Not sure why I never thought to share my particular story here? But it would hurt nothing -
<---------------------- FYI that is me in my AVI. Attached is the Brachial Plexus diagram.
On May 1, 2005, I had a severe motorcycle accident. It was a day I’m glad I don’t remember!! A car turned in front of me, and I was in a coma for 6 weeks. My injuries included a severe TBI, some road rash on my R leg and arguably my most challenging disability, a brachial plexus avulsion in my R arm. My arm punctured through the car windshield and that is how I lacerated and damaged the nerve bundle in my arm. I have no functional use of the arm. My back muscles will move the arm a little, but there is no deltoid function. My weekly routine includes swimming 3+ days a week. While in the zero gravity environment of the pool, I can move the elbow of my R arm. I was informed that the nerves out of C-5&6 were the ones severely damaged. A few weeks after the accident (July ~15, '05) I had a nerve transplant surgery in Salt Lake City, UT, where Dr. Angela Wong tried to replace the damaged nerves with other nerves from my R ribs. Unfortunately, the surgery did not work as intended. In fact I now have very severe chronic pain in the arm. Dr. Wong thought that one possible reason for the failure of the surgery was that the nerve as it erupts from the spinal column was so brutally damaged.
I send a bi-monthly email out to some Dr.'s I find through a search engine. The engine looks around the world for trails which fit my criteria. My intent is to travel to another part of the world and have the needed surgery/s there because they are still in trail form right now and I would just have to pay for the flight and nothing more. The problem, I never hear back from the clinic physicians. In fact the only time I hear anything is when they tell me I do not qualify for that particular study, for whatever given reason.
Does anyone have any other ideas of where I can go? To go stateside, I would need a terminal disease to qualify for any study. I already bought a right handed gun, but that did NOT help my particular case.
Quick note - FYI, there are two types of stem cell types: adult OR embryonic stem cell. ESC come from an embryo and not one person in the world is alive today because of the cell type. Last number I was told over 10,000 cases of ASC. Confirmed cases, of people who were treated with ASC and are now alive because of ASC. Now realize it has been four years since the last number I had was from a reliable source. Still the number is potentially huge because a patient’s cells are their own and there is NO risk of rejection. Try and tell Bam bam we need to spend MORE money on embryonic stem cell research because the potential is there. Who was it that won a Nobel Peace Prize because he had vision?!?