RALEIGH, N.C.  – The leader of the North Carolina Senate says he has no plans to leave the Legislature despite being diagnosed last year with a rare degenerative nerve disease.

Dare County Democratic Sen. Marc Basnight has trouble at times with coordination and balance with his disorder, which slowly destroys nerve cells.

But his doctors told The News & Observer of Raleigh it shouldn’t affect the legislative work he does now and that it will be 10 to 20 years before the disease disables him.

Basnight said he noticed symptoms of the disease two years ago when he lost his balance and fell.

Basnight is in a record ninth two-year term as Senate president pro tempore.