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DrewI am a thirty something married gay boy living in Sydney, almost on top of the gay scene but not in it! Why Sometimes blue?, because I love blue, but also I am sometimes blue :)
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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Deep Brain Stimualtion

I am not particularly close to my extended family, there are pockets that I am closer to which is nice and there are entire sections of the extended family that I would have preferred does not exist (and probably vice versa).

Anyway one of my close relatives my aunt has Parkinson's disease which she was diagnosed at 38 some twenty something years ago.

As the years have progressed her symptoms have worsened considerably and the involuntary movements, shuffle, trouble speaking etc has become in a word debilitating.




But today she will go into hospital to Have a new kind of treatment, Deep Brain Stimulation DBS which is one of the greatest hopes for control of Parkinson's disease.

Essentially they will sedate her and then insert a series of electrical probes into the part of her brain which causes the 'mis - firing' and symptoms of Parkinson's. When they find the part of the brain they will leave some electrical probes in there and hook them up to something like a heart pacemaker.

This all happens while she is fully awake too, this way they can make sure they find the correct part of the brain.

The idea is that this device will prevent the symptoms of the Parkinson's.



This is a monumental step forward for Parkinson's sufferers and I hope this really helps my Aunt's condition!

I am not sure that I could cope with being awake for this type of thing, I think it would just freak me out far too much, but if I had Parkinson's disease and had lived for so long with the symptoms I suppose you would put up with a bit of discomfort!

More info on DBS

1 Comments:

At Wed Jul 23, 06:58:00 PM EST, Anonymous Virpi said...

I just saw a documentary about DBS and was very impressed with the results. Hope everything goes well!

 

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