The irony isn't lost on Brent McFarlane. As the former Olympic track coach shuffled toward the door, hands firmly gripping his walker, he couldn't help but remember a time when he could sprint 200 metres in 22.3 seconds.
This time, as soon as the 49-year-old reached that door, everything -- including that thought -- froze.
Afflicted with a rare and severe symptom of Parkinson's disease, Mr. McFarlane has moments when he simply cannot move, even though his brain is sending signals through his body to get going.
"I just stop. Nothing's going through my mind, I just can't get moving again," he said. "It's like my body is dead."
But unlike most of the 100,000 Canadians who have the debilitating neurodegenerative disease, Mr. McFarlane is taking small but successful steps to reclaim his body -- and his independence -- with the help of a world-renowned research facility tucked away on a small street in Waterloo, Ont.
And he's getting somewhere.
In room 114 of what used to be Northdale Public School, Mr. McFarlane was being held up by two Wilfrid Laurier University graduate students.
In front of him lay a mat with 20,000 sensors to track his gait, balance and speed. The students, who are working on a thesis project, had taped glow-in-the-dark strips across the mat and instructed Mr. McFarlane to step on each one as he walked the length of it in the dark.
He said he wouldn't be able to do it, that his medication hadn't yet kicked in, that he'd need his walker.
After some strong persuasion, Mr. McFarlane obliged. He slowly shuffled to the mat, paused, and took his first step.
Almost immediately, he began to walk the length of the mat, taking normal strides, at a much quicker pace, and with his back straight.
"I can't believe I just did that," he said at the end, sitting down.
The lines may help keep the mind from freezing, said Quincy Almeida, director of the newly established Movement Disorders Research and Rehabilitation Centre that has garnered the attention of researchers from as far away as Australia.
It is one of the few centres of its kind anywhere in the world where scientists are integrating basic research with rehabilitation to come up with a program that could help reverse some of the symptoms of movement disorders such as Parkinson's.
Although their results are preliminary (the centre is less than a year old), basic research such as the glow-in-the-dark lines -- which eliminate any other markers in the room that might confuse the patient -- are starting to show promising results.
"There's no cure for Parkinson's, but it seems like we're actually slowing the progression of the disease in many of these patients," said Dr. Almeida, who has received a Parkinson Society Canada new investigator award for $90,000. He's using that money to undertake two years of vigorous experiments that he hopes will actually help Parkinson's patients reverse their symptoms.
He said his ultimate goal is to have the research from his centre -- which works with 22 scientists from Laurier, the University of Waterloo, McMaster University and the University of Western Ontario -- become the foundation for a government-sanctioned exercise program for people suffering from Parkinson's. Canada currently has no such program.
Universities from around the world are sending in inventions they've developed to be tested, including some from Australia, Brazil, Finland, France and Israel.
"Although we've only been in existence for a short while, we're definitely leaving a big footprint," Dr. Almeida said.
In conjunction with the research of neurologists, psychologists and epidemiologists, the centre also runs an experimental 12-week rehabilitation program in which participants are asked to perform selected exercises three times a week, for about an hour each time. Past research has shown that certain types of exercise stimulate the substantia nigra, the region of the brain that is damaged in people with Parkinson's. This part of the brain produces a neurotransmitter called dopamine to control movement; in people with the disease, these neurons die off.
"There's a lot of basic science research that goes into driving what ends up being this rehab part. It's more to do with understanding how the brain functions, what causes the movement impairments," Dr. Almeida said.
Patients at the centre have come from across the country, as well as from Michigan and New York states, hoping to enroll in the program that could help them regain their independence.
Mr. McFarlane, from Waterloo, used to be more than independent.
He coached track athletes in four Olympic Games, including gold-medal sprinter Donovan Bailey.
He said he first noticed signs that something was wrong nearly 15 years ago. Since then, the symptoms have gradually worsened: tremors, slurred speech, balance problems, a shorter than normal gait, stiffness in the limbs and the freezing.
He takes the daily maximum dosage of his medication -- 12 pills -- to reduce the effects of his symptoms, but already, it's taking longer every day for the medication to kick in. He's hoping to reverse that trend with help from the Waterloo centre.
"I've got nothing to lose."
