Hello everyone. Another good day today. My trunk muscles are ever so slightly getting stronger and I was able to twitch my toes again for some of the therapists. It seems like the right foot is easier than the left for now anyhow. Dad and I went with a couple from Utah, Kirk and Jessica, out to eat and to do a little window shopping. It was a relief to get out of the hospital for a couple of hours and just roam around. Kirk is an extrordinary individual. His has a spinal cord injury as well, but his is a higher break than mine so he has less use of his hands and arms, but the size of his heart and the determination in his mind are as strong or I should say even stronger than my own. His wife is as amazing also. She is always there for him, but she gives him the distance he needs to push himself and the love that he needs to continue to believe not only in himself, but in them as a couple as well. That is about it for now. It is getting late so I shall talk to everyone later.

Hello everyone. Another great day today. Therapy was great. My therapist is changing my sitting balance exercises around and making them tougher because my trunk muscles are getting stronger. The hardest thing for me is trying to keep myself from falling forward, but now I can slow myself down significantly and even sometimes stop myself from going to far forward. I know it is just the beginning, but man what a wonderful feeling to have your abdominal muscles burning again after an extreme workout. After the second session I was able to move my toes for my therapist and was as excited as I am every time I can do it. We are having a going away party tomorrow for our friends from Canada, George & Melissa. We will miss them much. George is an extremely strong and confident person, but loves to make people laugh and feel good as well, who is handling his situation with more strength and character than I could ever imagine. Melissa is an extrordinary woman, devoted wife, and a loving mother. I highly encourage everyone to checkout his blog. That is it for now, but I do want to take a second to thank everyone that I know and don't know who is praying for me and my family. When things are getting at their hardest, I can close my eyes and feel the blessings coming down to lift me up. From the bottom of my heart I can't thank everyone enough, but to say that I will never give up and I hope that someday someway you will receive a blessing as great as I have and I can be there to pray for you. Talk to everyone soon.

3rd injection - IV

Hello everyone. Had a great day today. I am feeling much better and had a great therapy session. Everyday it feels like I am trying to use my abdominal muscles more and more during rehab and even while I am just sitting in my chair. After therapy, I came back upstairs for a foot and leg massage and while sitting there on the couch relaxing afterwards I looked down at my feet which were propped up in the air and I thought to myself " I wonder?" With everything I had I tried it and it worked. My big toe twitched. Had to be a fluke. Try again. It worked. Other foot. It worked too. Now mind you, it is not a wiggle or even barely noticeable, but it is there. I called dad over to show him and he smiled so big. I literally wore myself out after about four tries so I am waiting until tomorrow after I have rested to see if it will happen again. I had my IV treatment shortly after that and feel great. Dad and I got out and went to KFC tonight. I have to say that it is just as good as back home and it is more popular here than McD's. That's about it for now so I guess that I will go stretch out. Talk to you later.

Weekend

Hello everyone, things have been good here. Had a quiet weekend and am feeling a little under the weather so I did not go out with the rest of the group today. They went to another small theme park which I think was more or less a kind of history lesson on China and everyone had a good time. I am looking forward to my next treatment on Monday. I hate to leave this short, but I am going to go back to the room and stretch out, but I will let you know how the treatment goes. Talk to everyone later.

Hello everyone. Sorry it has taken me so long to get back on here, but things have been extremely busy here. Therapy is going great. The heat sensations are still about the same from the acupuncture and the sweating has improved just a little, but I am still thankful for what I have gotten so far and very optimistic with what can still develop. The weather here has been great, usually between 65 and 70 degrees during the day and 50 to 55 at night. I have three more treatments left to go. One on Monday the 29th, which is only an IV drip where as the others are are done through the spinal cord injections. The next one is Friday the 2th and the last one is Feb. 7th then we come home on Feb. 16 just before the Chinese New Year kicks off. I am still working on getting some pictures posted. We are not sure what the problem is, but it might be that dad bounced the laptop off the pavement on the way over. We are sending off our friends, Gary and Rachel, back to Australia today. She is an extremely strong woman who came here for some help with her condition which is Ataxia. If you get a chance everyone should log on to the website www.stemcellschina.com and look at hers and the many others that are on there. Well I got to go and beat the rush for breakfast. I will be back as soon as I can.

Second injection

Hey everyone. I had my second injection last night and I am feeling much better this morning compared to the first one. Therapy is going great. I can now start to feel heat down in my muscles from the acupuncture needles while they are hooked up to the electrodes. I am not yet able to tell the difference between hot and cold on top of my skin but it is an absolutley wonderful and blessed feeling to continue to see and feel small changes of recovery. I am still working on the pictures and hope to have them posted by this evening. Talk to you later.

Daily events

Hello everyone. I thought I would take a few minutes to give you a summary of my daily events. Wake up at around 5 a.m. to get showered and dressed then somewhere around 7 a.m. will leave the room to come down to the computer room to see if I can get on the internet (which by the way is very hard since they had an earthquake near Taiwan before we got here and has caused major problems with the internet service so I apologize if it takes me three or four days to get logged on and leave a new post) and to talk with the nurses who are getting a good laugh while they try to teach me some Chinese. I have therapy six days a week that starts at 9 a.m. with a 30 minute round of acupuncture in my legs followed by a 30 minute session of electronic stimulation of the muscles in my legs ( which is about the same as what I do in St. Louis). From there I get a Chinese massage on my legs for 20 minutes followed up by a 30 -40 minute stand in their standing frame. Sometimes they will have you pitch a soft foam basketball around while standing to help strengthen your stomach muscles. Then we get to break for lunch and resume therapy at 2 p.m. This starts with another 30 minute round of muscle stimulation followed by a series of extreme therapy that includes different sitting balances such as sitting with no back support and holding my arms out at shoulder level and twising from side to side. Then I must hold them up and hold my balance while my therapist (whose favorite words are Try Harder!)tries to push me over. Then we pass the basketball around again while I am sitting there. All of this lasts for an hour then I go stand up for thirty minutes followed by a 20 to 30 minute workout of lifting weights. So that pretty much sums up my day. I have my second injection this afternoon so I need to get going because they tell you not to eat starting six hours before your injection and for six hours after your injection so I need to go stock up like a bear getting ready for hibernation so I will be back on as soon as I can with some updates and pictures. Oops, I almost forgot to let you know that there was a reporter here from Business Week magazine last night and he interviewed several of us and said the article should be coming out in the next 2-4 weeks. I think that is it for now so I need to go eat. Thank you everyone for your prayers because they are truly uplifting. Talk to you later.

The nurses and staff here at the hospital are extremely polite and helpful. Just about everyone speaks a bit of broken English and they are always asking how to say new words and in the process, will try to teach you some Chinese if you want to try. Like I said in the last post we are making friends with people from all over the world, such as U.S., Canada, Hungary, Australia, Chile, & a few other places that I can't think of right away. I am hoping to be able to start posting pictures before to long because dad and another guy from Utah went to go get a digital camera. Well it's off to round two of therapy for today so I will be talking to everyone later.

Fun day out

Hello everyone. We had a fun and busy day today. We went to a theme park called Windows of the World with several other of the patients today. Things are going good here. We are making friends here from all over the world. The city is quite interesting to get around in considering that traffic laws don't and I mean don't mean a darn thing here. I have to make this a short post because I have to go and get some medicine so I will get back here as soon as I can to fill in some more details on how things are going.

Finally up and running

Hello everyone. Sorry it took me so long to get this going but we have been busy. Things are going good here. I received my first injection Friday afternoon. It was not bad, but I had to lay flat on my back for six hours afterwards and that got to be old fairly quick. I did start to sweat a little on the back of my head and my neck for the first time in almost four years so that is exciting. Dad and I got out and walked around the city blocks for a little while and found a grocery store to do our shopping in. We will be posting some pictures hopefully the first part of next week. I need to go and get some medicine now so I will be checking in in a day or so to talk some more. Hope everything is going good back home for everyone.

See you soon, Chuck