Just in time for Parkinson’s Awareness Month in April is the book:
Life With a Battery-Operated Brain – A Patient's Guide to Deep Brain Stimulation Surgery for Parkinson s Disease
By Jackie Hunt Christensen, to be released on April 15, 2009.
What I like best about this book:
· It is written by a Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) patient and for patients and their families considering DBS.
· It provides an easy-to-understand, step-by step guide through the entire DBS process (DBS is not an event, but a process, says the author).
· The book provides checklists of questions to ask the neurosurgeon, programmer, and others involved in the DBS process.
· The book has illustrations, photos, appendices with links to other valuable information, with excerpts from the author’s personal journals and opinions from other DBS patients.
· The book includes topics such as the DBS evaluation process, making the decision, the logical tasks required in preparing for surgery including psychological preparedness, the impact on the family, a detailed description of what actually happens in surgery, the programming process, care and maintenance of DBS, side effects of DBS and alternatives to DBS.
· It gives power back to DBS patients, arming them with information and questions that they might not have considered.
· It’s the kind of book that I wish had existed when I was going through DBS.
I highly recommend this practical guide to DBS. In fact, I like the book so much that I wish I had written it myself.
Further information about Life With a Battery-Operated Brain – A Patient's Guide to Deep Brain Stimulation Surgery for Parkinson s Disease can be obtained at: http://www.lifewithbobbook.com/
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