Today was a busy day. First day back at work after vacation. Roofers started putting a new roof on our house. Continued working on updating my blog with vacation stories and photos.
And I started an intensive acupuncture program to see if it will help me combat ALS. My doctor studied with her father in China, and there was an acupuncture/Chinese herb treatment that purportedly helped some people in China. It was a small study, only 47 people. The information was provided to my doctor by another pupil of her grandfather, who is still in China and now in his 80's. According to the medical study (in Chinese), more than half of the treated group lived more than 10 years. More than half of the group showed some level of improvement in their condition.
Part of the treatment involves pricking and bleeding, coupled with traditional acupuncture, Chinese exercises, and Chinese herbs. She will have to formulate the herbs, so they won't be available until next week. She pricked my paralyzed tongue numerous times to bleed it. She pricked my back along my spine somewhere between 60-100 times to bleed it and vigorously massaged some liquid compound into it. She told me it would bruise, and it did. She pricked each of my toes twice, once on each side of the nail to bleed them, and I flinched a lot more when she was doing that than when she did my back. When I go back on Wednesday she will prick my fingers instead of my toes. I had about 8-9 needles in my scalp along the central meridian plus the usual ones in my feet, legs, and thumbs.
No pain, no gain! Kim and I think it is worth the time and cost to see if it will work. We have to pay out of pocket since she doesn't accept insurance, and it is not cheap. However, if I can extend my life, improve my speech/swallowing, or slow the spread of the disease to the rest of my body, it will be worth every penny.
The article in this past Sunday's paper talked about ALS and the Brainstorm study. They indicated that the stem cell therapy would likely have to be repeated several times a year, not a once and done treatment, which I didn't know.
This will be interesting to keep up with. I do not know if could make it through. Your story might just encourage me enough to try it out for myself. Thank you so much for sharing this story with the public. It is nice to hear the stories of others who are going through similar struggles with living with ALS.
ReplyDeleteHannah Holland @ Berkeley Community ACU