The FDA has approved PRP and Stem Cell therapies; they are not dangerous: These treatments are about harvesting your own, healthy cells and injecting them into areas of your body that need help.
Since few can afford PRP and stem cell treatments, we are left with little more than anecdotes, but the anecdotes are more than promising. They are miraculous.
Few insurance companies, though, cover the expense of these treatments. My ex-husband, Anthony Pizzarelli, just passed away, yesterday, after being bedridden for ten years with progressive Multiple Sclerosis.
My son is autistic. I can feel the space between us when my words do not reach his brain, and when his thoughts and words are lost on me. He is locked inside himself, but when something unlocks--when we are in a circle of connection through our words--I grieve when he returns to the isolation of autism. He does not need any more challenges than being a neurotypical child figuring out his way in the world.
Far less drastically, I have degenerative disc disorder in my back and am in chronic pain.
My idea was to speak to a specialist tomorrow, a day after Tony died from m.s. It was to be about treating my back--I am the easy one to heal, it seems, expensive as it will be to come out-of-pocket. I thought that I would ask about where to go, though, what other countries care enough to provide for not only myself but for my two loved ones. Iran, for instance, offers stem cell therapy. Yes, Iran. The idea was to sell my home and use all of the money and then some to regenerate what has degenerated in my loved ones. My ex-husband died, though, yesterday at the age of 43, two days before his birthday. It's customary to say it was "his time," but it wasn't.
We have something that regenerates and is safe, yet insurance companies prefer for us to be chronically unhealthy; there is more money, it seems, in "treating" the chronically ill with big pharma drugs--a business structure too complex to describe but not so different from a well-run drug cartel. It's all about the money.
HMOs have no problem approving the ABC drugs for MS, which leave those riddled with this disease in a permanent flu. Why not stem cells to let their nerves regenerate?
HMOs have no problem approving my use of painkillers, highly addictive and unhealthy, rather than let my body regenerate. Why not offer my back regeneration where it is degenerating?
HMOs have no problem letting teachers and parents carry most all the weight--financially and emotionally--providing services and pills to those on the spectrum. Why not stem cells, which are showing promising results?
Do I know, absolutely know, that PRP and stem cells will work? No, of course not, but the medical field is called a practice for a reason. I do know that much of what they currently practice leaves those whose bodies fail in far worse shape than when they started. It seems that almost everything out there comes wth far harsher side effects than is sometimes worth the treatment. Stem cells do not have harsh side effects: They are your body healng itself--nothing foreign, nothing toxic--just you giving you another chance.
It is too late for Tony. I am not going to let it be too late for all those who suffer while a potential cure exists.
