Long-time islander Cynthia Elliot is currently living with Parkinson’s disease. Her son Aaron D’Errico has created a GoFundMe at www.gofundme.com/help-my-mom-w-parkinsons-therapy to help raise the $50,000 cost of Focused Ultrasound Therapy.

According to D’Errico, Elliot is “A champion of helping others.”

After D’Errico was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at age 1, his mother became a massage therapist to help her son. Now she is the one that needs a hero.

According to the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, the therapy is an early-stage, non-invasive therapeutic technology with the potential to transform the treatment of many medical disorders by using ultrasonic energy to target tissue deep in the body without incisions or radiation.

D’Errico was inspired to fundraise by the Focused Ultrasound Therapy TED Talk video by Dr. Neal Kassell, founder and chairman of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation and former co-chairman of Neurosurgery at the University of Virginia. Find the video by googling “Curing with Sound.” Find a Focused Ultrasound video from Dr. Sanjay Gupta by visiting everydayhealth.com and searching “ultrasound eliminated her Parkinson’s.”

“My mother is a hero to me and all who know and love her,” said D’Errico.