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RALEIGH, N.C.
State Senate leader Marc Basnight said he has no plans to leave the Legislature despite being diagnosed with a rare degenerative nerve disease that affects his coordination but not his cognitive abilities.
Doctors said Basnight, in a record ninth two-year term as Senate president pro tempore, is suffering from a disorder that slowly destroys nerve cells that control balance, walking and speaking.
It will be 10 to 20 years before the disorder disables him, one of his doctors told The News & Observer of Raleigh. In the meantime, Basnight, a 62-year-old Dare County Democrat, can still perform his work as chamber leader.
Basnight's doctors don't know what caused the illness.
"Being able to do what he is doing is not a problem," said Dr. Souvik Sen, Basnight's neurologist and director of the stroke center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill medical school.
"It's not going to kill him," Sen said. "It's not going to get bad very fast."
Basnight noticed symptoms of the disease for the first time in 2007 when he lost his balance and fell just two weeks after his wife, Sandy, died following a long illness.
"When I go down the stairs, they all move," Basnight said, adding he doesn't like walking on concrete because equilibrium problems could cause him to fall. He now complains about trouble opening bottles and putting keys in locks.
Sen. David Hoyle, D-Gaston and Basnight's roommate while in Raleigh, said Basnight's speech has slowed noticeably. Basnight has lost weight, which Hoyle attributes to a low-carb diet, and because Basnight walks regularly for fitness.
Basnight, who takes a drug used for patients with Parkinson's disease to help with coordination, was diagnosed with the condition last year. He's faced speculation inside and outside of his Senate district about his health and political future because details about his illness weren't broadcast.
"Would it have been better for it to have been nothing? Sure," Basnight said. "But that is not the hand that is dealt."
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Certainly sorry
that Basnight is facing this medical challenge, but if it takes 10 to 20 years to debilitate him hopefully he will have had the common sense to move on and let someone else be a senator--another reason for term limits at every level!
Mark
Please have the strength of faith, and understand that the strength of your constituents is behind you. Work and find a way forward. Continue to be our voice. Find strength and support in the issues that affect us, and please work for us. We need you now more than ever to work on the issues that we are facing. There is healing in work well done. Again, my condolences on Sandy's passing. Be well.