Dave’s MS Blog

Tuesday, August 28, 2007 – Physical Therapy Workout With Dave

August 29th, 2007

Dave is on the final count down for his remaining acupuncture treatments. After today’s session, only three more to go! Many of the spinal cord injury patients do get acupuncture on a regular basis in the United States. They say they really miss it when they don’t have it. They also claim that it totally relaxes them, which could be another reason Dave is sleeping so well and so often over here. We think that we will look for a good acupuncturist when we return home.

Today was a great day of physical therapy. I actually did all of the exercises along with Dave. Let me just say that it was quite the workout! The pictures that I have been posting certainly don’t tell the whole story – they make it look pretty easy. It was not until I felt the pain after the workout (and I consider myself to be pretty strong & in pretty good shape), that I could really appreciate all of the effort that Dave is putting into this program! We keep praying that positive results will come from all of this. We do know that the greatest improvements will not be seen for several months yet.

Our number one reason for being over here is to help Dave get better by gaining back his balance and the ability to walk without his leg brace and cane. An added benefit for us is that we are able to see some miraculous healing that is the result of stem cell treatments. Nori, a 10 year old little girl with CP couldn’t walk last year when she came here from Hungary for 8 weeks of treatments. She is back now for more treatments and we were out in the hall as she was walking and running while pushing a big rubber ball. How thrilled her parents are! What we are hearing is that the sooner stem cells are given after a diagnosis of an illness or a bad accident, the better and perhaps quicker the results. We really need to get it approved in the United States. It could help so many people who right now feel hopeless. Our neighbor here was in Beijing with her daughter several years ago and saw terrific stem cell results in patients having ALS. I’m starting to feel that it is our duty to lobby in Washington for umbilical stem cell use once we get back home. It is not fair that only a select number of people can get this kind of help only by traveling half way around the world!

We had an excellent dinner at Pizza Hut last night. By the way, fresh fish in the Chinese restaurant here means live fish that are swimming around…no thank you! We have had some great Chinese food, though, but with pizza we always know what we are eating! Another plus of us being some of the only foreigners over here, is that when we do go to Pizza Hut, the waitress remembers us and in her limited English, says “I know , you don’t like beef”.

I am so very proud of Dave. Not only does Johnny call Dave “the best English teacher” but also last night he proved to be excellent at Chinese. He so confidently asked the cab driver to take us to Xiao Shan Hospital in his fluent Chinese…guess what? That is exactly where the cabbie took us – home, sweet, home! This was the first time that we did not have to point at the hospital name on a business card!

Pictures today include physical therapy, and the mountain we see from our window. In that picture the building with the big red letters is the RT Supermarket in which we do most of our shopping. It is about a $1.00 (U.S. money) cab ride to go through the tunnel to the other side of the mountain. I might go there one day just to see what I can see. The last picture shows the box of individual, one use, sterilized needles used for acupuncture. I know some of you might have wondered about the sterilization over here – this hospital follows the same sterility protocol as U.S. hospitals.

(Sorry this is a bit late but the internet was down for a little while today)

Entry Filed under: ms