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| Art Rowbotham |
You might say Art Rowbotham needed a new treatment for Parkinson’s disease like he needed a hole in his head. That’s what he got last December when a surgeon drilled through his skull to implant a pair of wires on his brain.
LAKELAND — For Art Rowbotham, a couple of phrases commonly used in a figurative way have literal meaning.
You might say Rowbotham needed a new treatment for Parkinson’s disease like he needed a hole in his head. That’s what he got in December when a surgeon drilled through his skull to implant a pair of wires on his brain.
And while others talk of recharging their batteries as a metaphor, Rowbotham actually recharges his battery daily — a small unit in his chest that powers the electrical impulses sent to his brain to help reduce the symptoms of his Parkinson’s.
Rowbotham, president of Hall Communications and a prominent Lakeland civic leader, says the procedure he had done at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville has transformed his life.
“It’s miraculous,” said Rowbotham, 69. “You can walk with a normal gait. You’re able to do things you couldn’t do as easily before. Again, there’s no cure for this — the disease progresses — but it buys you time to have a much more productive lifestyle.”
Rowbotham was only 50 when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a chronic and progressive movement disorder. The disease, which causes damage to nerve cells in the brain, can cause tremors in the hands and faces, rigidity, slowness of movement and impaired balance.
In some cases, the disease is also linked to a decline in mental processes.
Rowbotham said his diagnosis arose after he began to notice stiffness in his neck and shoulder. A local doctor attributed that to a thyroid problem, and Rowbotham eventually went to Mayo Clinic’s Jacksonville branch, where a neurologist determined the stiffness was a symptom of Parkinson’s.
Rowbotham began taking two medications, Sinemet and Symmetrel. The first is a synthetic substitute for dopamine, a neurotransmitter that Parkinson’s blocks the brain from producing. The latter stimulates production of dopamine.
“I took the first dose, and all of the sudden I felt like a new person because I was able to move my muscles,” he said.
Rowbotham recalled knowing another civic leader in Lakeland who had the disease — Dan Bagley, a colleague in the Polk County Advertising Federation. Rowbotham admits he felt uncomfortable around Bagley and tried to avoid him after getting his own diagnosis.
When the two wound up sitting together during a function at Lakeland Yacht and Country Club, Rowbotham shared his news with the late Bagley.
“He said, ‘Art, don’t worry; it’s not going to kill you,’ ” Rowbotham recalled. ” ’Just take your medication and it will be fine. For me, no truer words were ever said, and that’s what I’ve done the last 19 years.”
Getting worse
At best, the drugs merely slow the progression of the disease, and over the years Rowbotham’s symptoms grew more pronounced. He also noticed the effects of the drugs abruptly wearing off.
It would just be uncomfortable,” he said. “You’d be at the symphony or something like that, and be in the intermission and all of the sudden I’m there and I couldn’t stop shaking,” he said. “It’s an uncomfortable feeling.”
Bonnie Rowbotham, Art’s wife of 47 years, said the rise in symptoms was impossible to ignore.
“The tremors were very bad in his hands,” she said. “He would flap like a founder. His hands would go back and forth very dramatically, and as the day wore on he would get worse. He would try and take an extra pill to counteract it, but it really had gotten dramatically worse, so that people who knew him and saw him were a little shocked and the employees were concerned seeing him because he was visibly very bad.”
Rowbotham said it had become more difficult for him to type and do other aspects of his job. As president of Hall Communications, he runs four radio stations based in Lakeland and 21 others in the Northeast.
In his regular visits to his neurologist, Dr. Ryan Uitti of Mayo Clinic, Rowbotham would ask about potential new treatments. A few years ago, Uitti mentioned a procedure he had helped develop called deep brain stimulation.
As Uitti explained, the procedure involved inserting a thin wire in the patient’s brain, which connects to a device implanted into the chest. The device sends electrical impulses to the brain, interrupting signals that cause tremors.
A neurosurgeon at Mayo clinic, Dr. Robert Whalen Jr., helped develop the device.
Rowbotham, repelled by the idea of a surgeon drilling through his skull, resisted the doctor’s recommendation at first. By last year, though, the disease was interfering so much with his life that he overcame his trepidation and agreed to have the operation.
“You had to feel you really needed it before you were going to let somebody drill holes in your brain,” Bonnie Rowbotham said. “It’s a scary procedure, but I think he believed in the value of it, and he had two very, very good doctors.”
Uitti looked on as Whalen conducted the operation, which Rowbotham said lasted about six hours. Rowbotham was sedated and his head placed in a vice, but he remained conscious and could feel the vibrations from the surgeon’s drill.
He said patients are not put under full anesthesia because the surgical team needs to check the effect of the electrical stimulation on their tremors. One wire is enough to control the symptoms in some patients, but Rowbotham said Whalen needed to implant two wires.
Finding stride
The Rowbothams’ two grown sons had come to the hospital to offer their support, and the impact of the surgery was quickly apparent, Bonnie Rowbotham said.
“When he got up the next day, he outwalked all of us when we were walking back to see the doctors,” she said. “Our older son turned to me and he said, ‘Wow.’ We were all walking as fast as we could to keep up with him.”
The small device implanted under Rowbotham’s collarbone has to be charged regularly, like a cell phone. He holds a charging mechanism plugged into an outlet up to his chest to accomplish the task.
It only has to be done about once a week, but Rowbotham said he charges the implant daily to keep the duration down to about 10 minutes.
The Rowbothams spend the winter months in Rhode Island so that Art can monitor the company’s northern radio stations. When they returned to Lakeland, he said the reactions were startling.
“You walk around and see people afterwards and they say, ‘Oh, you look so good. You’re doing so well,’ and you’re thinking, ‘I must really have been needing this operation,’ ” he said.
Bonnie Rowbotham concurred.
“This whole thing is nothing short of amazing,” she said. “It made a huge difference, and people seeing him before and after were amazed.”
Rowbotham said he has been able to reduce the dosage of his medication by about 25 percent since the procedure. He said he also strives for physical activity — walking and taking the stairs at work — because his doctor has told him exercise can delay the worsening of symptoms.
“A lot of it is attitude,” he said. “You’ve got to overcome the depression of knowing that you have it and have a good, positive mental attitude. And exercise is very meaningful.”
Rowbotham said he has no plans to retire. He said he has become an unofficial adviser on Parkinson’s disease, talking to newly diagnosed people occasionally sent to him by friends.
“I always felt Dan (Bagley) was so helpful to me, just in the way he introduced it, so I’ve been open in talking about it,” Rowbotham said. “He was very helpful to me, and I wanted to share that with other people.”
http://www.theledger.com/news/20171015/hole-in-head-helps-reduce-parkinsons-symptoms-for-lakeland-radio-exec-art-rowbotham
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