Meet Cynthia, Dr. McKhann And Dr. Ford’s Patient

Meet Cynthia, Dr. McKhann and Dr. Ford’s essential tremor patient who received deep brain stimulation.

Cynthia loves to play bridge. Thirty years ago she began to notice that when she went to pick up or put down bids, her hands would shake. Over time the shaking got worse.

Her husband saw it too. “I noticed that her hands would shake, and then after a while, her head would start to shake.”

Cynthia went to a neurologist who prescribed medication, but it didn’t help. So she went to another, and another. Finally a neurologist diagnosed her as having essential tremor, but even he had nothing more to help her.

She didn’t know anyone else with essential tremor, and her doctors could not help her. Cynthia resigned herself to a life of living with the tremors.

And then one day, a newspaper article led her to a fellow essential tremor patient, one who had been treated by neurologist Dr. Blair Ford at Columbia University Medical Center.

“Dr. Ford was so informative,” she says. “He sent me to see Dr. McKhann, who is a neurosurgeon. Neurosurgeon—just that word sends shivers down your spine!”

Watch the video to see why Cynthia wishes she had found this newspaper article years ago.