Week 127 – Day 17 – 18 ” Getting over Jet Lag and Cold”

Wednesday morning and we have woken up to a beautiful morning but very cold, down to -5c overnight and currently -1c and -4c with wind chill. Although the rooms are very warm and I am sitting writing this in my tee shirt and jeans. The window ledge will be a great drying rack today even though the outside temperature will only reach 4c. Jill has been progressing pretty well, still has her cold and having trouble giving it away. Yesterday they produced a mask for her to wear; she had a problem breathing with the mask in place. We have noticed is that her walking and balance are back to square one which is an improvement. The effect of the cold, travel and sedation has certainly made all those things difficult. We will find out tomorrow if the valium used in the sedation for the stem cells has any retrograde effect on her walking and balance.

Monday and Tuesday were very similar in that Jill had Electric wave therapy and then acupuncture early in the morning in our room. And followed mid afternoon with Physical Ed. Owen has had Jill do several exercises we have not used at home and he has been concentrating on her legs, both with the acupuncture and massage. He has then had her doing various balancing exercises which certainly are having some effect but are also very tiring.

As I mentioned after Jon’s visit we were offered a room with a larger toilet (14), we moved yesterday morning and have found using the walker in the toilet /shower area much easier. This has moved us some 20+ meters further away from the PE room. When we went to the PE room yesterday Jill walked all the way, but on the way back after the exercising she had to have a rest at the lounge for several minutes.

We again asked Mary via Wendy to do our shopping and for the first time we had a slight variation in what we ordered to what we got. I think that the translation from English to Chinese in the office was where the problem came. Example is potatoes instead of tomatoes, Pizza Cheese Balls instead of cheese slices and broad beans (30cm long) instead of snow peas. However all are welcome and I got a nice looking piece of pork which I will make a stir-fry with tomorrow. This will give us a better variety to our meals.

The nurse just arrived with Jill’s schedule for today’s stem cells extracted from Jill’s own bone marrow (extracted on November 10 2008). She is to have one spinal reinfusion of her cells which have been processed using Biotech’s special technique.  Once the marrow has been extracted it goes through a separation and culture process.  It is within the separation process that all but the Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSC’s) are removed.  The next step is to culture them within a growth medium to expand their numbers.  It takes approximately 5 to 7 days for this cell type to reach full maturity.  Once the expansion process is completed the cells are cleansed to be free of all growth medium.  MSC’s are one of the rarest stem cell subsets found in cord blood but they are plentiful in the bone marrow and extremely effective when given in high dosages (numbers).  The final step is to prepare them for injection into the Jill’s body via a spinal injection.  The number of cells yielded at the end of the process depends somewhat on the amount of marrow which can be extracted. But typically the total number of stem cells reintroduced into the client is between 100 and 200 million.  It should be noted that this processing method is unique to Beike Biotech

Beike Biotech find them very effective it boasting the potential of our umbilical cord stem cells.  In addition they also “kick in” at a later time than the typical stem cells they use which seems to allow patients with progress disorders to have longer periods of stability. 

This is to happen at 3.40pm today and she is not allowed to eat anything after midday today. I am hoping that Jill’s courage, persistence and obstinate nature is still there in these little Aussie battlers and that they join together with their Chinese sisters and do their bit.

See you tomorrow on the net.