The Don Margolis Blog

AFTER 13 YEARS OF BAD MEDICINE FOR HIS MS, PITTSBURGH MAN OUTSMARTS HIS DOCTORS

John Orsingher says he feels "great" just three weeks after receiving stem-cell treatments for his multiple sclerosis.

But the Export man realizes a there's still a battle ahead in the fight against the condition he has had for about 13 years.
 

"It seems like my eyesight came back. I feel a lot better," Orsingher said last week in the Export Laundromat, which he owns. "I'm moving around more ... I'm not all worked up, I feel great right now. I still can't walk (very well), but I feel good."
 

Orsingher went to Latin America with his wife, Lisa, on Oct. 27 for treatments not available in the United States. To come up with the $30,000 for the treatment and various assorted extra costs, fundraisers were held.
 

Multiple sclerosis -- commonly called MS -- affects the ability of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord to communicate with each other. It often progresses to physical and cognitive disability.
 

No American doctor has a clue on how to improve the lives of MS patients, but to a man (or woman) they will lie and tell their patients stem cells don’t work. “Take these pills,” they say, not knowing whether they work or which side effect will hurt the patient! For proof by real experts, see our Lab Rat section about John Ioannidis as reported by Atlantic Monthly in our newsletter:http://www.repairstemcells.org/newsletters/NL111210.htm

Orsingher, 48, had been taking various medications to slow the progression of MS. One of them, Tysabri, was effective, but side effects were too damaging. Others left him sick. That led him to seek alternative methods. 
 

A stem-cell transplant infuses healthy cells into the body. According to New Scientist magazine, the treatment works by resetting a patient's immune system to reverse some of the disability.
 

Lisa Orsingher said she has noticed an improvement in her husband. (Don has often said, “Don’t ask the patient, ask the spouse if you want to know how the stem cell patient is really doing!”)
 

A second treatment is recommended in about six months at a cost of about $12,500. He said he should have the money thanks to fundraisers and donations.
 

"I'm going to take some money out of my 401(k) to cover whatever they don't cover," he said.
 

Donations still are being taken at S&T Bank in Murrysville.
 

Orsingher did say he hasn't felt the need to take much medication since his return to the United States. He does take some pain medication and muscle relaxers.
 

"I actually cut back on most of that," Orsingher said. "I'm trying to wean myself off all that slowly."
 

He is continuing therapy and stretching exercises and rides a stationary bike.
 

The couple is glad they made the trip.
 

"(We have) no regrets, no regrets at all," Lisa Orsingher said. "He may need a little more, but I'm sure he's willing to go again."
 

Her goal is to have her husband, who is using a walker, take her for a stroll on the beach.
 

"That's what we're still shooting for," she said.

What is subjected to more weight and is injured more than any other joint in our body? Our ankles are. When an injury, sprain, or break does not heal right, the problem creeps up years later in the form of arthritis.
 

A new procedure using stem cells from the patient's own body is regenerating joints and giving people more mobility.

His resume includes conquering mount McKinley 40 times, Mount Kilimanjaro 20 times and Mount Everest nine times, and a broken ankle from 30 years ago created his biggest barrier yet.
 

He said, "It's getting to the point where I'm limping."
 

The cartilage in between his subtalar joint right below the ankle was gone.
 

Dr. S. Robert Rozbruch, Chief at Limb Lengthening and Complex Reconstruction Service Hospital for Special Surgery, said, "The conventional treatment for that is to fuse the subtalar joint which means make it stiff."
 

That is not an option for Vern, so doctors tried a new approach. Implant a fixator for three months that pulls apart the joint. Then, inject stem cells in the new four-millimeter space where cartilage will regenerate.
 

Dr. Rozbruch said, "We used stem cells derived from his pelvis."
 

Dr. Rozbruch has done 100 of these procedures on ankle joints. So far, 90 percent of patients are relieved of pain and do not need fusions.
 

He said, "Basically you see a reversal of arthritis."
 

You can see the difference between the ankle joint before the procedure, which has no space between the bones, and after...
 

"Look at the difference you can see a space, there's about three millimeters of cartilage compared to nothing," said Dr. Rozbruch.
 

"With this new technique I'll have a foot than can go 20, 30 years," said Vern.
 

Vern is a climbing king who was not going to let pain prevent him from his next adventure. This is the first time ever the procedure was done in the joint below the ankle.
 

Vern's next trip is an expedition across the South Pole in November.
 

Doctors say the cartilage continues to regenerate years after the procedure. If it does not work, patients can still have a fusion.

BERLIN, November 26, 2010 - Doctors associated with a German umbilical cord blood bank say that they have cured a child’s leukemia completely using an infusion of stem cells from umbilical cord blood.
 

The procedure was reportedly performed in 2005 on a four-year-old girl whose chemotherapy treatment had failed and who had a prognosis of only three months to live.  The procedure was possible because the parents had decided to preserve their child’s umbilical cord blood at the time of birth.

After continuous monitoring of the child for five years now, with no sign of leukemia cells in her blood, doctors say that they have confirmed that the treatment worked.
 

“Seventy-five months have passed and we can speak of a cure with certainty,” said Eberhard Lampeter of Vita 34.
 

According to the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, this is the first case in the world of a child cured of leukemia by her own stem cells. In most cases the child’s umbilical cord blood is not available, and the stem cells of close family members must be used.
 

The new treatment is the latest in a long string of hundreds of successes in the science of stem cell treatments that use mature cells rather than embryonic stem cells.  Embryonic stem cell treatments, which destroy a human life, have never been proven effective in any medical treatment to date. Treatments with mature stem cells do not cause harm to the donor of the cells.
 

Stem cell pioneer Dr. Colin McGuckin recently told LifeSiteNews that, despite amazing success with umbilical cord blood treatments, it remains difficult to obtain funding for research because of the “cult of celebrity” in science, which rewards controversial research over research that is truly effective in saving lives.
 

“People aren’t talking about cord blood because it’s not controversial,” McGuckin told LSN. “Consequently, it does not make headlines and therefore researchers who want to use the cells from cord blood do not receive funding.”

His journey was a hard one – 17 years of ill-health, medical testing leading to questionable diagnoses and useless harmful drugs. “I have a long history of heart disease, which began noticeably in December 1993,” he confided.  “My condition is caused by a family history of vascular diseases, hypertension, hypercholesteremia, and severe sleep apnea. Unfortunately, I’d inherited all these risk factors and, had I known earlier, I wouldn’t have felt the compunction, much less the devastating effects of heart disease, had I not added 18 years of cigarette smoking to the deadly mix.” “Sadly, I was told by a heart specialist that even a perfectly healthy lifestyle wouldn’t have prevented me from having a heart attack somewhere in my 50s, but smoking had definitely accelerated the process.“ “Only a month after my 30th birthday, I was rushed to the local hospital’s emergency department twice in four days with severe, pulsating pain in my chest, arms, and shoulders.”

 

On this trip to the hospital, Jim was incorrectly diagnosed with esophageal reflux, but four years later, after suffering the same symptoms, he found out he’d really had two heart attacks, not acid reflux, and was now suffering another. “This time I was rushed to a different hospital, where I was correctly diagnosed with a severe heart attack caused by two completely blocked heart arteries and a third blocked at 90%. The attending cardiologist told me in exact terms, that I’d require emergency quadruple bypass surgery to restore blood flow to my heart, so obviously I agreed. In fact, I was ecstatic to hear that I would survive. “

 

“So, within a few hours on a very early Sunday morning, a medical team had congregated to perform the grueling five-hour procedure. Odd perhaps, but I was feeling happy and excited about the surgery.” “Unfortunately, bypass surgery couldn’t repair the severe scar left on my heart by the heart attacks and the damaged tissue had left me constantly fatigued and breathless for the next 12 years.” During those years, Jim reinvented himself. Following the surgery, he physically worked on his condition, working out, trying to lead a normal life. Jim enrolled as a full time student, graduated, and began private practice as a psychologist, hoping to share his knowledge on the subject of the humanities in a broader, refreshing manner.

 

But then his whole world was overturned. “In December 2008, I was playing cricket at a Jimtmas gathering with my university colleagues, when I suddenly collapsed in a heap. I’d eaten lunch and consumed two light beers on a warm summer’s day, shortly before running between the wickets and heading for the outfield. It was then that my colleagues noticed me “go down like a cowboy in a Western gun battle.”

 

“Amazingly, it seems the stars had aligned for me that day, when I was saved by a quick-thinking and skilled friend and colleague. She’d resuscitated me within seconds of going down and miraculously kept the blood flowing through my brain with ongoing CPR, until both the fire brigade and ambulance had arrived a few minutes later.“ “An hour of resuscitation onsite undoubtedly appears to have helped convince me to hold onto life, so once I was fully stabilized, the paramedics immediately transported me to a hospital’s intensive care unit. I remained there for 24 hours, covered by an ice blanket, which aimed to cool my body and reduce my heart’s function to a bare minimum. I remained in hospital for nine days and had a defibrillator fitted in my chest. “Having narrowly escaping this time, Jim had thought he was free and clear, but in 2009, he felt he had hit bottom.

 

“Following my last VF in December 2009, I’d become increasingly helpless and hopeless in the need to control both my heart’s predictability and overall quality of life. The sense of helplessness I experienced with taking drugs to curb one problem, only to have them cause others, had left me feeling claustrophobic and believing that perhaps my relatively young life at 46 had reached its tether. I began to feel as though my light was dimming slowly, but markedly.” After much personal introspection, years of pills, medical appointments, and treatments,  Jim’s internet search brought him to adult stem cells and their use in treatment of heart disease through VesCell, a process of using one’s own blood to create stem cells. He had a glimmer of hope.

 

Jim contacted VesCell in early 2010, seeking options for his heart condition. “I have a deep concern and personal interest in stem cell therapy because of my heart condition, so I wished to explore the possibilities the procedure may hold for me. “

Jim submitted his medical records, was approved and began to prepare for is journey to Bangkok for treatment. “Despite my knowledge of the hospital’s credentials, once I’d arrived there in mid April this year, I was almost stunned to find an amazingly modern hospital with ever-attending, pleasant, and courteous staff members. Just arriving at the Bangkok hospital had made me feel better, so I was sure that my up-lifted mood would play some role in improving my chances of optimal improvement after the long-awaited procedure.” Jim’s treatment was deemed a success, and he returned home to his everyday life to wait and see what happened.

 

“It was May 28th, exactly one month from the date of my ASC injection. I remember leaving the house that morning and, while heading for the train station, it had dawned on me that for the first time in maybe 15 years, I hadn’t propped myself on the bed for 10 minutes to meditate. Morning meditation was a ritual I’d developed to help me wade through the day.”

 

“I realized that I hadn’t sat down to meditate that morning, because I hadn’t needed to. As I noted in a few of the testimonials I’d read early this year, the patient had experienced symptom relief as early as a month from the day of his/her procedure. And now, exactly one month after my procedure, it had happened to me! You wouldn’t believe how the treatment just crept up on me, when, as if by magic, I was without fatigue for the first time in maybe 15 years. Not to mention, the palpitations had all but ceased at the same time, while the associated cough had disappeared, and some blood had come rushing back to my face.” “My breathlessness also seemed to have all but disappeared, and here I am at the end of September, 2010, still feeling the amazing effects of VesCell. There’s only one more detail, of course, and that’s whether or not my new stem cells will hone in and repair the problematical scar tissue that’s causing the VF’s. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see in time and remain open to the possibilities, yet again.” Jim just had his six month checkup back in Bangkok and his stem cell cardiologist confirmed his results.

 

“This is a revolutionary treatment and I take this opportunity to congratulate you all for potentially making a profoundly positive impact on those with the greatest needs of hope and life, with “a deep concern and personal interest in stem cell therapy because of my heart condition.”

 

VesCell™ uses a patient’s own adult stem cells to treat Heart Disease and is a viable alternative for patients who either cannot undergo or choose not to undergo the standard treatment such as Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG), heart transplants, or receiving maximal therapy. The company focused on using stem cells from the patient’s own blood in order to treat a variety of disorders, especially cardiovascular diseases. The company has developed a proprietary stem cell technology called VesCell™ that is currently being used by hospitals in Thailand to treat patients with heart disease. The company has treatment centers in Latin America and Europe.

www.vescell.com