Recovery from Parkinson's gives hope to all

Dec 10 2008 by Paul James, The Journal

ANDREW Gilmore would spend 20 hours a day in bed as Parkinson’s tore his life apart – today his amazing recovery gives hope to all sufferers.

The businessman is back on his feet and back in charge of his central heating firm, three years after fearing he was “finished” by the disease.

Mr Gilmore and his wife Jackie were yesterday guests at the official opening of Newcastle’s new £5.5m research centre into ageing, which will diagnose, treat and help thousands like him.

He is currently taking part in a trial at the Clinical Ageing Research Unit (Caru), on the site of Newcastle General Hospital, which has helped him to overcome one of the final hurdles on his journey back to a normal life.

Mr Gilmore, a fit and healthy man who enjoyed tennis, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s at the age of 43, and over the next decade his condition slowly deteriorated to the point where he had no second thought about having brain surgery.

He was bed-ridden for a year before the procedure in March 2005, which has left him with a battery embedded in his chest and electrodes permanently stimulating his brain – but it meant he could walk again and control the shaking and sweating symptoms of his disease. It took another 10 months before his body fully adapted, and the 61-year-old would still suffer from imbalance and falls because of the low blood pressure that results from most Parkinson’s drugs, often struggling to get up before lunchtime.

But in the past six weeks Mr Gilmore has embarked on a new drug trial at the Caru, which has kept his blood pressure up and enabled him to rise for work in the morning.

And he is now back at the reins of RHL Heating, based on Shields Road in Byker, without the fear he will fall while visiting customers’ homes.

Yesterday Mr Gilmore, from Brunton Park in Gosforth, said: “I gradually became worse and worse until I went in for brain surgery. It’s a very slow disease – it was 10 or 12 years before it really started to bite.

“I couldn’t control my arms or my legs. At my worst point I was in bed for 20 hours a day – I was finished.”

Jackie, 62, became a carer to her previously independent husband, who was otherwise never ill, as the disease took hold.

She said: “He was in bed for more than a year. He couldn’t walk – when he could he was in a wheelchair. He was totally incapacitated. The operation was just a godsend and totally transformed our whole life.”

Mr Gilmore, proud to show The Journal the control he now enjoys over his limbs, said the drop-out rate for the brain surgery operation was high, but the thought didn’t cross his mind.

Now his gratitude to the medical experts and staff from both Newcastle hospitals and Newcastle University is such he is prepared to help them test almost anything.

He said: “I’ve more or less told them that if they need a guinea pig for any trials, I’m it.

Caru director, Professor David Burn, said: “Andrew is a glowing example of how the North East is helping people, and of joined up hospital and university services. He got bad enough to the point where he needed surgery – and now he’s running his own company again.”