Hello Everyone:
We are happy to announce that GREG IS a candidate for the spinal cord regeneration surgery but that is all we know until the doctor's "package" of information is sent to us with all of the options. Alicia and I flew out to San Diego last Tuesday night and the consultation took from Wednesday to Friday. They did an evoked sensory potential test, blood tests, breathing, EKG, urine, and emotional well-being interview. The evoked sensory potential test was the first one. The doctor placed electrodes on Greg's head in three places and placed conductors on each one of his legs. All this tested was the connectivity of my spinal cord(that it was intact and not severed). The results of this test looked real good and so Greg was allowed to continue with the rest of the tests. They looked at his X-Rays and MRI and decided that they could not determine the status of the injured portion of the spinal cord due to electronic interference in his MRI because of the titanium cage in his back. So..Thursday we went to a clinic in Tijuana and they performed a Cat Scan w/ dye contrast. It's where they inject slightly radio-active solution into your spinal cord via spinal tap. To make a long story short, it wasn't very fun. Friday they brought us back in to examine the results from the Cat Scan and they showed us Greg had two areas where his spinal cord had been crushed. At the T6-T7 area and T8-T9 area there is only about 30% of his spinal cord left and because the Myelin coating was stripped from the neural fibers when he got hurt that is why he doesn't have any sensation or muscle control below the ribcage. We did learn more about his options though. He has options where he wants the surgery to take place and what kind of stem cells he wants to have injected. The surgery can be either in the old Tijuana hospital or brand new 6 month old hospital, they told us that there is a major difference in price. We also have two options for stem cells. The therapy only used shark stem cells a couple of years ago w/ injections every two weeks. Then they improved the shark cells and only had to inject them every two months. Now we have the choice of buying human umbilical cord stem cells from a supplier in the US. They are the most expensive, but only require injections every 6 - 9 months and they have been proven to produce recovery results the fastest. That is all we know for now and they are going to be sending us updated recovery results from the 89 patients that they have treated so far, contact numbers, and an estimate of costs along with the options. We asked for a ball park figure for price and they really didn't want to give us one, but they finally guessed maybe $50,000-$60,000 for the surgery and initial injection of stem cells.
Friday was the last day of Greg's consultation so on Saturday we toured San Diego w/ the realtor that we have been talking to. He toured us around the town called Chula Vista(between San Diego and the border). He showed us quite a few different living options and then let us walk inside a house that he thought would be perfect for us. He was exactly right. We instantly fell in love with it, but it is vacant now so who knows if it will still be in a couple of months.
As far as moving to San Diego we finally decided to set the date of August 1st. We will have the movers come and pick up our stuff in the middle of July and start driving ourselves maybe the 27th of July so we can drive into town on August 1st. The Army pays for one move after getting out so we thought we might as well make the most of it and turn it into a road trip.
Greg is going to Montana for Kayla and Lucas's graduation this coming weekend so we will update you with more info when he gets back and receives the info from the doctors.
Greg & Alicia
