It’s impossible to believe only ten months ago the composed woman sipping coffee opposite had so little control over her body movements that she could not stop her head from compulsively jerking.
Lesley Barnard is the recipient of groundbreaking Deep Brain Stimulation (DPS) surgery, which has miraculously restored quality of life.
Between delicate bites of cake, the 62-year old Parkinsons’s disease (PD) sufferer recalls every moment of her epic fifteen year struggle with Parkinson’s disease (PD).
By all accounts at forty seven, Lesley was extremely attractive with deep brown eyes and thick auburn hair that licked her shoulders.
In 1998 Lesley was Deputy Principal of a training college with 1, 200 pupils under her supervision. Her workload was heavy, her stresses many. She was always an anxious person, who suffered from mild depression, but it never interfered with her work or social calendar.
When her thumb suddenly began misbehaving uncontrollably, flicking against her forefinger, her GP referred her to a neurosurgeon believing the cause of her embarrassing tremor stemmed from a problem in her neck.