Bill Daggett has spent decades carving wood, so when his hands started shaking, he couldn’t ignore it. A doctor at an art show noticed the tremors and pointed him toward a Parkinson’s diagnosis. Medication helped for a while, but eventually the shaking got bad enough that he could barely eat and stopped wanting to leave the house. For Daggett, the disease wasn’t just attacking his nerves; it was erasing the craft that defined him.
When pills weren’t enough, he chose deep brain stimulation. The procedure delivers electrical pulses to the brain to interrupt the signals that cause tremors. Gerontologist Sam Cradduck summarized it for listeners: “What they did was basically give his brain a pacemaker.” The result: Daggett is back at his bench, carving with steady hands. Cradduck calls it a quality-of-life breakthrough for long-term Parkinson’s patients, one that addresses the emotional loss of identity right alongside the physical symptoms.
For Suncoast families, the takeaway is simple. If medication is no longer controlling tremors, ask a neurologist about an evaluation for DBS. It isn’t right for everyone, but the conversation costs nothing. So tell us: what hobby or craft would you fight hardest to keep if your hands stopped cooperating?
