Posted on 08/02/2010 12:33:56 AM PDT by kathsua
GREAT BEND - Beth Schneweis can see herself dashing after her young son, Christopher, as he runs off the airplane when they return from Germany this fall.
Wednesday morning she was laughing out loud as she described the image that plays often in her mind.
The sounds of his mother chuckling caused 5-year-old Christopher, strapped into his specially designed tilt chair, to roll his head toward her and smile.
The idea of Christopher, who has cerebral palsy, walking off an airplane in a few months, after having additional stem cells injected into his spine at a clinic in Germany, is something she dreams of often.
But they are usually daydreams. Beth Schneweis doesn't sleep much, working the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift as night support in a residential home for people with disabilities at Great Bend's Rosewood Services.
There is little time to close her eyes when she gets home. However, husband Mike, who works the 2 to 10 p.m. shift as a certified medical aide with Alzheimer's patients, gets their four children up and going. Christopher is cared for with the help of an attendant worker who comes into the home during the day. Along with Christopher, their family includes children from Mike's first marriage - Curtis, 11, Cierra 10, and 3-year-old Faith, who is autistic.
But the dream of the running child isn't totally unrealistic since the Schneweises learned of Xcell-Center, a private clinic and institute for regenerative medicine in Dusseldorf, Germany.
Problems from the start
Wednesday was Christopher's fifth birthday. Born with hydrocephalus, a buildup of fluid inside the skull leading to brain swelling, he was rushed to Wesley Medical Center in Wichita. The fluid was drained and doctors inserted a shunt. A condition of cerebral palsy, which involves brain and nervous system function, was confirmed.
"When he was born, his head was huge - the size of a dinner plate," Beth Schneweis said. "We came home and immediately got involved with Sunflower Early Education Center."
Then at 6 months he was admitted to Kansas University Medical Center for failure to thrive because he wasn't processing his food. On Beth's first Mother's Day, doctors inserted a feeding tube.
On his special day, Christopher was enjoying some chocolate pudding being fed to him by one of his attendants. His chubby fists remained permanently clenched, but he was obviously enjoying the treat.
This birthday there is a sense of hope in the Schneweis home. Christopher and his mom are getting their first passports.
Discussion centers on a series of fundraisers they are planning so they can raise $25,000, to not only pay for the procedure, which costs $13,700, but also to pay the expense of getting Christopher, Beth and two family members who will assist them to Dusseldorf.
"I wish I could go with them, but I can't," Mike Schneweis said. He will remain behind, taking care of the rest of the family and working. He admits the idea of the procedure was his wife's. "But I have been lifting up in prayer the procedure to help Christopher walk."
Finding hope
Beth Schneweis learned about the stem cell procedure from an article in The Salina Journal about 3-year-old Marcus Fruits of Delphos, who went to the Xcell-Center in March.
According to www.xcell-center.com, one week and a day after treatment, Marcus had already started making progress, crawling, and walking a little. And since then he has been using his hands to sign to his parents.
Beth Schneweis called and talked to Marcus' mother, Ashley, and learned more about the procedure and how to apply.
Ashley Fruits told The News that her son continues to improve.
"His hand movement was very limited before, but now he is picking up more stuff, holding crayons and taking the cap off a marker," Fruits said.
He is also trying to talk more and his sign language is improving.
"Every penny of the cost was worth it," Fruits said. "Even if it had cost more, it would have been worth it."
Christopher has been approved for the procedure, which is not yet offered in the U.S. However, their insurance won't cover the expense. Currently the federal Food and Drug Administration has no licensed stem cell treatments.
The procedure involves extracting and treating Christopher with his own autologous stem cells. There will be no hospital stay; it will be an outpatient procedure.
Christopher will be lightly sedated and they will extract healthy stem cells from his hip. The next day they will test, and count them and let them grow. The following day his cells will be reinserted into his spinal cord.
According to its website, Xcell-Center is the first private clinic worldwide to hold an official license for the extraction and approval of stem cell material for autologous treatment. Therapy focuses on the treatment of cerebral palsy, spinal cord injuries, diabetes mellitus and neurological diseases/disorders such as Parkinson's and stroke. They also work with multiple sclerosis and macular degeneration. Since January 2007, more than 3,000 patients have undergone various stem cell treatments.
"There is a 90 percent chance of this working," Beth Schneweis said.
Her determination to help her son goes back to a promise she made to him soon after his birth.
"I told him even if we had to drive halfway across the world to get help, even if we had to live in a pup tent, we would do that," she said she told Christopher five years ago, as he lay with his swollen head strapped to a backboard so he wouldn't thrash around.
Still, with all her hope and Marcus' success, she knows there is a chance it might not work for Christopher.
"At least we tried," she said softly.
BreakoutFor those who want to help, donations may be sent to the Christopher Schneweis Medical Fund, First Kansas Bank, 4001 10th St., Great Bend. From 5 to 8 p.m. Aug. 22, Great Bend's Pizza Hut will sponsor a fundraiser. From 7 to 9 a.m. Sept. 6, during Hoisington's Labor Day festivities, a freewill-offering pancake and sausage breakfast will be at Living Joy Church, 354 W. First St., Hoisington.From 6 to 7:30 p.m. Sept. 14, Ellinwood First Baptist Church is planning a lasagna dinner and silent auction at the Ellinwood High School cafeteria, 210 E. Second.
Would Obamacare pay for treatment that does not yet have U.S. approval? If not then the boy might be out of luck because people wouldn't be used to helping others who need it. If charitable organizations were more interested in providing health care, there would be no demand for government intervention.
Oh please...
The "journolist" who wrote this story deliberately failed to distinguish "adult" stem cells from "embryonic". The whole point of writing this touching, feel-good story was to mention the phrase "stem cells" as many times as possible in order to push the Democrats' ('Planned Infanticide') abortion agenda. The author couldn't care less about little Christohper or his mommy.
Only toward the end of the story (after the phrase "stem cells" has been used several times) does the author elaborate that the stem cells to be used in the procedure are Christopher's own stem cells, to be taken from his hip.
>> The “journolist” who wrote this story deliberately failed to distinguish “adult” stem cells from “embryonic”.
>> The author couldn’t care less about little Christohper or his mommy.
I think you nailed it.
Are we sure this isn’t the ‘clinic’ where Domenick Dunne and Farah Fawcett had treatment? They both had initial improvement and then death.
Pray for this family.
I used to work for the Hutch News. Unless you know the reporter, don’t assume. You would be wrong much of the time.
Maybe so, but in today’s “journolist” world of reporters pushing the socialist agenda, it is natural to “assume” where a reporter stands. A good reporter in these times who exercises due diligence should specify in the first paragraph (or the first time the phrase “stem cells” is used) that the stem cells at issue are “non-embryonic” or some similar disclaimer to let the reader know that there is no political controversy here.
See, my suspicions were in part caused by the whole “going to Germany” for treatment aspect of the story, as if the kind of treatment discussed is banned in the USA because of mean conservatives or Republicans or something. A casual idiot might begin making those kinds of assumptions from reading this story, and those are exactly the kind of assumptions a sneaky liberal Democrat reporter wants. It’s easy to imply some things through what’s not said.
FRegards,
LH
Fair enough. I didn’t know Hanks very well, but she generally just wrote the nice features.
But, I do concede one could certainly do that to leave such an idea in the reader’s mind.
There are lots of things writers can do to insert their own viewpoint sneakily, such as selecting quotes etc.
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