Parkinson's DBS Surgery

Shelly (our wife, mom, daughter, aunt) is having brain surgery, to help her have a better quality of life due to Parkinson’s disease. We are not the family to typically reach out for help, but we would love all the help we can get.

From Kevin: I want to share this story about my wife and our family. My wife, Shelly and I met and got married in 1997. We have 2 children, Briahna born in 2001 and Austin in 2006. We have always been comfortable enough to support our family and put our children through the sports they wanted. That was up until my wife, Shelly was unable to continue working because of her Parkinson’s disease. Losing over half of the income created a difficult time budgeting. It went from more financial freedom to living paycheck to paycheck now.

Shelly, my best friend, partner, loving mother, and a great friend to those that know her was diagnosed about 8 years ago with Parkinson’s Disease. Unfortunately, it took about a year for a confirmed diagnosis from the MAYO clinic. At the time we were so grateful to finally have a diagnosis, even though we really didn’t know what it would mean for our lives going forward. I say our because it wasn’t just Shelly’s diagnosis, it was a diagnosis for Shelly, myself, and both our kids. We go into all our challenges in life as a team, our tight little unit. Shelly (my strong wife) still worked full time and tried to work as

long as she could until she just couldn’t anymore. Parkinson’s took that ability away from her. When Shelly was unable to work, it was scary because we needed to adapt to a new way of living, the unknown.

I mentioned how strong my wife is, she has gone through many hardships in life and has come out stronger each time. Shelly will have Deep Brain Stimulation Surgery (DBS) in June. I am so impressed with her strength to take this on. We need help with funding to get through this surgery, to help reduce stress and continue to support our kids when they need us. It is so mentally challenging as a husband and father to not be able to provide anymore the way I could before. Our family is a bunch of hard workers, but no matter how hard we work, this surgery will exceed that hard work. With Shelly leading the way we will continue to fight Parkinson’s and we will continue to win with some help. We have had wonderful help from family and friends and we couldn’t have gotten this far without that.

She is our rock, our leader, and now she needs our help.