[This story is also available at

      http://Bill.Innanen.com/photoalbum/000802/

with photos of the people, places and events.]

Today was the big day - my turn as a Parkinson's guinea pig at Johns
Hopkins Hospital.  I arrived very early, both because I didn't know
how long it would take me to drive there, and because I wanted to
look around.  20 years ago I was there almost weekly, taking my wife
in for chemotherapy.  I wanted to see how things had changed.  And
had they ever changed!  I was almost totally lost until I found the
original hospital.  Then I began to find familiar landmarks.  Most of
them had been remodeled or had new buildings built in front of them.
And the whole complex was easily twice the size I remembered.  And
it's still growing.  The low income housing complex across the street
was almost totally gone.  The last remaining high rise looks as if it
is to be imploded sometime soon.

At the appointed time, I met Christina at the appointed place.  She
gave me chits for the cafeteria and parking garage.  I didn't have to
do the laptop reaction test because I had don it for the Longitudinal
Study a couple of months ago.  Thus I started with lunch.

The first stop was to get an EEG done.  Fred Wolfe was the person for
that.  The first thing he did is to give me a quick Eye test.  He
then wired me up and put me in front of the "visual stimulator.  This
was a monitor with a checker board pattern.  In the center of the
screen he had stuck a "smiley face."  I was to stare at the smiley
while the background pattern flipped back and forth.  He had some
problems getting a good reference ground sensor.  He tried several
locations until he got one that satisfied his needs.  By that time I
had about a dozen leads attached - all with gooey contact gel.  He
said my impedance was not good in the other locations.  I told him
that I must either have a thick skull or be a member of the
resistance.  :)

After that test was over, he put the "LED goggles" on me.  For this
one I kept my eyes closed and let the LED array in the goggles shine
right through my eyelids.  I didn't have to do anything except let it
happen.  That was by far the easiest test all day.  But once he
unhooked me I had goo all through my hair.  The only satisfactory fix
would have been to shampoo it out, but that wasn't in the cards.  I
just combed it and let it look as if I had been using the "greasy
kid's stuff."

Next we (Christina and I) set off for the Kennedy-Krieger Center for the fMRI
portion of the test.  I met the people who would be running the test.
Renee Geckle was in charge.  Terri Brawner would be running the
equipment.  Dr. Yousem stopped by to say hello.  He's the Principle
Investigator for all of this testing.

I have only one photo of me in the fMRI machine, and it was taken by
Renee from the door.  Just entering the room would have probably
scrambled my poor old digital camera.  To put me into the machine,
the cage-like device you see just above my head slides down over my
head.  Then the platform is raised and slid into the machine.  For
the first test there was a half silvered mirror attached at a 45
degree angle so I could see a projection screen that was at the far
end of the tunnel.  the little camera in the tunnel that kept watch
on me looked right through it from the back side.

First they did a structural scan to image my entire skull.  Talk
about noise!  I was warned over and over about the noise level, as
well as having earplugs.  Those stepper motors were really howling as
the moved the RF receiver arrays
around.  I swear that at times the dominant frequency was above 600
Hz.  Fast little suckers!

Then they started the functional testing with Renee running the show.
For that they scanned the target areas over and over while the
projection screen in my mirror showed the stimulus.  I was to click a
button on a box that I held as soon as a colored circle appeared.
The circle had each of its quadrants a different color.  (I never
thought to ask if the coloring was significant.)  We had one false
start of the functional scan.  The projector was showing a blue
screen with the words "No Signal."  Oops!

Then came Christina's turn.  I think I was the first to try it out.
When she said "Ready... Go" with a variable pause, I was to do a
little finger tapping exercise.  Counting your index finger as 1 and
your pinkie as 4, the pattern was 1,3,2,4,4,2,3,1.  With each "1" to
be a depression of the button.  A little awkward until I got the
pattern memorized.  I also found a little "trick" that Christina
liked and might use in future tests on others.  The second part of
the test was the same except that Christina's "Go" was missing.  I
had to wait an estimated 10 seconds after her "Ready" before I did
the tap dance.  The third phase was the same as the first - "Ready...
Go."

When I finished I was give a paper printout of my head sliced right
down the midline.  You can clearly see the corpus colosum and top end
of my spinal cord.  I was amused to see that it imaged my stuffed
sinuses.

And that was it.  I think I spent about an hour in the machine.  It
was quite an experience.  At no time was I ever even slightly
uncomfortable.  I made sure that everyone knew that I would volunteer
for any other tests they might devise that I could qualify for.  I
limited my open acceptance in only one respect - I insist that I must
have at least a 50 percent chance of survival!

Bill
--
Bill Innanen                     <mailto: [log in to unmask]>
                            <http://Bill.Innanen.com> & <http://mni.ms>