A STEM CELL LOVE STORY BETWEEN MAN, WOMAN & GOD

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A STEM CELL LOVE STORY

BETWEEN MAN, WOMAN & GOD

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One of the most moving love stories I’ve seen

in a very long time.  

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Imagine Romeo and Juliette recast with clergy and separated not by feuding families but by their life-long religious vows to God.  Throw in not one but 2 third act heart attacks and the standard doctor’s refrain:

“there’s nothing more we can do.” 

Add the stem cell treatment twist at the finale; allowing for an extended encore of life and love extending years beyond prognosis.

Dramatic enough to make even the coldest heart sigh?

Yes.  But this…is no play.
This is REAL LIFE.

by David Granovsky

The Stem Cell Blog

 A Priest and a Nun Get Married…

and Get Stem Cells

John Fugelsang recalls…his mother, Peggy, joined a convent after an abusive childhood, taking the name Sister Damien. But his father, Jack, had become a Franciscan monk after high school. The two met in Brooklyn when Jack – or Brother Boniface – had become ill with tuberculosis.

“From all accounts I heard, he fell madly, desperately, insanely in love with this Southern nurse in a nun’s habit that he knew he could never have, and had sworn to God he would never want to have,” Fugelsang says.

Brother Boniface did the only thing he could do. He held a secret torch for Sister Damien for some 10 years. During that time, he expressed his love through platonic letters. She had been sent to Malawi to care for people with leprosy. And every week, he would write. He kept her – and all of the sisters – apprised of the latest: of L.B.J. and M.L.K. and everything else U.S.A.

Then, her father died. When she returned home to take care of her family, Brother Boniface found out and intercepted her – showing up at the hospital where she was working and professing his love. “She was appalled,” says Fugelsang.

But eventually, Boniface won her over. They broke their religious vows and made new ones – to each other.

As Fugelsang says, it was their first love and second marriage, the first being a marriage to God. They dropped their names and became Jack and Peggy again. They had kids and lived happily married for decades, from what Fugelsang recalls.

“I can honestly say that my father’s love only grew as he got older and as they aged,” says Fugelsang. “The romance didn’t slow down for him at all. He was someone who was completely unable to separate his devotion to God from his devotion to his wife.”

Well into his 60s, Jack’s heart thumped at full force – emotionally and spiritually. But then, two heart attacks had doctors shaking their heads, saying

there was nothing they could do.

“So he just began telling everyone that he wasn’t going to die,” says Fugelsang, “that he was going to live on because he was too in love. And he held on longer than any of the doctors thought he could.”

A stem-cell treatment in Thailand afforded him a few more years.

 “It was amazing seeing how even in the last days of his life, the love just got deeper and deeper. I have photos of him in his hospital bed looking at her with a kind of naked, calm love that I’ve seldom seen on a man’s face.”

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CEDAR SINAI – EDITING THE TRUTH

I commented on the recent Cedar Sinai heart stem cell story and received an interesting response.  The Cedar Sinai story used the following erroneous quote”

“This is the first instance of therapeutic regeneration”

I took issue with this and sited the many years of trials, studies and patients treated to illustrate its inaccuracy.  See my comment below and then that of the Health Care reporter from KPCC, Stephanie O’Neill, …

…………………

Comment by StemCellBlogger, Stem cell writer, author, patient advocate.
7 long years. It has taken 7 years for the US medical system to CATCH UP to the rest of the world.

This article, though pro-adult stem cell, uses the same tired, B.S.
lines like: “This is the first instance of therapeutic regeneration”
This article blatantly ignores the thousands of of studies, trials and
patients successfully treated over the last 7 years.

Sadly, we won’t see stem cell treatments readily, commonly and
commercially available in the US for a long time. Many people will
offer comments on these developments…
The uninformed will say: “first time ever!”
The optimists will say: “better late than never”
The realists will say: “10 years before US patients will have access to these treatments”
The families of those who have died over the past 7 years will say: “if only the US woke up sooner”

Stem cell treatments are available NOW outside of the United States at
some of the most modern and advanced hospitals and clinics in the
world. Maybe, just maybe, the families of those who WILL die from heart
disease over the NEXT 10 years will say: “NOW is the time to go where
they have been treating heart disease with stem cells for over half a
decade”

……………………………..

Comment by Stephanie O’Neill, Health Care reporter, KPCC:
For the record: The line quoted in the comment was in neither of my stories – online or broadcast versions. Thank you, Stephanie O’Neill, Health Care reporter, KPCC.

……………………………..

WHAT THIS MEANS:

I applaud Stephanie O’Neill (not the author of the original article) for understanding that the quote, “This is the first instance of therapeutic regeneration,” is wrong and further, not wanting her article and her reporting associated with inaccurate quotes.

Reporting on stem cells is like tap dancing through a  mine field.  There is so much misinformation out there and so many conflicting agendas and interests, it is very difficult to print the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  We have a responsibility to the patients to try to disseminate the information truthfully and in a manner they can be readily understood.

Stephanie, thanks for doing your part!  You have definitely earned a gold star from The Stem Cell Blog today!

Patient’s own stem cells help heal heart, early research shows – CNN.com

7 long years.

It has taken 7 years for the US medical system to CATCH UP to the rest of the world.  This article, though pro-adult stem cell, uses the same tired, B.S. lines like:

“This is the first instance of therapeutic regeneration”

This article blatantly ignores the thousands of of studies, trials and patients successfully treated over the last 7 years.  Sadly, we won’t see stem cell treatments readily, commonly and commercially available in the US for a long time. 

Many people will offer comments on these developments…

The uninformed will say: “first time ever!”

The optimists will say: “better late than never”

The realists will say: “10 years before US patients will have access to these treatments”

The families of those who have died over the past 7 years will say: “if only the US woke up sooner”

……………………

Stem cell treatments are available NOW outside of the United States at some of the most modern and advanced hospitals and clinics in the world.  Maybe, just maybe, the families of those who WILL die from heart disease over the NEXT 10 years will say:

“NOW is the time to go where they have been treating heart disease with stem cells for over half a decade”

For info on CURRENTLY AVAILABLE stem cell treatments for heart disease:

http://bit.ly/stemcellsnow

For more info and the HISTORY of stem cells for heart disease :

http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/heart-disease-treatment/

Patient’s own stem cells help heal heart, early research shows

A patient’s own heart cells can be used to regrow new heart tissue and help undo damage caused by a heart attack, according to early research published on Monday.

Scientists at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore were able to treat 17 heart attack patients with cells grown from their own heart tissue and not only show the procedure was safe, but also that the cells can help reduce scarring and even cause new heart muscle to grow.

When a person suffers a heart attack, he or she is often left with huge areas of scarring in the heart. Scarred heart muscle doesn’t pump blood as well as it used to, putting stress on other parts of the heart to make up for the deficit. The damaged area also doesn’t conduct electric current as well, leading to an abnormal heart rhythm, which can cause more problems. Heart attack patients often go on to develop heart failure.

“This is the first instance of therapeutic regeneration,” says Dr. Eduardo Marbán, director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute. He says while nature abounds with examples of spontaneous regeneration of limbs or tissues – like a salamander’s new tail or a human liver regrowing to full size if partially damaged – doctors have not been able to help patients regrow heart tissue. This could change in the future if larger clinical trials and longer patient outcomes confirm the results of this early research published Monday in the journal The Lancet.  Marbán and his colleagues first presented this research at an American Heart Association conference in November…

Patient’s own stem cells help heal heart, early research shows – – CNN.com Blogs.

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PARKINSON’S – FREDDIE ROACH

For those that don’t know him, Freddie Roach is the greatest boxing coach of all time.  He has accomplished this incredible feat with slurred speech and tremors.  Freddie Roach has Parkinson’s.  On the HBO special about him, in a conversation with another Parkinson’s patient Roach says:

“That’s why Muhammad Ali shakes so much.  He doesn’t take the medication.”

The side effects of the medication are worse than the symptoms of the disease.

In a special on Muhammad Ali’s daughter, a brilliant fighter in her own right, she says:

Ali is perfectly coherent and easy to talk to in the morning before he takes his meds.  After he takes his meds you can’t talk to him.

What have we learned here?

http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/gene-therapy-shows-promise-for-parkinsons-reuters/

http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/60-parkinsons-patients-improve-after-repair-stem-cell-treatment-physicians-confirm-results/

Autologous Bone Marrow Stem Cells Transplant into Parkinson’s Disease Patients – Safe + Improve
http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/autologous-bone-marrow-stem-cells-transplant-into-parkinson%e2%80%99s-disease-patients-safe-improve/

60% PARKINSON’S PATIENTS IMPROVE AFTER REPAIR STEM CELL TREATMENT – PHYSICIANS CONFIRM RESULTS!
http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/60-parkinsons-patients-improve-after-repair-stem-cell-treatment-physicians-confirm-results/

Do Stem Cells Repair Damaged Brain Cells
http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/mesenchymal-stem-cells-may-repair-damaged-brain-cells-%c2%ab-adult-stem-cell-awareness/

* OPRAH, MICHAEL J FOX, DR OZ – STEM CELL DEBATE IS DEAD! –http://tinyurl.com/DEBATEisDEAD

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