Ashley, Athetoid Cerebral Palsy | Stem Cell Treatment Testimonial

I’ve never hidden the fact that we do stem cells treatment from people because I feel it is important for people to be aware of, that there are options. When you have a child with Cerebral Palsy, every single thing is significant and every little improvement is a win. My name is Ina, I came from Australia to have a treatment for my son Ashley. Ashley is five years old, almost six. He has Athetoid Cerebral Palsy. He was born um, at 23 weeks and 24 days, so he was extremely premature. And by the time he was one year old, he was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy. Well, Cerebal Palsy, it affects physical abilities, Ashley’s physical abilities, and ability to verbally communicate.

It’s quite difficult. He’s a very intelligent child, but physically he’s at the level of possibly a six months old baby. He has fluctuating tongue and he doesn't have full trunk control so he’s not able to fully hold himself. He couldn't express his thoughts in any way. He found very difficult to look at people with his central vision, he could only see everyone with his peripheral vision and his eyes always had to be pointed up. He was very difficult to understand, he couldn't eat any solid food.

There was so many things he couldn't do. Everything has to be done for him. For neurological conditions, there are not many treatments available, so when Ashley was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy, which, at that time he was 13 months old. Originally when Ashley was diagnosed, our first neurologist that he went to see, when I asked him a question OK, I didn't know what Cerebral Palsy was, so when I asked a question "what can be done to improve his abilities?" The neurologist said "there’s nothing you can do." And basically you can give your child some physiotherapy, but apart from that there is really nothing you can do.

Once they have a condition, that’s the condition for life. And I guess both me and my husband are not the type of people to give up, so we started doing things like kinesiology, chiro work, physio, point percussion therapy, occupational therapy and then we discovered stem cells. In Australia, they don’t do stem cells for neurological conditions, so we had to seek treatment overseas. Since Ashley started receiving stem cell therapy and other therapies on a very regular basis, he learned how to, with inflatable collar, but he learned how to control himself in the water. Ashley can use his central vision very well, so he can watch TV, listen and communicate with other people. He’s improving all the time. He’s a very intelligent child, he can control different switch devices and communicates with computers, he can to some extent now, start and stop music videos on an iPad. He’s a very hardworking child so he understands that our goal in life is to achieve his independence and basically me and my husband and Ashley all three of us work towards it! You can hope for miracles but it’s its it's a lot of hard work as well, it’s not just that you receive one treatment go home, and you can lay on a sofa, chill and relax and not do anything and and things will happen on their own.

You have to work hard I guess having stem cell treatment and then working hard you see more results so you feel more positive. That something you’re working towards is clearly working and it’s easier to keep going when you know things are going in the right direction! All I’d like to say to other people is it’s always good to try, to look at the glass as half full rather than half empty. I wasn't always that person before Ashley, but now I understand positive thinking is extremely important and it’s also important to be grateful for, I guess being here, having what we have, and just try to work as hard as possible towards some more positive things in life!.