Deep brain stimulation controls her tremors

“It was scary, because I was awake for it, and I could hear them turning on the drill and I was thinking, don’t drill too deep!” she said.

On March 30, 2006, Baxter-Moore underwent brain surgery to relieve the symptoms of Essential Tremor, a condition others noticed in her at the age of 12.

“People kept asking me if I was cold all the time. I didn’t realize I was shaking. I didn’t start feeling it myself until I was 18 or 19,” she said.

As an employee for the past 20 years with the Royal Bank in Yarmouth, she found that the shaking made her highly self-conscious when assisting clients. She knew the tremors would only become worse with age.

Neurosurgeon Dr. Rob Brownstone performed the operation on Baxter-Moore at the Brain Repair Centre in Halifax by placing deep brain stimulating electrodes into her brain - one on each side - in a region called the thalamus. The wires were then tunnelled behind her ears and down her neck beneath her skin to her chest, where they were connected to two hockey-puck-sized pacemakers implanted just below her collarbone on each side.

“This can be externally programmed to optimise treatment - just like the dose of a drug can be increased or decreased, or changed to a different but related drug, we can alter the characteristics of the electricity delivered,” said Brownstone.

He says in his world, the procedure is common but that it’s unnecessary as most people respond to medication.

“Surgery is reserved for patients who don't respond to meds and whose lives are significantly impacted,” he said.

Deep brain stimulation is also used successfully on the clinically depressed as well as those suffering from Parkinsons disease, Tourette’s and chronic pain.

Although people are frightened at the thought of brain surgery, Baxter-Moore wants those who could benefit from this operation to consider it.

“The thing that bothers me is they (doctors) only recommend it as a last resort,” said Baxter-Moore.

“Most general practitioners don’t even know about this. I found out about it online when I started researching Essential Tremor,” she said.

Although the normal procedure is to implant one pacemaker and return several months later to implant the other, Baxter-Moore requested both pacemakers be implanted during one operation.

Being claustrophobic, the requirement of a halo to hold her head motionless during the 12-hour operation was a real challenge, but drugs administered to relax her did the job.

“I had marks afterwards where they drilled it into my skull,” she said.

Awake for the first seven hours while the probes were positioned in her brain, she was anesthetised for the remaining five hours for insertion of the pacemakers.

Baxter-Moore has had the system fine-tuned by a Halifax technician since the operation. The device can be programmed up to 60,000 different ways.

She was provided with a remote control to turn the pacemakers on and off as tremors are not supposed to happen overnight. However she’s found the experience very discomforting and leaves the unit on all the time. Battery-life is estimated at three to four years.

Baxter-Moore has to be manually checked going through airport security now but other than that, there are few drawbacks.

“Now I’ll go a lot more places that I wouldn’t go before and I am a lot more comfortable. I used to hate to have to go to places where I had to sit still like church, or the hairdresser or the dentist,” she said.

To date, at least 35,000 patients around the world have had DBS electrodes implanted in their brains.