Beating a debilitating disease

By Margaret Carroll-Bergman
I&M Staff Writer


The simple things in life are what Brian Chadwick enjoys most, like buttering toast or operating a chainsaw. But he’s been deprived of those simple pleasures for five years, after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a neurological disorder which causes occasionally-severe body tremors.


Until this week, that is, thanks to Deep Brain Stimulation surgery he underwent earlier this month at Massachusetts General Hospital, a procedure that he said has eliminated the shaking.


While not a painful disease, the tremors associated with Parkinson’s can cause involuntary muscular contractions and tendinitis, an inflammation of the tendons.


“Well, I could run a saw before, but it was a little shaky and my wife did not like it,” said Chadwick, 46, a retired police officer and current selectman who is married to Charlene Chadwick, a nurse at Nantucket Cottage Hospital.


The surgery consisted of boring two nickel-sized holes on either side of Chadwick’s skull and connecting two electrodes to his brain, one to the right side and the other to the left, with wires going down the back of his neck and connecting to a nuerostimulator, a pacemaker-like device, installed just under the skin of the chest. The electrical impulses from the nuerostimulator block the electrical impulses from Chadwick’s brain which cause the tremors.


Chadwick was awake during the surgery, performed by Dr. Emad Eskandar, director of stereotactic and functional neurosurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.


“It was kind of creepy when the holes were bored into my head,” said Chadwick, who played video games during the surgery so the surgeon could track his brain functions. “Then I smelled a fiberglass resin, which I have used when fixing boats. The doctor was plugging the holes in my head with the same type of resin, only it was a medical resin.”
While Chadwick did not feel the holes being drilled into his head, he was under a slight anesthesia, he did feel the bolts, which hold the frame of the electrodes to his head, being tightened.


“They gave me a shot of Novocain for the skin, but they used a ratchet to tighten the bolts and I could feel that. The bolting was brutal,” he said.


This week, after Chadwick healed from the surgery, the neurostimulator was turned on and the tremors stopped almost immediately.


“I felt a whoosh through my body when they turned it on,” said Chadwick of the nuerostimulator, which is activated by a magnetic force. “I felt an electric feeling in my brain, like a burning feeling and then felt the power go up my neck to the implants and then, up my arm and down into my fingers. In five to 10 seconds, the tremors went away.”


“I can’t get Tased,” Chadwick teased of the stun guns carried by Nantucket police officers. “The battery will last three to five years and when it needs to be replaced, the doctor will cut along the old incision mark and replace the neurostimulator.”


On Tuesday morning, when Chadwick was interviewed, he was exuberant.


“This morning I had breakfast and I did not need help opening my creamer or buttering my toast,” he said. “This operation helps with a level of independence. It does not cure Parkinson’s but it does stop the symptoms.”


For now, Parkinson’s affects the right side of Chadwick’s body. The electrical wire from the electrode on the left side of his brain controls the right side of his body. Should the left side of his body experience tremors, doctors can plug the wire from the right side of his brain into a second neurostimulator, which would have to be implanted, but would not require future brain surgeries.


Chadwick, a self-described Navy brat, came to the island when he was 5 years old, was educated in the public schools and then served in the Navy for four years and attended college. He started working for the Nantucket Police Department in 1986 and in 1991, was seriously injured in a bar fight while making an arrest. At that time, Chadwick broke his neck and after his recovery, returned to regular police duty before retiring a decade later. He now works as a caretaker.


Although the disease was diagnosed five years ago, Chadwick remembers some of the early signs even before then that something was not quite right.


“At first I noticed the ticking in my hands and the pillaring with my fingers. Over time, it got faster and faster,” said Chadwick. “I was writing (parking) tickets in Sconset and was not nervous and wondering why this was happening.”


The Parkinson’s progressed steadily, but Chadwick said he was grateful it wasn’t ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.


Charlene Chadwick started studying Parkinson’s disease and also started a Parkinson disease support group at the hospital.


“She wrote a research paper on recognizing and dealing with Parkinson’s patients in the emergency room,” said Chadwick. “Charlene submitted it to a nursing journal and it will be published in January.”


One of the drugs used to test for Parkinson’s is L-Dopa.


“If your body responds positively, you have Parkinson’s,” said Chadwick. “The drug is 40 years old and was first used by Oliver Sachs, whose work with the drug was made famous in the movie, ‘Awakenings;.”


One day, Chadwick was walking down Main Street and summer resident and actress Ann Meara asked how the Parkinson’s was going.


“I told her about L-Dopa and how Sachs’ research was featured in ‘Awakenings’ and she said, ‘I know. I was in that movie,’ laughed Chadwick as he recounted the story. “She had done some research on L-Dopa.”


For now, life is back to normal for Chadwick. There are a few restrictions on travel, he can’t go through a metal detector, and he can’t have an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging).


“I feel a little bit of tingle in my fingers and a warm feeling through the right side of my body,” he said. But once again, he can enjoy the simple things.

http://www.ack.net/ChadwickSurgery122007.html