Fighting Part II...South of the Border

Sorry for the delay in this one!  As I type, my Mom and Dad have just landed in El Paso, Texas, where they were picked up from the airport by Dr. David Karam.  Talks of this trip began way back in April, not long after Mom received the diagnosis of ALS.  My sister, Jamie, a pediatric nurse in Miami, was working at the time on getting her Master's degree through FIU. (She just finished and is now a Nurse Practitioner...Congratulations, James!!!)  When she shared Mom's news with the doctor she was training under, the doctor immediately said, "There's someone I want you to talk to." Within hours, Jamie was on the phone with Dr. David Karam, a neurosurgeon working in El Paso, Texas doing experimental stem cell treatments on patients with neuromuscular diseases and paralysis, primarily ALS patients!  It was the first of several conversations with Dr. Karam where he described in detail his research, the treatments, and the possibilities.  In July when we were all in Miami, I along with Mom, Dad, Jamie, Casey, Uncle Dave and Aunt Laurie spent close to two hours on a conference call with Dr. Karam where we learned more about his research and asked our many questions.  Mom and Jamie were able to meet with Dr. Karam in Miami a few days later.  After much talk, thought, and prayer, Mom decided to go forward with this treatment.  I'll do my best to explain it to you here...
Tomorrow, Mom will be evaluated by Dr. Karam and the team of doctors who work with him.  They will harvest stem cells from Mom, from her blood, fat, muscle, and/or bone marrow. Hopefully, the first three will produce enough good cells for them to work with, thus avoiding the more invasive bone marrow procedure.  They will send Mom's cells to a lab in Juarez, Mexico where they will grow over 2 days to a number over 20 million.  On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, Mom, Dad and Jamie will be driven about four blocks across the border to the clinic in Juarez where Dr. Karam and his team work.  Mom will have her multiplied stem cells put back into her body, some intraveinously, some by site-specific injections which target the areas where Mom's muscles are deteriorating.  She will receive injections in her mouth and throat to help her speech and swallowing, her feet to help her mobility, and other areas that are being or will be affected by the degenerative nature of this disease.  She will receive the stem cells, and then spend time in a hyperbaric chamber, which will flood her body with oxygen and help the stem cells get where they are going.  They will then be brought back to El Paso Doubletree to spend the night. So much is still unknown about this disease, and while this is not a cure by a long shot, the stem cells do seem to cause a slowing of the disease progression and a temporary reversal of its symptoms in many of the patients who have received this treatment.  I'll write more later and try to answer some of the questions you probably have, and Jamie will be blogging from El Paso this week, keeping us all up to date on how the procedures are going!