Gardner’s brain surgery was ‘raging success’

OLYMPIA – Former Gov. Booth Gardner, who has battled Parkinson’s disease for 15 years, is recovering from two deep-brain surgeries and raring to get to work on education reform and a statewide “assisted death” initiative.

Gardner spoke Tuesday in his first interview since his surgeries, the last on July 20. He said he’s feeling fine, has gone through a divorce and has moved to a waterview condo in Tacoma. He has a live-in caretaker and his grown children, Gail and Doug, check in on him.

The former Democratic governor, 70, a millionaire heir to the Weyerhaeuser fortune, led the state from 1985 to 1993 following terms as Pierce County executive, state senator and dean of the business school at the University of Puget Sound. He could have easily won a third term, but stepped down, saying he had “run out of gas.”

He took a White House appointment as a U.S. trade ambassador in Geneva, and eventually was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He said medications enabled him to lead a fairly normal life for 12 years after the diagnosis, but that he worsened to where he was drugged all the time and had only about 8 percent of the normal control of his body.

In February and again in July, he traveled to the hospital at the University of California at San Francisco for innovative deep-brain surgery that included implanting a type of pacemaker that helps restore control of his body.

“It was a raging success,” he told the Associated Press. “The doc said, ‘I hit a home run with you.’ “

The test of success is how much medicine it takes to have a stable and relatively normal life, he said. “I’m on one-fifth the amount of medicine I was on before. You might see a couple of clues about the disease, but most of the time, you wouldn’t know I had Parkinson’s.

“I am calm. My temperament is even. I’m not hammered with drugs.”

His only complaint was boredom.

“I’ve been going nuts” during recuperation. “I’ve always had something to do and for a year I haven’t done anything. I get restless.”

Actually, Gardner has been active in a number of ways. He follows public affairs and recently got involved as a volunteer for Darcy Burner’s congressional race in the 8th District.

He golfs and still drives his car, although he had his license lifted twice after getting cited when he was heavily medicated and hadn’t gone through his surgeries, which control his twitching and other symptoms.

His marriage to Cynthia Gardner broke up and they divorced. Gardner moved from his Vashon Island estate to the mainland so he could be closer to family and medical care.

He’s planning a Parkinson’s information forum with Gov. Chris Gregoire and former Govs. Dan Evans and Gary Locke, all of whom have relatives with Parkinson’s.

He’ll take part in a symposium on education reform, specifically what to do with the high-stakes Washington Assessment of Student Learning. Gardner has led the critics who oppose using it as a graduation requirement.

And the former governor said he is still on target to lead a statewide campaign in 2008 for an “assisted death” initiative patterned after Oregon’s.