Monday, March 30, 2009

One Week!

Lord willing, we will be flying to China in one week! We are VERY excited. We would appreciate everyone's prayers.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

No More Vomiting and VISAS!!!!!!

I don't know what was up with Sierra the past week. She was vomiting every single day, at least once a day. I was able to keep enough liquids in her that she did not get dehydrated. We did not end up going to the doctor. Yesterday was the first day in 8 days that she did not vomit. YAY! She did not have a fever or anything. My own personal theory is that she was dealing with some after effects of her hospital stay. She was given so many drugs and antibiotics that it wouldn't surprise me if she had an ulcer or something. We've been giving her lots of probiotics to help replace the ones that were wiped out by the antibiotics.

Our Visas arrived yesterday!!!!!! Now we are pretty much all set to go to China! We have been making lists, checking them twice (more than twice actually), buying things, and figuring out how we are going to pack it all. We are very excited about the trip!

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Let the Triathlon Begin!


The next few months are going to be so busy! We are going to be doing three different things that should all work together to achieve the maximum effectiveness of all of them. I feel like we are going to be doing a triathlong of treatments. :-)

Umbilical Cord Stem Cell Treatments

Lord willing, we will be leaving on April 6 for China. We are VERY excited about going and looking forward to what the results might be. To be quite honest, we may see no results or we may see dramatic results. We are really praying that she may gain some vision. Here is a quote from Kirshner on some of the improvements that others have seen.

86% of CP kids of all ages under 18 get some type of improvement. Results can vary greatly depending on the childs level of function prior to treatment. I never like to compare the kids because as we know they are all very unique.

One can however make some general statements about the types of improvements that are often reported such as;

Increased ability to motor plan, improved vision, increased cognition, speech, swallow, eating, increased social interaction, smiling, laughing, kissing (one of my favs) and so on.

Vasodialation with Dr. Hammesfahr

The last two weeks of June, Sierra and I will be going to St. Petersburg, FL to see a neurologist there. He does something that no other neurologists in the world do. Dr. Hammesfahr was nominated to receive a nobel prize in medicine for his work with brain injured patients. Here is some information from his website www.brainandstroke.com

We have proven, documented results treating the patients others have given up on. Dr. Hammesfahr is a board certified neurologist who has pioneered a major new therapy for treating neurological conditions such as stroke, brain injury, autism, cerebral palsy, migraine, and others. His technique, awarded a patent for its innovative approach, helps to improve blood flow into damaged or poorly functioning areas of the brain. Damage or narrowing of blood vessels is seen in a large number of chronic neurological diseases. Medicare and others have reviewed and found his technique to be effective and successful in helping those others were unable to help, even years after their injuries. Thousands of patients from all over the globe have been treated successfully over the past 20 years. We have documented success of their recovery and some of their stories are included in this website. We are bringing families together and rebuilding lives...one patient at a time.


Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy

Ninety days after receiving stem cell treatments, we will begin putting Sierra in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber. We were able to buy a chamber locally at a great price and thanks to Sierra's great-grandmother Fedelem, we have an oxygen concentrator to use with it! Doing the hyberbaric treatments will be like "adding Miracle-Gro" (as others have said) to the stem cell treatments. It will help those new cells grow.


Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Missing Grandma

After having her out of state Grandma here for over a month Sierra got spoiled by having both of her grandmothers to cuddle her, talk to her, and love on her.

We are VERY grateful that Jason's mom could come out while Sierra was in the hospital. She helped out so much and was such a blessing! We considered kidnapping her and not taking her back to the airport. :-) The ladies from church told her that she was just going back long enough to pack her bags and get her husband, and then she was moving here. =)

Sierra is doing fairly well. The hospital stay really gave her a set back though. Being paralyzed for so long and being made to lay on her back made her lose the muscle strength that she used to have. She has been wanting to hold her head way back instead of up. We have to fight her to keep it in the right position.

We ended up finding a good chiropractor here in Temple. We do miss the nice folks in Austin, but her new chiropractor is very good and so sweet! It only takes 10-15 minutes to get there as opposed to 1 hr 15 min! We are loving all the extra time!