A member of a support group I am in was kind enough to document his journey on stem cell therapy for his Rheumatoid Arthritis. He is a 49 year old male classified as having severe RA. Here is his story:
"In July 2012 I went for Adipose Adult stem cell therapy. it took about 2 months until I felt something and soon to follow it healed me to about 80% and lasted till about Aug 2013 till the curve started. Now I was on Remicade with prednisone(20 mg per) and many pain killers (30 mg morphine 2x per and perc 10 4x per) around Feb 2013 i stopped all pills. A few flares had popped up in the following months but were far from what i was. (bad flare every few days) both knees are in need of surgery as well as hand/wrist but during that span it wasn't an issue.
so... in Dec 2013 I went again and am not feeling much on the recovery. I noticed muscle mass, and had slowed the flare process but had not reversed like last time.(unsure if reason is no biologics) so now am back with Rheumy and did tests. Round two took a while to take hold but it has indeed set in fairly well. Not as well as the last time back in 2012 but has helped with flares and relieved the pain levels tremendously. Being i'm in need of surgery asap i'm thankful for the added length of time. I had a fallout with my last rheumy so i never did get on the biologics, but my primary wants to start me up on Enbril or Humera.
So after the rheumy I had started MTX with prednisone, and am taking 5Mg of vico's 2x daily. after a debate with him about the stemcell, he tried to make me go on Simponi, but found out my copay was 500.00$ I freaked! after 3 days of phone calls and a ton of stress I got it down to 95$ per month (still out of my range) so I had asked for another bio and after that discussion I noted he is hell bent on Simponi (after saying Actemra first, which I can afford) i decided to leave that rheumy. now my primary is talking about enbrel or humera. my goal here is to gain the upper hand on this RA while my body is at its healthiest. But finally have a Dr who is in agreement with my viewpoint, and I just saw him today. My TNF is good, lowered from last check. no need for any biologics he says, and agrees the stem cell has helped (unlike my rheumy) doing a check on the liver via ultra sound. all in all things are looking much better. so to celebrate i'm going to work on a deck repair job.... yay lol"
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