Catching Up on the Past Few Days

Sunday was pretty low key, we got caught up on laundry, took a long stroll along the boardwalk and then walked across the street for a movie. The movie theater is interesting. They are very modern and they have “regular” movies and “VIP” movies. The VIP movies include leather lounge chairs and there is a waiter or waitress that will take food orders and deliver it to you during the movie! We just went to a regular movie, but might try to catch a VIP movie before we leave. The VIP movies cost about the same as normal movies back home and the regular movies are half price. All in all Sunday was a very relaxing day.

Monday was another day of physical therapy, followed by a trip to the mall and then Trish’s 3rd injection. This time we went to the big mall. It's huge with very high end stores. So, no purchases for us other than a cup of coffee. :)

The injection on Monday contained fresh, non-expanded cells. Typically, the clinic receives the cells and then splits them to produce more cells and then freezes them until they are injected. The cells Trish got Monday have never been spilt, so they were brand new cells. These cells have been shown to work better, but can’t be used more often because of the cost and the overall availability of umbilical cord blood stem cells. The injection went well again and then Trish was down resting for the night, letting the stem cells do there thing! And, no headache!

Here we are working on balance in Physical Therapy. Ivan puts me to work helping out, which I love!

Here is Trish and Ivan her Physical Therapist posing for the camera!

This is a picture of the stem cells being injected in Trish's spinal fluid.

Here is (from left to right) the nurse (didn't catch his name), Dr. Herrero (the anesthesiologist), and Dr. Hernandez (the general Dr.)

Here Trish is with 2 of the patient coordinators, Samantha and Viviane. They are so sweet and Trish enjoys talking with them when she goes in for her treatments. Trish doesn't have a picture with Melisa yet, but will be sure to get one before we leave. It's nice because the clinic gave us a cell phone to make local calls while were here. It's nice because if we ever need anything day or night, they are always there to help.

Tuesday was physical therapy and then an IV. The IV was Trish’s first containing her own cells from her bone marrow. All in all from her bone marrow, she will get 2 bone marrow IV’s and 2 bone marrow injections. All of these will come over the next four days.

Things are going well, but we are getting home sick and ready to come home. We miss our boys, our pets, our family and friends very much! Thanks so much for your posts. It's great to hear from you.

We Love Monkeys!!!

Yesterday afternoon while I had to lay flat after my injection, Scott walked to a different grocery store that was about a mile away. It was open and he got stuff for us to make more of our meals at the condo. He came back with these flowers to surprise me. What a great guy he is!

Well, this morning we headed out to the Panama Canal and Monkey Island. William had his driver Victor drive us there. It's only a half an hour away. On the way there we saw an ant eater on the side of the road. Victor knows the local stuff so he got us a local boat tour guide that took us all around Lake Gatun and through parts of the canal. The canal actually runs through the lake. The boat was a small boat that could hold about 8 people. Our boat had only us 3 and the guide. It was fun going fast across the water passing some huge freighters as we went.

The boat stopped in front of a little island which we could quickly see was “Monkey Island”. The White Face Monkeys came running out to the end of the limbs on the trees to greet us. You can tell that they are used to boats coming up to them with food. They're not shy at all. Quickly about 6 monkeys jumped on our boat. One climbed right on Scott’s lap as we fed them pieces of bananas that Victor brought along. They were so cute! They kept grabbing bananas out of our hands and stuffing their faces. They would let you touch them and they would wrap their soft little hands around your fingers. It was so cool! Then they would jump back to the trees in the jungle. Then we would go a little further and more would jump on our boat. You have to watch your stuff or they will steal it and jump away. One of them took a little bag that Victor had. Their quick. What an amazing opportunity to be this close with wild monkeys. I wish so bad that Hunter and Parker could have been here to do this too.

Next we drove further on the lake and saw some other animals. We saw a big turtle, an alligator, an iguana, and some bigger black monkeys.

Here is the big Iguana in the tree.

Look close for two black monkeys.

Here they are closer.

Next we got back in the car and headed to Miraflores Locks. We went into the museum and watched a video explaining the history and how they built the Panama Canal. In the early 1900’s many different cultures came together to build the canal that would go through a strip of land 48 miles wide and connect the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. What a feat! The locks are necessary to bring the boat from sea level up to the level of the canal and lake. They do this by filling the locks with water, or letting water out. This brings the ships up or down each section. We were able to watch a big freighter go through the locks, which was very interesting to see. There are actually 3 sets of locks along the canal and we were at the one that is the entrance/exit with the Pacific Ocean. There are currently 2 lanes at the locks and boats can go through both ways. There is currently a huge expansion going on in which they are planning on building another set of locks, as well as widening and deepening the existing channel. They anticipate that this will be done in 2014. It was interesting.

Now we are back in our condo for a relaxing evening. Make sure that you click on the post before this. "A Night Out" because we posted that one and this one on the same day. Talk to you soon.

A Night Out

Thursday night out with Dr. Ugalde was great! He is such a caring and fun guy! We went to a nice restaurant called The Market. We were also joined by one of Dr. Ugalde’s colleagues from the lab. The conversation was great. It was very interesting to talk to them about the all they are doing with the stem cells. They’re so intelligent and excited about all their work. We get to go on a tour of the lab next week. It will be very interesting.

After dinner they took us on a tour of Casco Viejo. This is an older part of the city that is being renovated. There are lots of little clubs with live music. It’s also full of history. Mary Laura (this is how you would say her name in English), was extremely knowledgeable about the history of Panama. She took lots of time with us showing us many different parts of Panama’s history. She was excited when talking about how you can discover the magic in a culture by examining their history. It was interesting. Casco Viejo was actually the 2nd main city that was built. It’s over 100 years old. The first city they built was burned down by pirates and this one was built among the rocks so the pirate ships couldn’t get too close to attack.

Friday was full with therapy in the morning and my second injection in the afternoon. The injection went well. Again, the staff at the Stem Cell Institute is awesome. After my injection I laid flat in bed for the rest of the night to allow the stem cells to start to travel up to my injury spot as well as to try and avoid a spinal headache. We watched movies and hung out and I only had a slight headache when I woke up in the morning.

Now for the fun! Saturday we are planning on going out to see the Panama Canal. We will be going to see the locks and hopefully catch a ship going through. We also plan on taking a boat tour on the canal to a place called Monkey Island.

Another Day in Panama City

As expected today was a relatively easy day. Trish had physical therapy in the morning where she spent a lot of time standing and showing the therapist here how she stands in her walker without using her hands once she's up with her knees blocked. He was very impressed and said in his year and a half working with spinal cord injuries here in Panama he has never seen someone injured at her level do something like that! She also worked hard with some new exercises. She had fun and always works so hard.

After therapy we headed back to the condo for a bit and were able to see a couple of ships headed to the canal entrance.




Later we met up with a couple of friends at one of the malls here is town. The mall is very modern and we plan to go back and walk around when we have some more free time.

This is William. He's such a great guy and has been very accomodating to us and very helpful with anything we need. He arranged our condo and will help us plan our tourist excursions!

These are our friends Holly and Raj. Holly is down here for treatments for her MS, and we were also in Costa Rica together last year. It's such a coincidence that we were here at the same time again.

The mall is right across the street from the Stem Cell Institute so we crossed the street for Trish’s IV, which went really well.

The Stem Cell Institue is located on the 1st floor of this building.

This is Dr. Hernandez injecting the stem cells through the IV. Here he is telling Trish exactly what kind of cells, what their purpose is, and how many are being injected.

After the IV we headed home and decided to make a trip across the street to the grocery store (which is in bottom floor of the mall). Now when I say crossing the street, I don’t mean finding a cross walk and waiting for he light to turn. This means risking life and limb to get to the other side. The traffic here is crazy, there doesn’t appear to be any rules. Anyway, we made it across and through the mall only to find out that the grocery store was closed. We asked a worker in the mall when they open and his response was that he didn’t know but that they were closed yesterday too. He wasn’t sure when they would open again! I guess we’ll try again tomorrow!

We are headed out to dinner tonight with Dr. Ugalde, we are really excited to go out with him! He told Trish earlier that they got lots of great stem cells out of her bone marrow and they look great!

Bone Marrow Day

Here's Trish in her cute get up, ready for her bone marrow aspiration!

Trish woke up with a small headache that seemed to last throughout the day. Hopefully her body will get use to the spinal injections and she won’t get any more. The bone marrow aspiration went well. The Doctor who performed the procedure was very nice. After the procedure we headed to the condo and rested for the afternoon. We added a couple more shots of the view from our place. It’s relaxing to look out over the water.

Here is the start of the boardwalk that runs along the bay.

We decided to head out just before the sun went down and took a walk along the long boardwalk that runs in front of the condo along the ocean. It was really nice and the views of the city were amazing. It was also cool to see the boats lined up waiting to pass through the Panama Canal.

It's a little hard to see, but if you look close you can see the ships lined up in the distance.

After our walk we headed across the street to the Hard Rock Cafe. We had a nice dinner and saw a popular singer from Columbia while we were there. Of course neither of us had ever heard of him, but it was fun to see the restaurant abuzz with excitement.

Tomorrow looks to be a fairly easy day with physical therapy in the morning and an IV in the afternoon. We hope to get the chance to go out with Dr. Ugalde to dinner tomorrow night. He is the Dr. that Trish mostly communicated with before we came to Panama. He is very nice and came by to see Trish at her appointment at the clinic yesterday. He mainly works in the lab and research part of the clinic. He’s in charge of the spinal cord injury patients. We are excited to get the chance to get to talk with him more.

Thanks for all the well wishes!

We made it to Panama City!

The trip was relatively uneventful, but was a long travel day. We left at 7:00 Sunday morning and didn’t land in Panama until about 9:00 at night. By the time we got through customs got our bags and got to the condo it was pretty late. The condo is fine. The view is awesome. From one whole side ,we look out over the ocean and can also see the city. We picked the condo because it was actually cheaper than a hotel and it has a kitchen so we can eat at “home” some of the time. The only issue is that things in Panama aren’t very accessible. Some of the doorways are too narrow for a wheelchair to fit through. But as always, we dealt with it and now have everything figured out!

Here we are waiting in our "VIP" room at the airport. They actually got all of our bags for us and got us through customs very quickly.



This is the view from the windows of our condo!

We didn’t get to bed until about midnight the first night and needed to get up at 6:00 for the clinic to come take blood. They took a total of 12 viles! They use the serum from the blood to mix with the stem cells before they inject them. They actually came to our condo to draw the blood, which was really nice.

Later in the day Trish had her initial evaluation down at the clinic. During her evaluation, they decided to take an x-ray of her back so they could see the space between her vertebrae at the injection site. We got quite a surprise when the x-ray came back and showed that Trish had a broken tail bone! They said it does not look like a fresh break, but it was definitely broken. This is one of our greatest fears…having Trish get hurt and not even know it! They said it was an older injury, but definitely since her accident and that there is really nothing they can do for it now. Other than that, the evaluation went well and we actually ran into a friend we had met in Costa Rica last year! We were so excited. All of the staff and Doctors at the stem cell clinic were extremely nice. It's only about 5 minutes from the condo so travel time is great. Although, depending on the time of day the traffic in Panama can be crazy! Panama City is the biggest city either of us has ever been to. It’s hard to explain, but it’s packed with sky scrapers everywhere. Plus, the building just keeps on going. It really is an amazing site! We had no idea the city was so big.

Monday was also my birthday so Trish got a great recommendation on a local restaurant from the girls at the clinic. We went to a place called Jymy’s. The food was great! At the recommendation of the locals, I tried the grilled octopus! It was actually really good. Trish had spaghetti with alfredo sauce and octopus as well, and is was delicious! You could definitely say we are experiencing the culture of Panama!

Tuesday was busy. The day started with Trish’s first physical therapy appointment. She met her physical therapist, Ivan, and worked out hard for an hour. Unfortunately they are only allotted 1 hour appointments. The set up is more like a gym with a physical trainer. Trish is looking forward to sharing the therapy techniques she learned in Costa Rica and with her therapists at home with the therapists here. This way as more spinal cord injury patients come they will have a broader spectrum of exercises to do to help as the stem cells start to rebuild the connections and as the signals start getting through.

After therapy we checked out the mall across the street from our condo and had lunch at good old Micky D’s. The mall was very nice and big, 4 stories high! Next we headed off to Trish’s first injection. Again, the staff at the clinic are extremely nice and helpful. The Anesthesiologist,

Dr. Herrero, is amazing. She is so caring and knowledgeable. We truly feel like we are in good hands with her. She is passionate about her work and you can tell that she really cares about Trish. The injection went flawlessly. In fact Trish actually felt the needle go into her back! This is something that never happened in Costa Rica and is a great sign. We were all so excited, even the Doctor!

Now Trish is down for the night and so far is headache free! It is always a possibility that she will get a spinal headache after one of these procedures and Trish will do everything in her power to avoid one!

Tomorrow is a big day. Trish will be getting the bone marrow aspiration procedure. This procedure was a bit nerve wracking for us in Costa Rica last year as we had to check into the hospital and we were not dealing with the staff from Cell Medicine. This time, Dr. Herrero will be Trish’s Anesthesiologist for the procedure so we feel very comfortable going into tomorrow's procedure.

That’s all for now!

My Trip is Postponed

Hi there,
I wanted to let everyone know that our trip has been postponed for two weeks. When I was in Costa Rica a year ago, I had some of my bone marrow taken out. They used part of it for my treatment, then they stored the other part of it for later in case I ever needed it. When the doctors thawed my bone marrow for my upcoming visit, they noticed that some of the cells were no longer good. They let me know right away and now when I do go to Panama, I will have to get my bone marrow extracted again. This way when they take my own stem cells out of my bone marrow, they will all be fresh and healthy. They were not expecting me to have to do this again and there was a problem finding a doctor to do the procedure on such short notice. This is why I had to postpone our trip the two weeks. I am now scheduled for September 19-
October 2nd. We changed our flights and hotel and are now all set. We will update my blog when we are down there. I am excited and hopeful that this will bring even more return to my body with more movement and sensation. Wish me luck and keep me in your prayers. I'll update you soon.