Monday Morning

We had 17 members at Monday’s meeting along with our guest speaker, former member, Peter Wettstein. “Happy Bucks” were offered up by Del Waldschmidt for being back after his recent overhaul at St. Luke’s, Dan Leeds for announcing that City Lights is again doing Valentine’s Day singing telegrams for $40 and to promote Trinity Baptist School’s 2nd Annual Souped Up fundraiser on Thursday, March 6th, Vickie Goldapske for Ron and Jackson’s 80 lb. sturgeon that they speared on Saturday morning and were on TV’s “Good Day Wisconsin Show” and Dave Lefeber who was thankful that Del and his cheese curd knowledge were back. Dave Twohig was the 50/50 Raffle winner and he drew the Jack of Spades, a non-winner. Next week’s drawing will have 33 cards with 7 pay cards and a pot of at least $255.

 Peter Wettstein, Deep Brain Stimulation

Former member, Peter Wettstein, joined us on Monday morning to talk about his journey with Parkinson’s Disease. Peter was diagnosed about five years ago and at that time was relatively well controlled with medications. Unfortunately the effectiveness of the medication waned over the past five years to the point that he was afraid he would have to stop working.  That’s when he began the journey of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS). Peter’s doctors at Froedtert/Medical College of Wisconsin (MCOW) tested Peter to see if he was a candidate for DBS and if it could potentially help with his symptoms. After testing it was determined that he was and Peter had the first surgical phase of DBS on October 15th of 2013. The second phase was on November 15th of 2013. After phase 1 & 2 Peter now had electrodes implanted deep into his brain. Phase three was done on November 21st when they implanted the electrical generator in his right chest/shoulder area and then they energized the system on December 2nd. After several trips to the ER and adjustments at Froedtert Peter’s tremors have been significantly controlled to the point that he has his life back. He’s back to a regular work schedule and again enjoys many of the activities that he had to give up over the past couple of years.