Rusty Without Wheels

 

Camels on the Autobindo Marg right in front of the gas station.  Kathy came skipping back into our room after one outing where she spotted these camels on the road saying she had “scored”.  She has seen half of what she wanted/had to see while in India:  monkeys, camels, elephants & snake charmers. 

Kathy asked this gentleman why he decorated his bull and through another man walking down the street who became our translater, he said his cow was especially good looking and it was his way of showing him off around the city as a good example of the holy cow.

Just to comment on Kari’s questions about a couple things:  “have you figured out how the stem cells work yet? I am continually surprised by the immediacy of their affect.”   Well we, too, have been surprised and absolutely blown away by how fast the stem cells worked in Rusty’s body.  

The differences in the varying procedures is the location of the injections, the volume of the injections, and the concentration of the stem cells injected.  I’ve asked about how much, or many, stem cells are being injected, but this is proprietary information.  Since the injections are relatively close to the injury site, the cells have a more direct, instantaneous impact on the body as their travel distance in minimized.  All we can say is that the stem cells have the ability to be the cell replenishment and regeneration that links injured nerve fibers and threads which are at the site of injury to the brain and muscles.  As Dr. Geeta Shroff says, the discovery of stem cells has caught the attention of the world because of the immense potential they hold to benefit people suffering from incurable and terminal conditions.

“When will the above-the-site injections occur?”   Rusty has been curious about this procedure because of the location of the injection site.  However, we are uncertain about whether this will take place or not. 

Rusty rolling into the “older” hospital at Gautam Nagar.  This cow looks like it could use some stem cells, too.

Yesterday, we went to Gautam Nagar for another epidural stem cell injection.  Dr. Ashish’s injection was at the L-1 level of my spine.  It hurt when he gave the local anesthesia; this is good because it is below my level of injury and I can feel the needle pricking the skin.  I had hoped it was going to be above the injury sight; maybe next week as we have 7 days to go and we hope they will include this one also.  After the injection yesterday, I had to lay flat on my back with the foot of the bed raised by 3 bricks per side for 5 hours.  This is an excruciating long time to have to just lay there.  We pass the time reading, but this is even hard, especially holding a book up in the air.  Lying on my back is not good for my skin as this is how pressure sores start and I’ve just gotten one sore healed from the experience with the torn urethra.  We were taught at rehab to not lie on our backs but on our sides along with weight shifts at the proper intervals, and periodic repositioning when reclined as this minimizes the chances of pressure sores.  It might be better for the paraplegics and quadriplegics to lie on their sides as the stem cells flow to the injury sight.  However, the thought is that the stem cells flow down the spine proportionately on the right and left by lying flat on your back.  Yesterday’s procedure was directed at “sensory” improvement so both sides of the spine needed to receive proportionate stem cells.

Kathy and I wanted to inform everyone that we have experienced e-mail problems at our address home@rustyandkathy.com  and for you to use the kathy@homes2go2.com address when sending correspondance.  We checked with Monument Graphics (the kind, professional people who set this blog site up and had nothing to do with this problem) and they found there were over 400 e-mails backed up on the other address.  Many of your e-mails have never reached us and we are extremely sorry if you had sent something and never received a response from us.    Nattana and Casey (Monument Graphics) gave us directions to check them via webmail.   If you need anything quickly, please resend your e-mail to the homes2go2 address as it will take us forever to get through the backlog.

Maintaining this site has taken more time and effort than I thought it would.  I figured it would be easy to sit down, every day, and type out a synopsis of our day.  Man was I ever wrong.  This has definitely been a wonderful experience, not only for the stem cell treatments, but for learning about ourselves, interacting with the people we’ve met and worked with, seeing a small portion of India, learning about the culture and the people, and then trying to convey our impressions to everyone who was reading this.  It has been a challenge to keep the topics fresh and not drone on about life here at the hospital and my therapy, even though so much of why we are here is about that.  My wife has done a marvelous job of editing my attempts at writing and her ability to input the perfect pictures to help convey that day’s blog has been remarkable, plus she writes great stories too.  I tend to ramble whereas she is concise, professional. 

Tomorrow is Saturday and our therapists Shivani, Deepti, Deepak, and Chavi have the day off as it is India’s Republic Day.  January 26th marks India becoming a sovereign nation with a spectacular parade of the Armed Forces, comprising regiments and their bands, armoured tanks, cavalry, as well as aerial displays by fighter jets.  Different states partipate by creating enormous floats show-casing their local culture.  Kathy is wanting to go to see if war elephants will be used in the parade as well.  I am not curious enough to be involved with the crush of people.  There is a big parade up at Connaught Place and Janpath where the roads will be closed, so it would be a bad weekend to try and sight-see as there will be hordes of people every where – as if there aren’t millions moving around all the time anyway.  In fact, there have been two parade “practices” this week and they even clogged up the city.

Traffic at Connaught Place jammed up.  (Sorry for the poor quality.)

Dr. Shroff approached me yesterday with a request to provide her with the costs my injury has caused to us and our insurance company, and if applicable, the government.  These include our yearly expenses:  medical supplies, prescriptions, wheelchair, doctors, tests, hospitals, etc.  Her point being if embryonic stem cells were utilized as soon as possible after a traumatic injury or diagnosis, then how much money could be saved over the life of the patient?  The more I thought about it, especially after the results I felt I’ve achieved from being a part of this therapy after 9+ years of being paralized, the more it made since to me how stem cells could save unbelievable amounts of money that could be utilized elsewhere in the health care systems around the world.  I think Dr. Shroff has a valid point, but it will take a lot of time to convince the world of her approach.  I for one will try to help her and to educate everyone I can to the benefits of stem cell therapy. 

Dr. Shroff and Pragati work with Rusty and his calipers after a walking exercise. 

Posted on January 25th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: My Entries