A young woman spent two decades fighting a body she couldn’t control. A Pittsburgh neurosurgeon and a medical device the size of a matchbook gave her life back.

Abigail Bailey of Hookstown, Beaver County, has spent much of her 24 years trapped. Diagnosed with Tourette syndrome at age 3, she grew up battling a body that moved without her permission. Relentless motor and vocal tics fractured her fingers, cracked her ribs, and drained every ounce of energy she had.

By early 2024, the condition had progressed to the point where she couldn’t get out of bed, let alone hold a job. The life she wanted — independent, employed and planning a future — felt permanently out of reach.

Then a neurosurgeon at Allegheny Health Network’s (AHN) Allegheny General Hospital (AGH) implanted electrodes deep inside her brain, connected them to a pulse generator near her collarbone, and changed everything.

“After my surgery, I feel like I finally have my life back,” Bailey said. “I’m working again, I’ve moved out on my own, and I’m planning my wedding. These are all things I never thought would be possible for me.”

The procedure is called deep brain stimulation, or DBS, a technology that has been reshaping the treatment of movement disorders since the 1980s. Best known as a therapy for Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor, its core idea is to counter bad signals with better ones.

Using DBS for Tourette syndrome remains an off-label application but for the roughly 10 percent of Tourette’s patients whose symptoms are classified as moderate to severe, those who have exhausted medication and therapy options, it represents a frontier of real hope.

The surgeon who performed Bailey’s procedure is Donald Whiting, MD, chair of the AHN Neuroscience Institute and one of the country’s leading practitioners of DBS therapy. Under his leadership, AGH has become a national referral center, a place where patients arrive from across the country when other hospitals have run out of answers.

Dr. Whiting implanted electrodes in precise regions of Bailey’s brain associated with tic activity. A pulse generator, a small device implanted under the skin near her collarbone, was then connected via wires threaded beneath the skin. Using a handheld remote, her care team programmed the generator to send mild electrical impulses that override the abnormal nerve signals responsible for her tics.

The results were swift.

Before surgery, Abigail experienced a tic roughly every second. Within weeks, that rate had dropped to just a few per hour. As stimulation settings are incrementally refined, her care team expects the tics to diminish further still. She now runs her DBS system 24 hours a day.

“Abigail is one of only a small number of patients worldwide who have received DBS specifically for Tourette syndrome,” said Dr. Whiting. “Her case shows the extraordinary potential of this therapy, not just to reduce symptoms, but to restore an entire life trajectory that had been lost to disease.”

Bailey’s story has a mirror, set a quarter-century earlier.

In 2000, Dr. Whiting performed DBS surgery on 18-year-old Ed Cwalinski, who suffered from severe dystonia so debilitating he could neither walk nor feed himself. Cwalinski was the youngest person in North America to receive DBS for the condition.

Today, Cwalinski, now in his 40s, has worked at the Allegheny County Bar Association for more than two decades and remains a vocal advocate for dystonia awareness.

“Without DBS, I wouldn’t be working, driving, or living independently,” Cwalinski said. “Dr. Whiting gave me my independence back.”

For Dr. Whiting, the two patients are inseparable.

“Ed and Abigail are bookends to the same story: young people whose lives were stolen by neurological disease, and who now have them back. For Ed, it was 25 years ago. For Abigail, it’s happening right now. That’s the power of this technology.”

Dr. Whiting believes the next 25 years will make the last look like a prologue.

“We’re entering a new era. If the past 25 years gave us the ability to restore movement in people who thought they’d never walk or function normally again, the next 25 could allow us to unlock even more potential to save and change lives.”

Patients seeking evaluation or treatment for complex neurological conditions can call 412‑DOCTORS to schedule an appointment with the AHN Neuroscience Institute or visit ahn.org/neuroscience for more information.

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