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My uncle has been struggling with increasingly worse Parkinson's, to the point that he is almost unable to feed himself. An old roommate of his has moved back in with him, which does benefit both of them, but moreso my uncle, and we are all grateful.
But it turns out this roommate has done much more. He saw some TV program about a treatment for Parkinson's that is being done in Germany and a few other places in Europe, but is not approved yet here. It is a targeted brain surgery where they cut a few specific connections (between the hemipheres? I don't know,) and in 70% of patients the Parkinson's symptoms are instantly gone, never to return. The other 30% see no change, for better or worse.
The roommate was hard at work figuring out the costs to take my uncle to Europe to get the procedure done (his latest figure was a mere $12,000, which seems just ridiculously low to me, but apparently even tourists get government-covered healthcare over there) when it was brought to his attention that there is an experiemental study going on right now, in Houston, attempting to get the procedure approved in the US. He jumped on it, again taking care of everything, and now my uncle has a screening appointment this Thursday. They say it is very likely he will qualify, as they are primarily looking for youngish people with severe symptoms who are otherwise in good health, so they can continue to monitor them for the next 5-10 years looking for adverse effects of the surgery.
The idea that this might suddenly disappear from my uncle's life is sort of mind-boggling. We're very hopeful.
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