KGO Radio's host Ronn Owens recovering after brain surgery

Cheryl Jennings Image
ByCheryl Jennings KGO logo
Friday, August 7, 2015
KGO Radio's Ronn Owens recovering after brain surgery
KGO Radio talk show host Ronn Owens is recovering after having brain surgery Thursday at UCSF in San Francisco to ease symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- KGO Radio talk show host Ronn Owens is recovering after having brain surgery Thursday at UCSF in San Francisco to ease symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

When asked what he was having done, Owens replied: "Just the normal thing, go in and have a couple of holes drilled into your head and have some wires put in," he said.

Owens kept his wicked sense of humor hours before his brain surgery in San Francisco.

Owens spoke with ABC7 News to talk about the procedure called deep brain stimulation or DBS for short.

He's been coping with Parkinson's disease for 13 years and only went public with it in 2014.

The KGO Radio icon appeared exclusively on ABC 7's Beyond The Headlines with his wife and Dr. William marks from UCSF. Owens didn't want the surgery then, but needs it now. "This last year, it's gotten worse. This year, I'm bumping into things, falling, a little harder to get up from a restaurant table, things like that and this is the time to do it," he said.

Neurosurgeon Paul Larson performed Owens procedure. He's an investigator for the largest clinical trial of Parkinson's disease treatment through DBS right now in North America.

DBS acts like a pacemaker for the brain using electrodes to send impulses to areas in the brain linked to movement disorders.

What Owens is hoping to get out of this he said: "If it works, I'll get back five to seven years. In other words it takes me back to five to seven years ago when I had Parkinson's and nobody had it, could see it then and I wasn't really shaking," he said.