DAY THREE Sept 19
Busy day. Went down to throat (speech and swallowing) therapy at 9. It is a TENS unit with a elastic collar, essentially. 30 mins of that. Then 30 mins of acupuncture, which was more tolerable today, then massage for 1/2 hr. Then into the physical therapy gym for a workout on balance machines.

Then had some Chinese pizza for lunch, like sweet and sour calzone. Had a Coke to drink. Tastes exactly like it should, in the familiar can colors, in Chinese, and with the old style removable tab-top that I haven't seen in years.

Dr.Liang says stem cells at 4 or 5 PM today. Hal the paraplegic weeled into my room excitedly and said he had a breakthrough, grabbed my cane (or baston as he called it, ) got out of his wheelchair and hobbled across the room. He said he had been shopping when he got a hot flash, and his legs started buzzing. Something had reconnected.

Fast foward....It's now 6PM. I got stem cells, but It was through IV, and not spinal. I guess there was a miscommunication. We heard a lot of kids crying on the floor, when they usually sedate them to administer spinally, so I guess the whole floor was IV this week. Hal says you want as many spinals as possible-he bought a couple extra. The spinals have much better neural effectiveness, on account of the blood-brain barrier which only allows a small percentage of IV stem cells enter the neural system. On the other hand, the ones that DO get through can go deeper, and a blood IV can fix other things that ail you, like bad eyesight (see DAVID'S blog: http://www.stemcellschina.com/blogs/David. He was in Physical Therapy with me today, complete with a cheering section. He's quite a guy.

Camillia (her English moniker) who schedules us, is quite a talker. She's only 23, Kelsey's age, and speaks pretty good English. Says she wants to go shopping with Sally and Kathy. She'll make sure they get a good deal. She said Shen Zhen is essentially 20 years old. 10 million people have settled here since then. Yow.

There's a phyisician from Spain here, being treated for ataxia. we had a long talk last night. It's funny to see him, because he's almost exactly as far along with the disease as me. He's skeptical, but his wife, who's also a Dr., sees changes. He said he had to give up his practice because he could no longer write! Been there. He had been to a big hospital in Miami that didn't know what ataxia was, but it would cost $30,000 for a five day "treatment." His wife said screw that, and here they are.