My name is Trisha O'Neill. Married.
I live in the suburbs of Chicago,
and I have two children.
My husband is neuropsychologist and I'm active,
and I like to do kickboxing and I do rock steady boxing
as well as a CrossFit.
And I work in the insurance industry right now.
Four and a half years ago,
I was diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson's disease.
Came about because someone noticed my finger twitching.
I knew something we're very aware of
Parkinson's in my family
because my father had had it for 32 years.
So we started right away
with a movement disorder specialist, and I was diagnosed.
She was having difficulties controlling her symptoms
of Parkinson's disease.
She had been very good in trying to do everything
in her power to stay active, to work out.
She was running into trouble
that could not be really addressed well
with medications, and that I thought would
be amenable to deep brain stimulation.
And so we talked about for quite a few visits
before she decided that she would actually let somebody
put electrodes in her brain.
And it kind of takes a while to kind of get your mind
wrapped around it because it is brain surgery.
It doesn't get much more invasive
than somebody putting wires in your brain.
But it's been around for 20 years.
There's a lot of research on it,
and for my set of symptoms,
it seemed to make a lot of sense.
They did it awake.
'Cause you have the option to do it awake or asleep,
and I got both sides operated on the same day.
It's been life-changing for me.
The majority of the patients that we treat
with deep brain simulation
are patients with Parkinson's disease
and also patients with essential tremor.
And there's a smaller group is dystonia.
Deep brain stimulation is a therapy
that uses basically electricity to override abnormal signals
in the brain where you put the electrode in there
and on the electronics is all under the skin
when it comes out of the brain,
it goes behind the ear to a battery pack that is sitting
under the clavicle, under the collarbone, under the skin.
Then we have the opportunity to activate it
with a controller.
Remote follow-up visits are a great option for me,
I think for anyone, 'cause it's a real time saver
instead of taking for me half a day off to come downtown,
have a visit and then drive back.
I can just do it in 15 minutes from my phone.
It's very similar to having any normal tele-med visit
or any really FaceTime call with your family.
And there are so many people I know
who live like an hour and a half, two hours away
that this is a real game changer for them.
One of the three currently marketed device companies
has come up with this remote programming option
that they call the nurse from your virtual clinic.
And that has recently been approved by the FDA.
And what it means is that we are now able
to program their devices remotely,
meaning that patients can just be at home
or if they're on vacation, they can be on vacation,
as long as they have a connection to the internet.
And it uses electricity rather than chemicals
to make an impact and have an effect on tremor slowness,
gaits, for instance, and over time,
these things can change a little bit as well
as the disease changes.
And so we can adjust the stimulation
for years to come as needed.
Now, hold your hand up a little bit unsupported.
It was often...
I'm just slightly adjusting it,
putting your stimulation on.
You may feel something.
Did you feel something just now?
No, not really.
Not really, that's good.
The tremor, but the tremor is going away.
The tremor has gone away.
Can we see that?
That's the most important thing. (laughs)
This is end-to-end encrypted, it's safe, secure,
and there's multiple steps in place
to make sure that there nothing can go wrong.
So I feel it's a very safe way to administer therapy
and change and adjust these devices.
The adjustments that we make can only be made
when both the patients and I are connected to the internet,
and they occur over the internet.
So most of the patients will use wifi connections,
but it can actually be done with normal satellites as well.
You know it's a response from your body,
unless it's at the extremes of the settings
where they're testing your tolerance for it,
but when you're tweaking it,
it's just more like you notice the adjustment,
like maybe a tremor you're having problems
that's no longer there or something like that.
You don't really feel anything
like an electrical current running through your body.
I would say 90% of patients,
they really see a remarkable difference.
And when the treatment affects their motor symptoms so much,
you usually also see a great improvement
in non-motor symptoms, depression, and anxiety.
And they usually tend to get better when people
have that kind of improvement in their functioning.
As great as it can be, it's not a cure.
In that sense, it's the same as medications.
It masks the symptoms,
but the underlying disease can get worse.
Having said that, a lot of patients tell you
that it turns the clock back at least five years,
and they feel great again.
And I think that counts for Trish.
I was able to cut down my meds by,
my medicines to a third of what I was taking previously.
My tremors virtually gone right now.
In my instance, I had a problem with my gait,
which really helped me with my walking.
No problems walking, no problems with activity,
no problems with energy level.
It's really helped, I think, on all levels.
It's kind of an incredible feeling.
It's like you walk in one person,
you walk out another person.