ABSTRACT
Inexorably and relentlessly, Willy De Craemer’s Parkinson’s disease (PD) advanced. By the middle of 2000, what had previously been the relatively slow progression of his illness began to quicken its pace, and he became more disabled. With a careful and artful balancing of a complicated schedule of anti-Parkinsonian medications, Dr. Howard Hurtig, the neurologist who had cared for Willy and his PD condition for almost twenty years, 1 had been able to keep him relatively independent. But the symptoms of underlying neurodegeneration—slowed mobility, tremors, reduced dexterity, impaired gait, precarious balance, slurred speech, difficulty in swallowing, and spasms of choking—grew more pronounced. The daily fluctuations in these forms of incapacity increased. It became harder for Dr. Hurtig to balance the variety of medications that Willy was receiving, and to manage their side effects—especially the jerky, involuntary movements (dyskinesia) caused by levodopa, the key drug for PD. Willy was admitted to the hospital several times in order to recalibrate his medications, and he was hospitalized twice because of serious falls that caused multiple minor fractures. These unremitting and accelerating ordeals entailed great suffering for him. He bore it with a combination of lucid realism, stoical courage, resiliency, and humor, which Dr. Hurtig and everyone who knew or came in contact with him greatly admired.
