New hope for cerebral palsy patient
June 20, 2008
Three strong women who took control of their own destiny - Nelly van Iwaarden (75) and her two daughters Francien (55) and Anneke. Anneke was born 43 years ago with severe cerebral haemorrhages. Her diagnosis: cerebral palsy (CP). CP sufferers are subject to apoplexies which lead to paralysis of the arms and legs, seizures and the loss of control of almost all muscles.
At five years of age, Anneke was put in a home for the disabled by the Dutch authorities. Thirty years later she fled from there, travelling twenty kilometres in a wheelchair back to her family. Her clenched muscles had given her back a double-S shape, her left arm was fixed at a strange angle behind her head and her body was twisted to the right and forwards. Her elbow joints and inguinal abdominal region were raw and openly bleeding. Anneke had uncontrolled saliva discharge. She couldn’t sit up by herself in a chair or turn in bed. She wet the bed every night. All accompanied by an incredible pain in her oppressed body.
Her sister Francien and mother Nelly built a fantastic handicapped accessible home with the inheritance from Anneke’s father, who had died in 1999, and searched desperately for ways to help Anneke. The doctors had already given up on the young woman a long time ago. Francien came across an article in a magazine about stem cell treatment in the XCell-Center.
Our specialists didn’t want to get the family’s hopes up too high in the beginning. However, following an in-depth examination, a joint decision was made to inject Anneke's own adult stem cells into her spinal canal.
Francien: “24 hours later, there wasn’t any saliva running out of Anneke’s mouth anymore”. Then everything happened in rapid succession: her left arm loosened; she could sit up straight again; her arm joint opened up; she could move her legs. Every day an improvement.
Today, following her third stem cell treatment, Anneke can laugh again and take part in family life. She can sit up straight by herself in her wheelchair, read again (after 17 years of not reading), write and knit. She can turn around in the bed herself and go to the toilet with help from her sister. Following the stem cell therapy, she can even maintain an upright posture again and has been able to stand for the first time in her life. Several times a day, she exercises her leg muscles while standing on an electric vibrating plate and she trains her arms and fingers using dumbbells.
Francien: “Our motto is practice, practice and more practice.” And Nelly, Anneke’s mother, adds with a smile: “We haven’t let things get us down. The exercises have only been made possible by the stem cell treatment and all three of us have seen an incredible enhancement in our quality of life.”
