Snore Away!

Ok, we are finally leaving Boston. The latest delay, I am very excited to report, was Kenneth. He just woke up and it is 1:45 in the afternoon. Daniel Faiella told me that the little girl from Orlando also slept a lot after her stem cell transplant. This is a wonderful thing! Snore away!

A lot of you have been emailing me about whether we will need to take Ken back to Costa Rica for more adult stem cells. The answer is, "yes". One of the reasons for this is because of the differences between adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are very powerful and dangerous cells. Once injected in the body, these cells work quickly to repair damaged areas, but the trouble is they will not stop there. Embryonic stem cells keep growing, often becoming tumors and other things in the body, a lot of which we don't know about yet. There is the potential for trouble down the road with embryonic stem cells.

Adult stem cells, on the other hand, will stop growing--they work sort of like the hyperbaric oxygen chamber. The cells in got in Costa Rica will grow for a while, take Kenneth to a certain level of recovery, and then stop growing (at about six months). The next few months we will work on reading/math skills, to help train his new cellss (an MS patient would add lots of physical therapy to help their cells). So, after about six months, you would want to go back for more adult stem cells to take your child to the next level of recovery.