Our names are Lindsay and Ryan Blank and we are making this GoFundMe for our father Ken’s treatment for Parkinson’s Disease. Our Dad has been helping others for as long as we can remember. Not only our family, ensuring we have had a wonderful life with a safe home, but also his patients as a psychologist for decades. Through the pandemic and its aftermath he served more people than ever, but soon after, he began experiencing tremors in his dominant hand. It started to impede his daily life, worsening over the following year. After many neurology consults, he was officially diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2022. Since then, he has tried all types of pharmacological treatments, including spending many months in a clinical trial. Unfortunately the clinical trial drug was targeted toward a mutation he does not have, so he has since left the trial. None of these treatments have been effective in reducing his tremors, which he now experiences on his entire right side. The next step in his journey is focused ultrasound therapy which has shown greater than 85% efficacy in PD patients with primarily motor symptoms. However, our insurance company refuses to pay for the therapy because they deem it as not medically necessary and “experimental” despite its approval by the FDA for treatment of tremor-dominated PD patients. Given that he has been determined to be medication resistant, we are looking for support from the community to help afford this therapy which costs around $55,000, and give him a better quality of life.

With the current mental health crisis in the US, our dad plans to continue working for the coming years to help his patients. However, his quickly progressing motor symptoms are creating more difficult conditions to do his work. This procedure would likely help reduce symptoms and allow him to continue providing care for others. We are so grateful to anyone who is willing and able to help us fund this procedure to give our dad a chance to reduce the burden that this diagnosis has placed on him and our family. He will also be immensely thankful for any and all support. Thank you for your consideration and supporting our dad and family.

Sincerely,

Lindsay and Ryan Blank