Stem Cell Treatment for Spinal Cord Injury
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Hi, my name is Ben and I'm fundraising to pay for stem cell treatment for my spinal cord injury.
At the beach in April of 2022, I walked out of the water to show my friends a jellyfish, I then ran back into the ocean and dove forward unknowingly into a sandbar, which broke my neck and paralyzed me.
My most immediate thought was that I may never be able to be the father to my two boys that I had intended to be, and I have committed myself to do everything I can to recover for them.
After my surgery, I remained hospitalized as a tetraplegic for fourteen weeks, and as I worked each day to regain a little more, I progressed from a bed to a wheelchair to a walker to a cane and now walking unassisted.
I’m so grateful that I can now walk slowly for 10 minutes before I need a rest and I can take care of my kids, and myself, but I also struggle daily with various symptoms from my injury, including high spasticity in my arms, legs and back, and organ dysfunction.
As I have pushed forward through the stages of treatment and healing, I now find myself with the opportunity to potentially take my recovery even further through the use of therapies based on current research in neurobiology and robotics.
Your donation will help fund my participation in a proven treatment program that is twofold: providing stem cell secretome therapy alongside robotics-assisted physiotherapy using the hybrid assistive limb (HAL) exoskeleton.
After deriving stem cells from my fat tissue, doctors will extract the active therapeutic components and introduce them to my cerebrospinal fluid during several injections over several weeks, with the potential to have numerous healing effects on the damaged spinal cord tissue. This process costs approximately $55,000.
The HAL system is a lower body exoskeleton that translates weak electrical signals on the surface of the skin into purposeful meaningful movement, which can be felt by the wearer and interpreted by their brain, closing a loop of signals that is important in inducing neuroplasticity. This process costs approximately $10-20,000 depending on duration.
Training regularly with the HAL device throughout a secretome injection cycle has been shown to give patients the best possible chance of improving sensory and motor function after spinal cord injury.
As a newly single father, I owe it to myself and my kids to pursue any treatments that prove safe and effective, including cutting-edge medical advancements, and so it’s my mission to overcome the financial hurdles that stand between me and my best recovery.
Thank you so much for your help and support.
My CTV News article:
Organiser
Benjamin Board
Organiser
Hamilton, ON