October 17, 2009

Skeet is going to Germany! I'm excited for him, scared for him and very, very proud of him. Here is an e-mail that I received recently:

"Hi Sis. Wanted to fill you in on our plans. On October 30 we will fly from **** to ****. Catch a flight on United (UA** if you care, you can follow the flight partway on the internet) straight to Frankfurt Germany. On Nov 2 the clinic will take out bone marrow from the hip area. On Nov 4, they will re-inject me with my own cultivated stem cells. I don't look forward to that at all. We fly home on Nov 6 and get this, we leave Germany at 1400 and arrive in **** at 1600. Pretty quick trip home huh?

Still waiting for ***'s passport, but she applied for it September 13 so it should be here this week or next.

We are going to take the high speed train from Frankfurt to Cologne. Really looking forward to that. It will take us approximately 140 miles in about half an hour.

Saw your comment on Steve's blog.

Love from Skeet and Peg"

So, yes, thanks to the very many generous donations and prayers for my baby brother, he will be getting a stem cell treatment to try to alleviate the symptoms caused by the MSA-C. Please continue to pray for his recovery.

Above is a picture that I took almost one year ago before we knew what was causing Skeet's imbalance and slurred speech. I'm sure that the words on the wall were prophetic and hopeful that they will aid in the outcome.

As a family, we have been following Steve's journey, which helped to make the decision to travel to Germany for the stem cell treatment. Please read about Steve here: http://www.msajourney.blogspot.com/ to learn a little more about the disease and the treatment.

I hope to be able to document Skeet's journey here for all of you that would like to follow his progress.

Again, "thank you" just does not seem adequate to express how much we appreciate the donations made for Skeeter's treatment; please know that a day does not go by that one of us/all of us is not saying thank you from the bottom of our hearts.