Stroke left Lynden organist unable to play; UW trial lifted his hope for recovery
Keith McKenzie of Lynden has been playing the organ since he was six years old. He grew up with a deep passion for music, is one that he has been able to share with his wife, Judy, his son, Michael and the Whatcom County community.
That all got put on hold when McKenzie, 57, experienced a stroke in 2021. Two months ago, four and a half years after the medical event, he couldn’t zip up his jacket or tie his shoes and lost function in mostly the left side of his body.
Today, he is able to play a scale on the piano, place a lid on a pot and grab a spice bottle from a shelf thanks to a clinical trial at the UW.
The study is being conducted by Dr. Jeffrey Ojemann, vice chair for discovery and professor of neurological surgery at UW School of Medicine and Jeffrey Herron, associate professor of neurological surgery at UW School of Medicine, implants a small device and sends stimulation in the brain, helping function.
“Most patients who have suffered from a stroke, even after they go through extensive physical or occupational therapy, still have long-lasting deficits, and we’re trying to use a new device to deliver stimulation to basically to the brain to try to make those rehab outcomes much better,” Dr. Herron said. “This device is intended to be a temporary device only used during the actual rehab period, and then once the patient gets function back, we can take the vice out, and they let them get on with their lives without having to have that extra piece of hardware.”
Participants for the trial are selected very carefully, according to Ojemann.
“Right now it’s very limited, because we’re under a very strict [Food and Drug Adminstration] protocol, and so they want to make sure appropriately that this is safe, and we’re not creating risks that are worse than the treatment,” Ojemann told The Herald via telephone.
Currently, patients were selected based on the intensity of their stroke and the medications they were on.
The study is result of funding from the National Institute of Health, Life Science Discovery Fund and the National Science Foundation. According to Ojemann, getting the money for these studies is typically the most difficult step.
“When you talk about the importance of the investment in research, but from government agencies, this is what everyone’s trying to do, is to study like this,” Ojemann said.
The UW study tailors the patient’s rehab and exercises to what each individual wants to achieve. For McKenzie, it’s working up to playing the organ again.
McKenzie discovered the UW trial after he was told in rehab that his progress plateaued, when he came across the study on Facebook and reached out, after the permilary screening he qualified.
In the beginning of the trial, McKenzie worked closely with Adria Robert-Gonzalez, an occupational and physical therapist for the study.
“The discussion that Adrian and I had when I was in therapy is viewing this not as a musical instrument but as a therapy tool, and just using this as an opportunity to gain work on finger movement, independence, and strengthening,” McKenzie said. “That was the difficult one as a musician, the sound is your end result, but there were times when I just didn’t have the strength to push the key down hard enough to make a sound, and it’s still a struggle sometimes, but being able to push down, and that finger movement is a win, because I’m getting the finger, the strength will come in the repetition.”
That was how rehab exercises go in the trial, repetition, the same exercises 100 times a day. McKenzie’s main motivator for staying in the trial is not giving up in hopes of reaching his goal.
Right now, the team behind the trial has implanted the device in a third patient and are currently seeking a fourth participant. After, the team will take their findings back to the FDA, the end goal is for the device to be wildly used as a method of stroke rehabilitation.
Today, although McKenzie and the trial may have a long way to go, it is the hope of helping people that keeps both the doctors and the patients going.
“It’s been amazing, because I had been told, you know, it’d been almost five years since I had had my stroke and my rehab had plateaued,” McKenzie said. “Now, I can look at the future and possibilities that I couldn’t, three months ago. It’s opened up a whole another chapter.”