Our stem cell journey: beginning

I’m titling this “beginning” because after receiving the stem cells, I’m hoping to begin documenting changes we see in Colleen!

We traveled out to California on Tuesday. The flight itself was very nice and I couldn’t have been happier with JetBlue and with how well Colleen did on the flight!

I wanted to fly out a little early, just in case. If anything for delayed or canceled, it would have made getting to her appointment impossible.

I want to talk about everything (traveling, about LA and so on, but I’ll save that!)

Her appointment was at 9am Thursday. We brought her emergency seizure meds, diazepam with us, and it could be used to help her relax when it came time for the IV. While waiting for the diazepam to work, we went over Colleen’s medical history in-depth while she had a microcurrent on her forehead and neck. I wish I could explain it better, but it can be programmed to send a microcurrent to specific areas of the body. In this case, we wanted it to go to areas of Colleen’s brain.

After getting her history, Dr. Shieh programmed it to be more specific to Colleen’s’ needs. It’s very interesting to hear different ways it can be effective!

Speaking of having Dr. Shieh explain things better than I ever could, you can listen to a podcast of him explaining stem cells!

Part one here.

Part two here.

This hardest thing about stem cell therapy is definitely placing the IV. I didn’t want to have to fly all the way back if we had to reschedule so I was praying Colleen was relaxed enough. After IV was in, she wasn’t very happy and I was so worried about that IV so I tried to held her arm in place. Frozen eventually came to the rescue and that calmed her down! Whew.

The actual stem cells were delivered in a box with dry ice. (The tube is about an inch and a half long!) They come with paperwork with all the tests that were done. After the placenta is being donated by new parents, everything goes through the same testing as say someone donating blood would.

Some of the stem cells were also spaying into Colleen’s nose. After that, IV was taken out, and everything was done!

Some people wait a few months for another treatment, others wait 6 months to a year. Colleen has had enough donated through her YouCaring so we can have more than one treatment! I’m not sure how long we will wait, to be honest! We are also trying to buy the microcurrent machine to help as well!

And now we wait and see. I’m so excited to see what will happen with Colleen and what changes we may see. You can be sure that I will sharing! ❤

Personal health: update!

Last month, I shared that I was going gluten free in an attempt to try to feel better and I thought it was time for an update.

I'm still going strong! I thought about adding gluten back in about 3 weeks into this health change, but after talking with a number of people, it seems like it should be a longer process.

Do I feel better? Eh.. that's debatable. There's days where I feel I have more energy, and there was a week straight where all I wanted to do was sleep, even after getting enough.

So the jury is still out, but I also haven't eliminated other possible thyroid triggers like milk. I have an appointment with my doctor next week. While I think she's helping, I also think my thyroid levels are no where close to being optimal yet.

This brings me to my weight! My work gym hired a full-time trainer and nutritionist a few months ago and just recently started a fat loss competition. Since scale hasn't budged in months, I asked and got a nutrition plan focusing on Macro nutrients. I'm on the second week, and now that I have a food scale, I think this is going to be a powerful tool in making sure that while my thyroid isn't optimal, at least my nutrition can be!

Haven't moved the scale much at weigh-ins, but I'm determined!

(In picture, I am 146.8)