Monday, August 2, 2010

Adult Stem Cells Treat Broken Ankle

Some friends of ours passed this article on to us from the Washington Post,"Adult stem cell research far ahead of embryonic."

From the article, "Einhorn drew bone marrow from the man's pelvic bone with a needle, condensed it to about four teaspoons of rich red liquid, and injected that into his ankle. Four months later the ankle was healed."

Sweet. I'll ask Dr. Buchanan about this on Friday to see what he thinks. It sounds like magic, like "just inject this and you're healed" magic. But I also don't see how it could make my situation any worse. I imagine the biggest problem he'd have with it is the risk of infection from retrieving the bone marrow from my pelvis.

My ankle looks ridiculous.

This is what a normal ankle looks like.

This is what a broken ankle looks like after it's been walked on for weeks.

I've been wondering why I have such a gigantic ankle. None of the fragments healed. I'm going to be extremely unhappy if this second incision is reopened during this next surgery. This took way too much effort to heal.

This is where most of my swelling and bruising was taking place last week.

My big toe nail looks amazing.

The CT scan is tomorrow morning, so I should have the 3D reconstructions up here tomorrow night.

2 comments:

  1. Tony, Interested to see what CT scan shows. Will check it out when you post it. Love to you and Brooke. MA

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  2. Tony, The CT should give Dr. Buchanan a plan on how to fix the broken plate and the lose screws. Send the images to my work email. Give my daughter in law a hug. Love Dad

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