) or if it will freeze the progression (it will not).  DBS is a treatment, akin to medication.  Each treats symptoms of the disease, but not the disease itself.  Neither can slow the progression of PD.  Medications are a pharmaceutical treatment, and DBS is a surgical treatment. An analogy that might help understand what DBS will do for most patients who undergo the procedure is a house which has a leaky pipe in the basement.  For my purposes here, the basement is the brain, the leaky pipe is PD, and flooding in the basement represents symptoms of the disease--typically reduced functionality (slow movement, tremor, freezing etc., but the symptoms vary from person to person). In the beginning the leak is small, and it goes unnoticed.  You have PD, but there are no noticeable symptoms, and it remains undiagnosed.  Over time the leak grows larger--PD progresses--until the water accumula...