Mike Robins could be forgiven for dismissing the diagnostic skills of the medical profession in the UK out of hand. Over a period of two years he consulted GPs, psychologists, stress councillors, psychiatrists, alternative medical practitioners and chiropractors for what started as a slight twitch in his shoulder and developed into a noticeable tremor in his right arm and leg. Each specialist diagnosed ‘stress' and advised a ‘change in life-style'.
It was only when Mike was recovering in a Shanghai hospital, following an appendectomy that a Chinese neurologist correctly suggested that he was suffering from Parkinson's Disease...
The 56 year old UK resident spent the first twenty years of his working life at sea, five of them in command of merchant ships. A period as a college lecturer followed. For the past ten years he has built a marine electronics start-up into an internationally recognised business.
To describe Mike as naturally gregarious is an understatement. But, in the period just before the implant was fitted which now controls his tremor, life had become thoroughly miserable.
"It really knocked the stuffing out of me. I lost all my confidence. I would cry spontaneously. From the moment I woke I just wanted the day to be over with so I could crawl back into bed and go to sleep again. My life was thoroughly miserable", he recalls. Treatment like diagnosis was hard to obtain: drugs did not work or produced unpleasant and weird side effects. Mike can vividly remember the moment, during the operation, when his life changed for the better.
"I was required to be awake during the operation at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. Tipu Aziz, the neurosurgeon, was inserting a probe about twelve centimetres into my brain to implant a neurostimulator. I was shaking: ninety per cent was tremor, the rest was pure terror".
"It was necessary to tell the surgical team what I was feeling and what I was seeing as the probe passed certain critical areas deep in my brain. I remember the surgeon saying "a millimetre to go".
"As he hit the spot that he had been aiming for, I was suddenly as steady as a rock. My right arm and leg felt light enough to float. The relief - I wanted to laugh. It was an incredible feeling."
Within twelve hours, Mike Robins was walking about: within four days he was involved in a campaign to enable other people to receive the same treatment.
"Without the operation, in a very short time I would have been taken to an old folks home and sat down in a chair where I would have shook uncontrollably throughout each day and been pitied. Nobody would want to talk to me because I was a bit of an embarrassment. The implant operation has proved a miracle."
Source: Medtronic
