Dr. Kelly D. Foote will put PJ asleep this time to implant a pulse generator under his chest, with a cable that will run up the side of his neck and connect to the DBS lead he got in the first surgery.
For a couple of hours, Dr. Foote and his team essentially carve out the perfect tunnel down PJ’s right side to connect it all. Then Dr. Foote slides the generator in.
“We’ll activate it and turn it on,” Dr. Foote said, but the programming they do now, he calls ‘quick and dirty.’
“The reason for that is programming a DBS device is a two-way thing. It’s a collaborative process, and I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to collaborate with a drunk person, but when you’re coming out of general anesthesia you’re not a very good collaborator,” Dr. Foote said.
He says PJ should get some benefits just from having the system activated, but they will only get better.
“We sort of guess, based on what we saw during the operation, what is probably gonna be a reasonably good programming setting, and set it really low and turn it on because most people are so excited to get it activated,” Dr. Foote said.
It’s all an outpatient procedure, so after a little time to wake up, PJ will be on his way back to Sarasota to recover.
