DBS Surgery Recovery Fund

Hello. My name is Steve Kemmerer. I have Essential Tremor and I need your help to find relief from it.

Since 2009, my wife and I have seen countless neurologists and visited several clinics in search of some way to control the incessant trembling of my hands and my impaired gait. Most of them have offered prescriptions to medications that either haven’t worked, have put me to sleep, or caused some kind of psychiatric trouble. In some cases, the therapy prescribed was Botox injections into the muscles most involved in the tremor itself with the likelihood of future damamge to the muscle and the costs of the quarterly treatments, but worst of all were the occasions of misdiagnosis. We’d almost given up when my mother-in-law told us that we should be looking for a neurology clinic that specializes in movement disorders. We quickly found one here in Virginia, but were dissatisfied with the diagnosis and the recommended therapies, so we looked further north, to Philadelphia, where we’d met and lived for a long time. Since 2015 we’ve been travelling back and forth between Virginia Beach and Penn Hospital Neurology Movement Disorders Clinic. I received a lot of close attention there along with exhaustive testing and examination. After much consultation among several skilled and experienced neurologists, their consensus was that my condition was indeed Essential Tremor, effectively treatable with a surgical procedure called DBS, or “Deep Brain Stimulation”. It’s brain surgery, during which electrical probes are implanted through the cranium into the thalamus, and fine-tuned to counteract the nerve pulses that cause the tremor. The first week after the procedure requires that I remain nearby so I can return to the clinic for my first signal adjustment, after that I return monthly for the following six months for tuning until I’m as close to normal function as possible. During that time, my wife will be away from her job with no more vacation time on the books, having spent all of it on taking me to Philadelphia and back. The funds we collect will be spent on travel, meals, lodging, and boarding our dog Fred.

At present I’m taking the most effective medication available to manage the tremor, but I’m at the maximum effective dosage, and even at that, the effectiveness window is growing smaller and smaller. Before much longer I’ll be the way I was before, unable to do anything, really. Even walking any distance had become difficult. There were even a couple of occasions when I was asked if I had Parkinson’s disease. Fortunately for the vast majority of people who unknowingly have Essential Tremor, this never happens. I don’t want to return to my prior degree of debilitation. I hope you’ll help me.

Over the years since my wife and I began our quest to find answers and hopefully some relief for my situation, we’ve over-extended ourselves and now, as we’re getting so close to our goal, it’s our lack of funds which may further delay or even prevent this surgery.