Am I alone again?

[orangejello]

I have been feeling very hopeless about many things lately. So I guess maybe my earlier post might have been made more out of a general sense of despair, rather than a specific negitivity towards a cure. It's not that I don't want to feel hopeful about potential cures. I am just finding it very hard to find a spark of hope anywhere in my life at the moment. I know in my heart that is not the reality of things, but sometimes I think the mind is more powerful than the heart. Or, at the very least, the mind is capable of playing more powerful tricks with one's emotions. I guess it's almost a case that the ideas of a cure and of the future are linked together in my mind. I am not feeling all that positive towards the future in general. So that pessimism automatically transfers on to any ideas I have about cures. It's not rational. But rationality is not one of my strengths at the moment. I don't even know if that makes sense...

Thank you diane. That was a lovely story and I have printed it off. Also thank you John. I had read that poem before but forgot about it. It made me smile and I printed it off as well. Jen thanks to you too. I hear what you are saying.

After many years of posting and reading on this site, I have come to realize that hope is a state of the heart, not of the mind. Hope is not rational because it applies to the future and we cannot rationally predict the future from the here and now.

A reporter in St. Louis (I forget his name) asked me outside a lecture that I gave at St. Louis University several years ago, whether I was giving false hope to people with spinal cord injury. I don't know what prompted me to say it but perhaps it was from conversations that I had with Christopher Reeve, I blurted out, "No hope is devastating". No hope is not only devastating but false.

I didn't reply earlier in the day when I first read this because I needed time to think about what you wrote Dr. Young. The whole notion of what "hope" means has been weighing heavily on me lately. But what you wrote helped me make a little headway through my confusion. I don't know if my rambling first paragraph reflects that. But what you wrote helped me a great deal. Thank you.

Real hope is not painful. It is simply determination to succeed, the knowledge in one's heart that one must succeed.
Wise.

I guess maybe I am just going through something right now where any kind of hope seems too painful to contemplate. It's easier to put up a wall. Then there is no pain. But you are right, one can't stop there.

[JGNI]

Real hope is not painful. It is simply determination to succeed, the knowledge in one's heart that one must succeed.

Wise.

Wise, I am very pleased to see that a scientist like you has this kind of hope, it means hope for all of us. Thank you for having the SCI cure at heart and doing something about it, I am very grateful.

[Wise Young]

I have been feeling very hopeless about many things lately. So I guess maybe my earlier post might have been made more out of a general sense of despair, rather than a specific negitivity towards a cure. It's not that I don't want to feel hopeful about potential cures. I am just finding it very hard to find a spark of hope anywhere in my life at the moment. I know in my heart that is not the reality of things, but sometimes I think the mind is more powerful than the heart. Or, at the very least, the mind is capable of playing more powerful tricks with one's emotions. I guess it's almost a case that the ideas of a cure and of the future are linked together in my mind. I am not feeling all that positive towards the future in general. So that pessimism automatically transfers on to any ideas I have about cures. It's not rational. But rationality is not one of my strengths at the moment. I don't even know if that makes sense...

Thank you diane. That was a lovely story and I have printed it off. Also thank you John. I had read that poem before but forgot about it. It made me smile and I printed it off as well. Jen thanks to you too. I hear what you are saying.

I didn't reply earlier in the day when I first read this because I needed time to think about what you wrote Dr. Young. The whole notion of what "hope" means has been weighing heavily on me lately. But what you wrote helped me make a little headway through my confusion. I don't know if my rambling first paragraph reflects that. But what you wrote helped me a great deal. Thank you.

I guess maybe I am just going through something right now where any kind of hope seems too painful to contemplate. It's easier to put up a wall. Then there is no pain. But you are right, one can't stop there.

Amanda,

Let me change the subject a little bit. Please bear with me because I hope that the discussion will be relevant to you.

One of my favorite movies when I was 11 years old was a 1960 Walt Disney movie called "Pollyanna", starring Hayley Mills, based on a book by the same name. Pollyanna was the "glad" girl who was always able to cheer everybody up by seeing the best aspect of any situation. Towards the end of the movie, Pollyanna was paralyzed and was unable to smile or see the "glad" aspects of any situation, including her own. Recently, I saw a 2005 PBS Masterpiece Theater version of the movie, starring Georgina Terry as Pollyanna, that was much more explicit about spinal cord injury being the cause of the paralysis and amazingly showed her eventual partial recovery from the paralysis. These movies were based on a 1913 novel by Eleanor H. Porter (Source).

Due to the book, there is a game called the "Glad Game" where the object is to see what is good about any situation, even the worst times. It is interesting that Eleanor H. Porter chose spinal cord injury as one situation that Pollyanna was unable to overcome with her "glad game". I don't know whether this is true but I believe that Eleanor Porter must have been close to a girl with spinal cord injury to write the book. The book ended with a letter from Pollyanna to her Aunt Polly, reporting her newfound ability to walk six steps after 10 months of rehabilitation.
http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/39/77/frameset.html

“Dear Aunt Polly and Uncle Tom:—Oh, I can—I can—I can walk! I did today all the way from my bed to the window! It was six steps. My, how good it was to be on legs again!

“All the doctors stood around and smiled, and all the nurses stood beside of them and cried. A lady in the next ward who walked last week first, peeked into the door, and another one who hopes she can walk next month, was invited in to the party, and she laid on my nurse’s bed and clapped her hands. Even Black Tilly who washes the floor, looked through the piazza window and called me ‘Honey, child’ when she wasn’t crying too much to call me anything.

“I don’t see why they cried. I wanted to sing and shout and yell! Oh—oh—oh! just think, I can walk—walk—walk! Now I don’t mind being here almost ten months, and I didn’t miss the wedding, anyhow. Wasn’t that just like you, Aunt Polly, to come on here and get married right beside my bed, so I could see you. You always do think of the gladdest things!

“Pretty soon, they say, I shall go home. I wish I could walk all the way there. I do. I don’t think I shall ever want to ride anywhere any more. It will be so good just to walk. Oh, I’m so glad! I’m glad for everything. Why, I’m glad now I lost my legs for a while, for you never, never know how perfectly lovely legs are till you haven’t got them—that go, I mean. I’m going to walk eight steps tomorrow.

“With heaps of love to everybody,

Pollyanna.

The amazing thing was that this book was written in 1913. In those days, most people with spinal cord injury did not recover and more than half died. For Eleanor Porter to write a book that described a girl recovering function after spinal cord injury was revolutionary. Well, in 1960, the Hayley Mills film did not show her recovery explicitly. However, the 2003 (later shown on Masterpiece Theater in 2005) film showed Pollyanna walking in the wedding of her beloved Aunt Polly, in crutches and beaming. I guess that that is the difference between 1960 and 2003.

Over the years, the word Pollyanna has been much abused, often used derisively to refer to people who engage in false optimism and self-deception. In psychology, the term Pollyanna Principle refers to phenomenon that the brain processes and remembers pleasing information more efficiently than unpleasant information. Matlin & Gawron (1979) found that people are much more likely to understand and remember pleasant information than negative information. In other words, people hear what they want to hear and ignore what they don't want to hear. More recent studies suggest that a "reverse pollyanna phenomena" occurs when people are depressed. Such people tend to hear and remember the bad news and not the good (Calev, 1996).

I have noticed both Pollyanna Principle and the reverse Pollyanna Phenomena on these forums. I often read posts from people saying that they heard doctors predicting that a cure would be coming in five years or less, back in the 1990's and even in the 1980's. These remembrances always come as a surprise to me because I remember the early 1990's and particularly 1980's as a time of deep and dark pessimism amongst scientists and doctors strongly denying any possibility of a cure. My colleagues in the clinical field were particularly pessimistic.

In 1996, I was standing next to a prominent orthopedic surgeon watching Christopher Reeve give a talk, after which I had to give a lecture. The doctor leaned over and whispered in my ear... "The only thing that can help him are electrodes placed in his hypothalamus to stimulate orgasms" or something to that effect. I mentally (and perhaps even physically) recoiled. I went ahead to give probably the most angry lecture that I had ever given about hope for treatments of spinal cord injury and subsequently wrote an editorial for Science Magazine, criticizing the "Fear of Hope" amongst scientists and doctors.

On innumerable occasions, people have asked me about an experimental treatment and whether or not they should go to some clinic to get the treatment. I do my best to summarize the positive and negative aspects of the therapy, hoping that people would be able to use the information in a balanced and rational way. Almost consistently, people have ignored my warnings, remembered everything positive that I might have said about a therapy, and went on ahead. One person even told me after he had gone to have the therapy that he "deliberately ignored" anything negative that I said about a given therapy because he knew that if he listened to the warnings, he would not have the courage to go. That taught me a great deal and I thank the person for telling me.

On these forums, I try hard to provide a balanced picture and not to overplay the negative aspects of experimental treatments. Many people who have been injured a long time are listening for the good news and ignoring the warnings. On the other hand, many here are in their early phases of injury and are hearing only the bad news and can't hear the good news. It is a difficult balancing act but the only way that I know how to deal with the situation is to be as honest as I can. That is the reason why I wrote the missive below to you, as I did, listing real hope, false hope, false despair, and scams. The real hope part of the message was for you but other parts are for others.

Why I am telling you all of this? It is because I know that you are struggling to understand why everything seems so dark. It is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when you are breathing with a ventilator. For those in pain, every minute is a nightmare. For those who are paralyzed, every hour seems forever. What I hope that you will understand is that many are in the same predicament and that you are not alone. Part of the epiphany for Christopher Reeve was his realization that he was not just working for himself but for all other like him. You are wonderful and I hope that you know that. I have only known you through your posts but for that I am grateful.

Wise.


Reference

1. Matlin MW and Gawron VJ (1979). Individual differences in Pollyannaism. J Pers Assess 43: 411-2. The Pollyanna Principle states that people process pleasant information more accurately and efficiently than less pleasant information. This study examined whether different measures of Pollyanna tendencies are correlated with each other. Fourteen measures of Pollyannaism were derived for 133 students. The results showed that subjects who rated themselves as optimistic or happy also showed Pollyannaism on other measures of happiness, believed that the events in their lives were pleasant, gave themselves positive ratings on personality characteristics, recalled pleasant words more often than unpleasant words, supplied more free associations to pleasant stimuli than to unpleasant stimuli, listed pleasant items first, and judged that pleasant words were more frequent in the English language. State University of New York, Geneseo, USA. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q..._uids=16366974
2. Calev A (1996). Affect and memory in depression: evidence of better delayed recall of positive than negative affect words. Psychopathology 29: 71-6. It is widely accepted that depressives focus on negative memories, and forget or repress positive memories (showing a mood-congruent affective tendency). Normals have an opposite positive bias in memory ('Pollyanna tendency'). Research evidence for depressives' negative bias in memory comes mainly from studies of retrieval of personal experiences during depression, or from studies of such retrieval during induced mood. In the present study, the hypothesis that depressives encode and remember negative emotion materials better than other materials was tested. Contrary to the hypothesis, the results showed that severely depressed patients remembered more positive affect than negative affect words, after a 2-day delay. Depressives' overall memory performance and rate of forgetting were poor, similar to schizophrenics', and worse than normals'. The results suggest that, while memory performance during a depressive episode is poor, the memory consolidation process for affective information is normal. Unlike in schizophrenia, it does not select negative emotion materials. This conclusion is not incongruent with the finding that depressives show mood-congruent retrieval for previously learnt personal (experiential) information. The consolidation of non-personal (nonexperiential) positive affect materials during depression may provide a clue as to the mechanism of recovery in depression, and the lack of such recovery in schizophrenia. Herzog Memorial Hospital, Jerusalem, Israel. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...t_uids=8861510

[spidergirl]

I think that the biggest fear Dr. Young and all- is that we are many many years away. I know that everyone is looking for answers and timelines and its impossible. It will happen when it happens. The important thing is though is that there are brilliant scientists/doctors out there so passionate to heal us that we are even blessed we have an injury being worked on. None of us can say when a cure will happen. A breakthrough could happen tomorrow or could happen in 10 years.

Personally, and i have said this before, i don't like the word "hope" to much. It almost seems like a reflection of despair. Reversing paralysis might be on of one side one of the the hardest things to accomplish in medicine and on another side one of the biggest breakthroughs in medicine. So it seems like a catch 22.

I think that if the "cure" does come in the next decade that we will all be pioneers set in stone in history and while the stem cell wars are going on now is the time to get out there and make a difference not only for ourselves but for our country.

We are scared we all are. We do not want to die like this when we were born normal and healthy. The thought of having mobility again is one of the most beautiful things we all could imagine that so many people take for granted.

[Wise Young]

Spidergirl,

I also have that fear occasionally, that nothing much will happen in the coming decade. That is one of the reasons why we must do something about it. I know that the mantra is old now to many people on these forums, that we must do clinical trials of combination therapies. We must have the clinical trials in the United States. That was why my message at the May rally in Washington DC was to stop outsourcing clinical trials overseas.

The title of this topic was "Am I alone again?" You are not alone. There are many who share the predicament. But, there is much that we can all do about the situation.
• Proposition 71. California, for example, will be spending close to $380 million this coming year on stem cell research. It is time to work with scientists and doctors in California, to persuade them to apply for the funds to do clinical trials.
• New Jersey Stem Cell Inititative. We are still fighting in New Jersey for the funding.
• SCREA. In the first 100 hours of the new Congress, the democrats are planning to get the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act passed again, hopefully with a veto-proof margin in the Senate but, as Nancy Pelosi points out, we still need about 40 votes in Congress to pass the act with a veto-proof margin. A letter writing campaign would help give your Congressional representative the support and courage to vote for the bill. A group of people from CareCure will be going to Washington DC in the coming week, to buttonhole their representatives.
• CRPA There is still the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Act to get through the Congress, that should add $100 million over 3 years for clinical trials.
• NIH. People can start telling Congress that they want to increase the NIH budget to do more clinical trials.

In the meantime, there is a lot that you can do to prepare yourself. If you are not doing so, I suggest spending at least an hour a day standing and walking, swimming, and doing sit-ups. Start writing letters. Make phone calls. Find the spinal cord injury scientists in your area and ask them what they are doing to get their therapies into clinical trials.

Wise.

[Ads32]

Spidergirl,

I also have that fear occasionally, that nothing much will happen in the coming decade. That is one of the reasons why we must do something about it. I know that the mantra is old now to many people on these forums, that we must do clinical trials of combination therapies. We must have the clinical trials in the United States. That was why my message at the May rally in Washington DC was to stop outsourcing clinical trials overseas.

The title of this topic was "Am I alone again?" You are not alone. There are many who share the predicament. But, there is much that we can all do about the situation.
• Proposition 71. California, for example, will be spending close to $380 million this coming year on stem cell research. It is time to work with scientists and doctors in California, to persuade them to apply for the funds to do clinical trials.
• New Jersey Stem Cell Inititative. We are still fighting in New Jersey for the funding.
• SCREA. In the first 100 hours of the new Congress, the democrats are planning to get the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act passed again, hopefully with a veto-proof margin in the Senate but, as Nancy Pelosi points out, we still need about 40 votes in Congress to pass the act with a veto-proof margin. A letter writing campaign would help give your Congressional representative the support and courage to vote for the bill. A group of people from CareCure will be going to Washington DC in the coming week, to buttonhole their representatives.
• CRPA There is still the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Act to get through the Congress, that should add $100 million over 3 years for clinical trials.
• NIH. People can start telling Congress that they want to increase the NIH budget to do more clinical trials.

In the meantime, there is a lot that you can do to prepare yourself. If you are not doing so, I suggest spending at least an hour a day standing and walking, swimming, and doing sit-ups. Start writing letters. Make phone calls. Find the spinal cord injury scientists in your area and ask them what they are doing to get their therapies into clinical trials.

Wise.

Any researcher I have spoken to says that more basic research is needed for the new, exciting breakthroughs rather than for money into trials for the older ideas. I'm really confused.

[orangejello]

Why I am telling you all of this? It is because I know that you are struggling to understand why everything seems so dark. It is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when you are breathing with a ventilator. For those in pain, every minute is a nightmare. For those who are paralyzed, every hour seems forever. What I hope that you will understand is that many are in the same predicament and that you are not alone. Part of the epiphany for Christopher Reeve was his realization that he was not just working for himself but for all other like him. You are wonderful and I hope that you know that. I have only known you through your posts but for that I am grateful.

Wise

Thanks for your post. I appreciate you taking the time to write it. What you wrote makes a lot of sense. It really does. I have seen both movie versions of Pollyanna but never thought about it in those terms before.


I must admit I feel bad for being so negative in this thread. I am not usually like that. Or at least I am not as consistently negative as I have been feeling lately. I don't know. It's so tough. Everything feels so bleak right now. Any light seems so far away. But I think I do know that there has to be some hope somewhere. Otherwise I would have given up on things like spending time on this forum a long time ago. I very often feel like that I am fighting this all alone. But I know that is not true. I am very happy that I found this place.

[Wise Young]

Any researcher I have spoken to says that more basic research is needed for the new, exciting breakthroughs rather than for money into trials for the older ideas. I'm really confused.

Ads32,

It is not an either/or situation. Both are needed. Right now, NIH is spending about $80 million on basic spinal cord injury research. It is spending perhaps $15 million on rehabilitation research. It is spending almost no money on clinical trials for treatments of acute or chronic spinal cord injury.

Many researchers now doing exciting breakthrough work. However, companies don't consider spinal cord injury a big enough market for them to invest $10-$30 million per clinical trial. Therefore, many therapies are now awaiting clinical trial.

I don't know who the researcher that you spoke to but my guess is that the researcher is doing laboratory research and is not doing and has never done clinical trials. Many therapies are ready for and can be taken to clinical trial if funding were available. The problem is that companies consider spinal cord injury to be small market and do not have enough money to invest in $10-$30 million for the clinical trials.
• Chondroitinase. This is a treatment that has been shown by at least four different groups now to stimulate regeneration in the spinal cord of rats. However, there is no enough funding to go to clinical trial.
• Rolipram and db cAMP. These two treatments have been reported by at least three groups to have beneficial effects on recovery in animal spinal cord injury models. Rolipram has already been in clinical trial for MS.
• IN-1. This is being done in a phase 1 trial by Novartis in Switzerland. It would be useful if there were funding for a phase 2 trial in the United States when the phase 1 is completed.
• Cethrin. We are awaiting the results of Bioaxone's phase 1 trial. A phase 2 trial is needed if and when the phase 1 trial shows safety.
• Olfactory ensheathing glia. Geoffrey Raisman is planning a clinical trial on these cell transplants in human brachial plexus injury. However, several animal studies have suggested that this treatment may restore some function. At the present, in Lisbon, they are doing nasal mucosal transplants. Don't you think that it would be important to assess whether this treatment is effective in the United States before more people go to Lisbon, paying for the therapy?
• Umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells and lithium. We are carrying out these trials in China.
• Alternating current stimulation of the spinal cord. This has gone through phase 1 clinical trials and the FDA has approved the device on compassionate use basis. This needs now to go through phase 2 and phase 3 trials to demonstrate efficacy.
• Embryonic stem cell transplants are being taken to clinical trial by Geron. I am sure that it would help Geron a great deal if NIH funds were available for clinical trial.
• Schwann cell transplants. These have already been tried for MS at Yale. The Miami Project has reported that Schwann cell transplants combined with rolipram and db cAMP is must better than Schwann cells alone.
• Bone marrow stem cell transplants. Darwin Prockop at Tulane has been trying to start this clinical trial for the last three years. Many animal studies have reported beneficial effects. So, shouldn't this go into trial?
• Decorin. Stephen Davies and his colleague Jeanette have been reporting very promising results with this molecule. It should be ready to go to clinical trial soon. Wouldn't it be nice to have a clinical trial network available to start testing this molecule as soon as it become available?

These ten therapies alone should be more than sufficient to take up $300 million of funds for spinal cord injury clinical trials in the United States over the coming three years. Who says that we don't need clinical trials? It also takes time to set up a clinical trial network and we should be ready when many of these and other therapies are ready to go to trial.

Wise.

[lynnifer]

We are scared we all are. We do not want to die like this when we were born normal and healthy. The thought of having mobility again is one of the most beautiful things we all could imagine that so many people take for granted.

I think this is the best post I've read in a long time and so true. Even though it's been 21yrs for me, my biggest fear remains dying without one improvement. I won't lose hope until I breathe no more. Or, as Schmeky as said, some sort of light in the tunnel for future generations.

I * NEVER * want my neice or nephew to go through anything even remotely close to paralysis. They're in their early twenties. Hurry up medicine!

[Steve]

You think exactly like me, Orangejello

I agree with Steve I am sad to say. I don't think there will be any cure for me. I don't know enough about what is going on in terms of a cure I suppose to really have an educated opinion. But I don't think I will see one in my future . I think I have resigned myself to living like this for the rest of my life.

[Steve]

Thank you for your nice message but I just can't believe in a God when you can suffer like that in a wheelchair.

Hey Steve, every night for 24 years I sleep and dream, I've never seen in my dreams that I am paralyzed. I always walk like before my accident, some times with a difficulty but always walking. That tells me my body is ready to walk again, our bodies and our minds want to walk again, and they are ready to do it. I trust my dreams, we never dream about something that is impossible to happen. If they put back the connection, everything else in our body and mind will do the right thing. Our nerves will make us run again, feel again. It might be easier than we think. As soon they start clinical trials, then nothing will stop progress.

quote:

I gave up about this.
Like God, we hear a lot about him but we never saw him...
Am I wrong?

Steve, I always knew that we don't see God, we feel God. I feel God to kill my pain, and gives me hope and strength to deal with this. If you believe in God Steve, keep doing it, feel God inside you all the time untill the cure will come and you won't lose. You are a special human being because of your faith and your believes in your faith. For me walk or not walk, I always feel God inside me until I die, then God will stay behind to help other living people if they will accept him in their hearts, if they don't need him is find too. God is for the living, and God will be the way we want him to be. Be well,manouli

[Schmeky]

Dr. Young,

I agree with your points in post #53, yes these promising therapies have potential and merit. Since "we" SCI's only represent roughly 1% of the American population, our voice is small. We are portrayed as "adjusted", "coping well", and "adapting", our condition is not, in most instances, considered life threatening by the public.

Since we are such a small percentage of the population, our voices merely squeak in a vast sea of screams and shouts for diabetes, cancer, and bio-terrorism research funds.

What we need is a grand slam in the lab, I mean an out of the park, in the parking lot hit. Something bigger than big, a huge leap, an eye opener. This would get the attention, and most importantly, the funding future generations will need. Going before the NIH or Congress with this research feat would transform our squeaky voice into a really big fog horn.

I see clinical trials in the USA as a chicken and an egg thing. Which one needs to come first, clinical trials, or a major breakthrough?

I say a breakthrough.

[manouli]

Dr. Young,

I agree with your points in post #53, yes these promising therapies have potential and merit. Since "we" SCI's only represent roughly 1% of the American population, our voice is small. We are portrayed as "adjusted", "coping well", and "adapting", our condition is not, in most instances, considered life threatening by the public.

Since we are such a small percentage of the population, our voices merely squeak in a vast sea of screams and shouts for diabetes, cancer, and bio-terrorism research funds.

What we need is a grand slam in the lab, I mean an out of the park, in the parking lot hit. Something bigger than big, a huge leap, an eye opener. This would get the attention, and most importantly, the funding future generations will need. Going before the NIH or Congress with this research feat would transform our squeaky voice into a really big fog horn.

I see clinical trials in the USA as a chicken and an egg thing. Which one needs to come first, clinical trials, or a major breakthrough?

I say a breakthrough.

quote:
I see clinical trials in the USA as a chicken and an egg thing. Which one needs to come first, clinical trials, or a major breakthrough?

Schmeky, can we have a major breakthrough without clinical trials on us? If they only try it on rats and not on people, how will they know that is success. I don't know I am not smart, do you need first a theory then a practice? If they start clinical trials I feel comfortable that they will be very carefull because they have, I think, a good idea that a few good therapies will work without any harm. So far the only thing they have try in the US on people is loco motor therapy. I think they are a little chickens, too much of scare to go ahead and take the first step. Come on doctors be a men, show me your knowledge.lol,manouli

[spidergirl]

Spidergirl,

I also have that fear occasionally, that nothing much will happen in the coming decade.

Wise.

OH DR. YOUNG DONT SAY THAT PLEASE!!!!!

THE DEMOCRATS ARE WINNING AND WE WILL GET BACK CONTROL!!!!

U KNOW THINGS IN THIS COUNTRY SKYROCKET LIKE NO TOMORROW. IF THERE ARE THERAPIES THAT ARE PROVEN TO WORK PROGRESS WILL HAPPEN - NOONE IN THERE RIGHT MIND IN THIS COUNTRY WILL TURN DOWN A THERAPY PROVEN TO BE SUCCESSFUL.

[Keith]

Dr. wise... never let the people with their negative thoughts distract you. As you can well imagine it's very frustrating in a wheelchair. It's going to happen your goal to repair sci... when it does let's make sure we find a way to make the people negative choke on their words & posts. There are so many things going on behind the scenes which can not brought out to the public yet. If the frustrated people would take their anger out on the politicians & companies to finance & donate $ things could be completely different. Keep up the great work wise. Looking forward to shaking your hand & saying thank you.