Ocean Isle Beach woman hasn't let Parkinson's disease slow her down

NEW BOOK

Nancy Whitfield's “Broken Places" memoir was released in July. Matt Born/StarNews

Nancy Whitfield hasn't let Parkinson's disease slow her down

By Ben Steelman

StarNews Staff

Published: Tuesday, December 1, 2015 

NC-Wilmington -

OCEAN ISLE BEACH -- It all started eight years ago.

"First, I lost my sense of smell," said Nancy Whitfield, who now lives in Ocean Isle Beach.

Whitfield, who had a busy job at the time, thought little about it until a couple of months later when she and her husband, Rick, took off for a wedding in Florida. She loved dancing and couldn't wait to get out on the floor at the reception.

Then, "all of a sudden, my legs wouldn't move," Whitfield said.

Back home, she did a Google search of the symptoms. Before her doctor could give her the news, she thought, "Parkinson's disease."

A disorder of the nervous system, Parkinson's affects the muscles' ability to move. Its most common symptom is a tremor in the hands. "But it settles on different parts of the body," Whitfield said. In her case, it affects her legs.

Whitfield, however, hasn't let the disease slow her down. Since moving to Ocean Isle in 2010 -- when Rick became vice chancellor for business affairs at the University of North Carolina Wilmington -- she's worked on her memoir, "Broken Places." Published this summer, the book is available from Amazon.com and the Barnes & Noble website.

Her Parkinson's diagnosis only shows up near the end of the book. "It's only one chapter in my life," she said.

The title comes from one of Whitfield's favorite quotes, from Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms": "The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong in the broken places."

"Broken Places" tells a story of success against the odds. Whitfield grew up poor in Clarksville, Tenn. Her parents, who married during World War II, divorced when she was little. Whitfield would not learn the story of their breakup until years later, and she would not see her father again until she was 26 years old, and expecting her only daughter.

Young Nancy was often a lonely child; her mother, who supported her three children as a secretary and with the income from a couple of rentals, was often tired and distracted. Nancy grew up thinking she blamed her for her father's leaving.

In high school, she went through a wild phase, which was muted by meeting Rick, the nice boy who would become her husband. She earned a Civitan scholarship to Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, taught school for many years, then followed Rick through his career as a financial administrator at increasingly large universities.

In Philadelphia, she worked in the admissions office at the University of Pennsylvania. In North York, she found her dream job as assistant general secretary for UMCOR, the United Methodist Church's disaster relief and humanitarian aid agency. As such, she helped oversee UMCOR's response to Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast.

"Whatever people needed to get back on their feet, that was our job," she said.

She was still in New York when the Parkinson's became apparent. Patients might have the condition for years without noticing any effects, Whitfield said.

After months of frustration and unsatisfactory treatments, a friend referred her to specialists at Columbia University Medical Center, which was at the forefront of Parkinson's research. On her first appointment, a doctor stared, alarmed, at her chart and said, "There are enough narcotics in you to put a horse to sleep."

The Columbia specialists put her on Sinemet, which helps restore the chemical dopamine in the brain. The trouble, Whitfield noted, is that all Parkinson's drugs seem to become less effective the longer a patient takes them.

"You just keep hanging in there," Whitfield said. "With Parkinson's, you're always savoring the time that you have left. A sense of humor helps."

So, in February, she and Rick traveled to California so she could undergo deep brain stimulation -- the same surgery that actor Michael J. Fox had. (Whitfield has pledged profits from "Broken Places" to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research.)

She was awake during the entire six-hour procedure, as surgeons at Stanford University placed electrodes in her brain. These provide electrical stimulation, somewhat like a pacemaker, to disrupt brain signals related to Parkinson's. Afterward, they had an extended stay as the electrical pulses were adjusted.

Now, she's home again. "Parkinson's is such a nasty disease," she said. "You change from day to day." For now, however, she's enjoying her friends, her church and long walks on the beach with her grandson.

http://health.einnews.com/article/299754066/BUNfFb1hTRu4DkkW