Roger noticed something wasn't quite right when he pulled the bow across the strings when I would draw my bow I suddenly had a shake in my bow now for most other professions this would not be a concern for being a violinist where your career depends on the stability of your appendages uh this was a great concern Roger has what's called essential tremor a nervous system disorder that causes shaking

Dr Lee and Roger agreed that deep brain stimulation or DBS was their best chance at stopping the Tremor it involved placing electrodes into Roger's brain but there was a challenge to overcome that created a first ever situation in an operating room you see because Roger's Tremor was so small it would be difficult for Dr Lee and his team to tell if the electrodes they were implanting were in the best possible place to stop the Tremor

we needed a violin in the operating room Kevin Bennett heads Mayo Clinic's division of engineering his team worked with Dr Lee's team to create a violin Roger could play while awake during surgery we built and designed a three-axis accelerometer that we could attach to the bow so that as Mr Fish was playing we can actually see um a plot on a computer screen of the movement that really shouldn't be there during the procedure

I started playing right away the day I came home from Mayo I was uh back playing with uh my colleagues with Min orch 3 weeks later without the stimulator on um the Tremor is quite pronounced you can see the difference with the click of a controller Roger can turn turn the electrodes on and off and that's as smooth of a bow as I can play right now