Parkinson’s: fighting the devil within

For more than 30 years, Queensland’s Denise King has stayed by her husband Jeffery’s side during his long battle with Parkinson’s disease.

“I just try to keep him on the straight and narrow and to keep his brain going with lots of quizzes,” Ms King, 68, confides to DPS News.

A chronic and progressive neurological condition characterised by slowness of movement, muscle rigidity and tremors, Mr King, now 64 years of age, was first diagnosed when he was 30.

Ms King, (pictured with her husband Jeffery), is his full-time carer and reflects on the years which have passed.

“His speech is very slow and sometimes people can’t understand him. It’s been very stressful because he has no short-term memory. It can get very frustrating,” she says.

Regardless, Ms King honours the  vows she made on her wedding day in 1971 and has been the support Mr King needs.

The couple sold their house to raise the funds for Mr King to undergoDeep Brain Stimulation (DBS) in 2003, which is a surgical treatment involving the implantation of a medical device called a ‘brain pacemaker’ which sends electrical impulses to specific parts of the brain.

DBS has reportedly provided remarkable therapeutic benefits for otherwise treatment-resistant movement and affective disorders such as chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease, tremor and dystonia.

“The surgery did help him. He was taking about 23 tablets a day for 10 years before DBS, but after the surgery he was only on just one tablet a day,” Ms King says.

She now encourages wives to “understand” their husband’s medication and to make note of it.

“Doctors can’t tell you everything. This is where you really need to get on a good footing with a GP first and a person who understands Parkinson’s.”

While the DBS procedure did help to “alter” Mr King’s symptoms, every day will always be a battle, according to Ms King as she says her husband still suffers with restless legs, short-term memory and has recently been falling over a lot.

“All I can think about is what happens if it gets worse. How am I going to cope?” she asks. “Carers often die before the person they’re caring for,” she adds.

“He isn’t bed ridden or in a wheelchair. He passed his driving test and can drive a car, but sometimes I think about what his future will be like and I don’t know what he has to look forward to.

“I ask him to stand straight and he just says to me, ‘I wish I could’. It’s like he’s fighting a devil inside of him.”

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