Tuning the Brain, Taming the Tremors

Six years after they met in an Internet chat room, Linda Jones and Steve Retterer woke up in the same Vanderbilt Adult Hospital room.

“I think it’s daylight,” Jones said, as the anesthesia began to wear off.

“I think you’re right,” Retterer answered, groggily.

The romance they unknowingly began in 2005 when they were newly diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and looking for online support had come full circle in 2011 when the pair underwent deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery—a procedure that entails implanting electrodes in the brain to continuously stimulate a targeted area to control tremors.

In 2005 they were worried about their impending disability, burdened by the stress that would ultimately end their marriages and staring into computer screens looking for hope. The disease they shared had progressed to the point that medicine wasn’t providing relief from the constant twitching, rigidity and other movement problems that are the hallmark symptoms of Parkinson’s.

On the morning of their surgery, they held hands and looked forward to better days.

By the time Jones and Retterer were wheeled into an operating room on that day in 2011, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) doctors were doing about 100 DBS surgeries annually. Last year marked the 20th anniversary of the hospital’s first procedure and this year, VUMC will surpass its 1,000th surgery. The milestones occur as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expands DBS treatment to people with mid-stage Parkinson’s disease and VUMC investigators lead a nationwide clinical trial to determine if the therapy can slow the progression of Parkinson’s in early-stage cases.

Read more at Vanderbilt Medicine Magazine