Roll Over Red Rover

Today Sierra did something new. While she was having tummy time on the floor, she rolled from her tummy to her back. She has rolled from her back to her tummy before, but this was the first time for her to roll onto her back.

She also seems to be having more leg movements. When she is on her back, she is lifting her legs a lot higher up than before.

We have been in contact with the doctor who is the medical consultant for Stem Cells China. She is going to be sending us more information. I am really getting excited about this. There have been people who could not walk who had the stem cell treatments and then were able to walk. As far as Sierra's eyesight, I think it might help the optic nerves, but I think she probably has CVI (cortical vision impairment) in addition to optic nerve damage. However, we have heard of several programs that have helped children with CVI gain sight. My main concern is for her optic nerves.

Something interesting that I learned is that the improvements from stem cell treatments are not visible on an MRI, or at least not right away. Here is a quote from Krishner, who is a medical consultant for Stem Cells China.

Typically on brain injured kids MRI’s are not done. Getting an MRI on a special needs child usually means sedating them so that they will lie still in the machine and thus the treating facility will not do this unless the MRI is absolutely needed. It also is the case that patients are only in China for a few weeks which is not long enough to see any changes that might occur. This type of growth would need to be very substantial in order to be picked up on a scan and that type of growth takes years. You also should remember that the cells are not creating a lot of new grey matter which is what makes up the bulk of your brain but rather they target white matter. White matter is laid down within the existing grey matter creating new Neuro pathways. The cells thus activate parts of the brain already there but may be stunned and/or dormant.

Having said that I will now tell you that there are a couple of kids who started SCT (stem cell treatments) when they were very young and have gone back for more treatments thus the doctors were able to obtain both pre and post treatment MRI’s over a longer time span. The MRI’s on these little’s ones did show increased brain mass....

...The requirements for the Optic cases are very different and I do gather a pre treatment MRI. We have only just begun to treat these cases within the last 10 months thus not enough time has passed to expect that we might see a change on the MRI. I would say perhaps two years post treatment they might be a visible change on the MRI.