Jack of Harts

My uncle has Parkinson’s Disease. He’s been slowly getting worse over the last few years. This year is his year of no return, the time in which life has become…not good. But someone he knew had an operation done that made him able to live again, and so my uncle came up to the Mayo Clinic to get that procedure.

It starts with the doctors drilling a hole in his head and pushing a spike through his brain. I’m certain they explain it much nicer, but that’s what I thought when I saw the X-Ray. That was last week. This week, they performed another surgery to install the batteries. The plan as I understand it is to electrically stimulate the mind to override the Parkinson’s tremors.

As you may guess, this is a rather involved medical procedure that no man recovers from instantly. But the things we can do with modern medicine are surely amazing. If this works, a man who maintained a campground until mere years ago, before losing the ability to even walk in a straight line without random muscle spasms, will soon walk straight again.

It is amazing what we have created as a people. The things we make to allow us to live beyond the frailties of our bodies. We are in an age of medical marvels, and we should feel thankful that we have lived to see such.