The implant in my brain that could let me walk my daughters down the aisle
A FATHER says the drug trial has given him hope of one day walking his two daughters down the aisle.
Bryn Williams was diagnosed with Parkinson’s when he was 36 after he noticed a tremor in his right arm. His symptoms progressed to stiffness and cramping in his feet, making it difficult to walk.
Spurred on by a dream to give away Ella, 16, and Rebecca, 15, on their wedding days, the patent lawyer, 47, helped raise £131,000 towards the £3million GDNF trial. ‘Everything I do, I do for my daughters’, he said. ‘All I want to do, is if they get married, walk them down the aisle. It’s my sole mission in life. There’s no more powerful a word in the English language than hope and I didn’t really understand that until I was diagnosed.’
Mr Williams, of Glasgow, who features in a BBC2 documentary about the trial, was one of 41 participants to undergo complex brain surgery to test the drug. ‘The worst that could have happened was I died on that operating table. The upside was I could have been cured of Parkinson’s disease,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘This was a chance to get out of it and be dad, or don’t do it and be no dad.’
Although the trial failed, he said he felt the drug work. For example, he could push things with his right hand, which his symptoms had left him unable to do.
‘I felt my body come back to me,’ he said. ‘People noticed the fluidity of movement. The expression back on my face. They noticed that I was smiling again.’
The Parkinson’s Drug Trial: A Miracle Cure? airs on BBC2 tomorrow at 9pm.