By Briana Vannozzi
Correspondent
The tremors in 45-year-old John Leonard’s hands and legs are so severe he’s unable to work or drive. Side effects from the strong medications doctors in his native Arizona initially prescribed left his personal and financial life in ruins.
“For the last month he’s spent most of his time in his room because his legs shake so much, the tremors are so bad that he couldn’t get comfortable,” said his father, John Leonard Sr.
“He’s what we call a tremor dominant early onset Parkinson’s disease because he was diagnosed in his mid 30s,” explained Jacqueline Cristini, neuroscience physician assistant at JFK Medical Center.
It’s one of the worst cases doctors at JFK Medical Center in Edison have ever seen. But today he’s undergoing deep brain stimulation surgery — a procedure used to turn those tremors off.
“So this is the lead that we hook to the micro electrode,” explained Dr. Asif Bashir.
Dr. Bashir and his team are inserting a thin, insulated wire called a lead. It’s connected to another wire that monitors the activity of nerve cells and targets the signals that cause tremor and Parkinson’s disease symptoms. The kicker? John is awake — but mildly sedated — for the entire procedure.
“So we are basically listening to the brain as we pass from the thalamus in to the deeper part of the brain which is the subthalamus. The activity goes up and Dr. Hannah and her team is able to track the waves over there as well as we can listen to the activity,” Dr. Bashir explained.
They use an MRI and audio cues to locate the exact target in the brain where the nerve signals generate the symptoms. Rain on a tin roof sound is actually John’s brain responding to the electrode.
“You can hear the brain activity go up telling us we’re getting close to the target,” Dr. Bashir said.
They’ll send electrical impulses from a neurostimulator through the wire into the brain and block the signals causing the tremors.
“It’s very similar to a cardiac pacemaker and it goes in the same area of the chest. It’s just about the same size,” Cristini said.
Doctors fine tune, trying to find the appropriate balance between the highest amount of voltage needed to turn the tremors off without causing side effects.
“That target is not resolving the tremor of the arm and the leg so we’re going to implant a second electrode in the same side of the brain at a different site that will get the tremor under control and he will be able to reduce his medications significantly if not completely,” Cristini said.
Second time around and they’ve got it.
“Prognosis is very good. Once we have the tremor under control then basically as long as you keep on changing the generator every four or five years all of the motor symptoms are controlled for life,” Dr. Bashir said.
It means it’s not the end of the road for the young father of two, it’s the start of a brand new one.