Basnight adapts to nerve disease

RALEIGH -- Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight has heard all the rumors.

He has Parkinson's disease, or Lou Gehrig's disease. Maybe it's Alzheimer's. In one version, he had a stroke after Christmas and was hospitalized in Illinois. (He was on vacation in Florida.)

His nephew reported hearing Basnight has prostate cancer and one year to live.

A constituent called Basnight's office with a request that was "time sensitive." Why? Because he heard that Basnight's health was failing.

Since last fall, Basnight's weight loss and complaints of dizziness have fueled the buzz that he might not be at the helm of the Senate much longer.

The speculation of doom is wrong, but Basnight does have a degenerative nerve disease. It is a rare disorder with no name, said his neurologist, Dr. Souvik Sen, who is also director of UNC-Chapel Hill medical school's Stroke Center. Basnight's nerve cells that control balance, walking and speaking are slowly dying.

Basnight sat down last week with the Charlotte Observer/The News & Observer to discuss the malady and brought his doctor into the interview by speaker phone.

"It's not going to kill him," Sen said. "It's not going to get bad very fast."

For the next decade, the disease will impose minor physical limitations on Basnight, who is 62, Sen said.

"It is not affecting any of his cognitive abilities -- thinking," he said. "Being able to do what he is doing is not a problem."

Basnight can do his job for years to come, Sen said. Basnight expects to do just that, as he has no plans to step down and expects to run for re-election next year.

But in 10 to 20 years, the disease likely will disable him, Sen said.

The rumors of more immediate calamity bounce around Raleigh and the state so fast because Basnight is the long-ruling political baron of the Senate. He has held the top post in that chamber for 16 years in a state where the legislature flexes more muscle than the governor. In that time, four speakers of the House and three governors have held those offices, while Basnight, a Democrat, has bulked up his party's majority in the Senate and built a fundraising capacity to sustain it. He and his leadership team determine whether bills live or die, and his former protégés now hold the offices of governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and U.S. senator.

He doesn't understand the breadth of speculation about his health.

"I don't get that," Basnight said last week. "I'm honest with everyone." It's clear, though, that some of his closest colleagues in the Senate didn't know the diagnosis.

Daily reminders

He gets daily reminders of the ailment.

"When I go down the stairs, they all move," Basnight said, describing the disease's effect on his equilibrium.

Sen. David Hoyle, a Gaston County Democrat and Basnight's roommate when they're in Raleigh, noticed how Basnight holds the railing. His speech has slowed noticeably, accentuating his Outer Banks dialect with its hints of old England -- "Marc" and "hire" are "Mork" and "hoyer." Basnight has complained to Hoyle about trouble with finger dexterity, putting a car key in the door or opening a bottle.

"He said he'll be walking with a cane some day," Hoyle said.

Basnight, whose puffy and boyish face has been a familiar sight at the legislature since the mid '80s, has dropped 30 pounds or more during the past four or five years, Hoyle estimated. Basnight said he doesn't weigh himself. Hoyle attributed the weight loss to Basnight's low-carb diet -- he eats the pepperoni and cheese off a pizza, but not the crust. He also spends hours walking outside or on a treadmill to stay physically active, which Sen said helps slow the disease's progression.

"When I exercise aggressively," Basnight said, "it feels better right then."

A 20-pound hand weight is stashed under his desk so he can do several sets of different lifts with each arm, 130 reps total. He doesn't get any more tired than he used to and doesn't feel any different.

But he doesn't like walking on concrete.

"The thought of falling, maybe," he said.

Basnight is a sport coat and slacks guy, never a suit, but always pressed. He rarely seems in a hurry. His smile full of crooked teeth and his tousled brown hair, now invaded by gray, display the relaxed nature of the small-town guy who greets customers at his beach restaurant rather than the practiced spin of a veteran politician. He blurts out whatever idea is on his mind, such as his relentless push for building windmills at the beach.

In the Senate, Basnight doesn't run the proceedings from the podium, except in the lieutenant governor's absence. His role is the leader of the majority party, so no legislation moves or makes it to the floor unless Basnight and other Democratic leaders sign off. A cluster of lobbyists hovers outside his corner office, hoping to catch him in the hallway. In the red-carpeted chamber, senators latch on to him for quick, huddled conversations.

Basnight first knew something was different when he fell two years ago. He was picking up a manhole cover for his restaurant in Nags Head from a construction supply company. He leaned over and tumbled, bloodying his face. It was the first of three spills that left him puzzled about why his balance was off.

Seeking cause of dizziness

He went to one doctor and then another. At UNC, Sen brought in other experts, in genetics and movement disorders. They ran a parade of tests, looking for genetic conditions, brain shrinkage, stroke or tumor. They found none of those, and diagnosed the rare degenerative nerve disease, part of a group of such ailments with no name. They sent him to another expert at the University of Maryland, who drew the same conclusion.

Sen prescribed Sinemet, a drug typically used for Parkinson's disease, which provides the chemical the brain uses for coordination. Sen hopes it will slow the disease's progression.

The disease sometimes is genetic but not in Basnight's case. The doctors can't find a cause. His family has a theory, but he doesn't sound convinced.

That first time he fell was the summer of 2007, two weeks after his wife, Sandy, died after a long illness. Several weeks earlier, their restaurant, the family business, burned in a fire that was later determined to be arson. The doctors could not link the tragedies with his ailment, but Basnight talks about the events at length, how his wife seemed to be successfully recovering from a bone marrow transplant when the restaurant burned.

"The restaurant burned and she went down. And she went down quickly," Basnight said. The doctors cannot connect that, he said. "Can I? No, if they can't, how do I connect it? But it came quick. My family tries to connect it. ... They blame it on the fire, and their mother [dying]."

Basnight said he knows how much worse it could have been. One of those many doctors could have diagnosed cancer or some equally devastating disease.

"Something will occur that will slow you down," he said. "Would it have been better for it to have been nothing? Sure. But that is not the hand that is dealt."