My hand simply stopped shaking! It was a miracle
At 55, Deborah Flores had already lived with Parkinson’s disease for nine years. The shaking in her right hand was getting so bad she had trouble with things most people take for granted – doing up buttons, feeding herself, using a computer mouse.
“I was embarrassed by my shaking,” she said. “I didn’t want to go out to eat anymore.”
More importantly, perhaps, she was having difficulty playing the piano, an essential tool in her profession. Deborah is a
K-5 music teacher at Hornsby-Dunlap School in the Del Valle Independent School District.
But Deborah is free of shaking now. She credits that to the “miraculously successful” treatment she got through the NeuroTexas Institute’s Movement Disorders Program.
That treatment was deep brain stimulation.
Deborah was taking increasing doses of powerful drugs to control her Parkinson’s. Still, her condition slowly worsened. Meanwhile, Deborah said the drugs’ side effects were making it difficult for her to function.
“As a classroom teacher, you need one hundred percent of your faculties,” she explained.
Early in 2009, she and her doctor considered levodopa, but found it could not be used on her because of a health issue unrelated to Parkinson’s. That was when Deborah was referred to the Institute.
Her surgery was done in June by Dr. Anant Patel, a nationally recognized leader in deep brain stimulation. The process required several visits: to drill holes in her skull, to insert wires to the part of her brain, to place a battery operated control device like a pacemaker under her skin, and then to activate the device.
“I was wide awake for every part of it,” Deborah said. Thanks to a local anesthetic, her only discomfort was the noise and vibration caused by the initial drilling. “But my fourth and fifth grade students helped,” she laughed. “They presented me with an MP3 player that contained their favorite songs, which I played to help take my mind off what was happening.”
She especially remembers the moment when Dr. Patel was inserting wires.
“He asked me to think of something really upsetting that would make my tremors worse,” she said. “My right hand began to shake, and when he touched the wire to exactly the perfect spot on his first attempt, my hand simply stopped shaking! It was a miracle.”
Deborah is now off all of her Parkinson’s drugs except for a maintenance dose.
