Brett Favre, a famous NFL quarterback, recently said that he has Parkinson’s disease. His news brought more attention to the degenerative disease that has no known cause or cure.
While Parkinson’s and essential tremor, a movement disorder that affects up to 10 million people in the U.S., are still hard to treat, doctors are making progress. One of the first people in the Chicago area to try one of Northwestern Medicine’s new processes was talked to by CBS News Chicago.
Recently, Chuck Wicks has used the word “miracle” a lot. This is less than two months after surgery that stopped the shaking in his right hand.
“It’s gone,” Wicks, who has essential tremor, said. “It’s an absolute miracle.”
For all of Wicks’ adult life, he has had essential tremor disorder, but a video taken just two hours after a “focused ultrasound” treatment showed that his right hand was no longer shaking.
In that video, Wicks said, “It is a miracle.”
He said he just recently chose to look into different kinds of therapy.
Wicks said, “I just chose to bite the bullet.” “What have I got to lose?”
He learned that his Medicare plan would pay for the surgery.
“How they ever determined where this spot was in the brain is amazing,” he said. “I wish all of that technology had been around.” It’s something I could have done 25 years ago.
The non-invasive procedure, which uses soundwaves to target the part of Wicks’ brain that caused the tremors, was done by Dr. Joshua Rosenow and his team. This is an old treatment, but Northwestern Medicine is one of the few in the country that offers it.
Rosenow said that some patients have been hesitant to agree to other tremor treatments, such as surgery to put an electrode in the brain.
“You think about how far, think about Parkinson’s research has come since Michael J. Fox went public back in the 1990s,” said Rosenow. “The way we think about Parkinson’s has changed a lot.” Now, Mr. Wicks has essential tremor, which is a more common movement issue than Parkinson’s. However, it’s not treated as well with medicine or surgery as Parkinson’s is.
Wicks said that the processes have changed the way he does everyday things like writing and playing pool.
“Now that it’s been done, it’s almost like it has always been this way,” he noted. “It’s amazing.”
Wicks said the procedure went so well that he might get it done on his other hand too, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says a person has to wait at least nine months between treatments.
Source: Chicago area man with movement disorder among first to be treated with new procedure
