Phoenix artist recovers ability to carve after brain surgery

Bill Daggett resumed woodcarving in Phoenix, Arizona, after undergoing deep brain stimulation surgery to treat Parkinson’s disease. The artist, who has carved for decades, had stopped working due to severe tremors that made holding tools difficult.

A physician who attended an art show observed Daggett’s shaking and recommended he seek a medical evaluation. Doctors subsequently diagnosed him with Parkinson’s disease. Daggett described the early stage of his condition as debilitating, noting that the tremors prevented him from eating properly or leaving his home.

“I couldn’t even eat, hardly. I was shaking so bad, and I didn’t want to go out anymore. That’s part of the depression. You don’t want to be seen when you can’t hold a fork and get it to your mouth,” Daggett said.

Medication alone did not stop the symptoms, so Daggett opted for deep brain stimulation, a therapy that uses electrical pulses to manage tremors. The procedure is similar in function to a cardiac pacemaker, but it targets the brain rather than the heart.

Sam Cradduck, a gerontologist and host of the program Aging Untold, explained the mechanism of the treatment. “What they did was basically give his brain a pacemaker. You know, we’re kind of accustomed to the thought of a pacemaker helping a heart keep rhythm. But this is a new way to go in and help that brain reset and send those electrical pulses out to give the brain the pacemaker to now reduce those tremors, reduce some of the side effects of the disease and the progression of it,” Cradduck said.

Cradduck noted that the therapy offers a quality of life improvement for long-term patients by addressing both physical and emotional impacts. “We talk about the physical aspects of disease and aging all the time, but we forget to talk about the emotional loss, and that’s where this guy was at. He was so connected with being the artist and being able to create, and the disease was robbing him of that. We see that it’s robbing him of physical abilities maybe to eat, but we forget that it’s robbing him of a piece of himself,” Cradduck said.

Daggett’s hands are now steady enough to hold carving tools without shaking. The procedure has allowed him to return to his craft after a period of inactivity caused by the disease.