We have been home for a month and it has taken this time for Jill & I to recover from a severe cold and jet lag. We arrived in Qingdao on November 3rd and settled into our room at the hospital. The hospital , staff and fellow patients were great. Jill had a total of 6 stem cell injections. This was made up of 1 IV , 5 spinal infusions. One of the spinal infusions came from Jill's own Bone Marrow, which was aspirated , taken to the lab and the stem cells were extracted and on grown to an amount of approximately 100,000,000 over 7 -10 days and then returned to Jill as one of the spinal infusions. Along with this Jill had daily acupuncture, ecectric wave therapy and physical exercises. Unfortunately Jill had picked up a cold not long after arriving and this took its tole. She was extremely tired and the physical exercise was very hard. We arrived back in Melbourne Australia on the 3rd of December.
We have settled back into our normal routine. Jill does speech exercise , leg and vibration exercise daily and later in the day some physical exercises and with the arrival of summer the swimming pool with solar heating allows for some low impact water exercises.
We are always asked what improvements have we noticed?
On return from China in 2006 , the first thing that showed improvement was her writing - going from not writing to writing me a shopping list. This time again the first improvement we have noticed has been the writing . Jill has written letters and cards to each of our children to their delight . Not just single words but several sentences. I have also heard better speech both in volume and clarity. Jill does not notice this as much as other mebmbers of the family do. There has been no changes in walking or balance. We have continued doing some of the strenghtening exercises she was doing in China and have made some of the equipment to help with the exercises.
I do not know whether if it is stem cells , exercise or determination that makes the difference but I do believe it is a combination and we will accept any change as a positive result.
We have continued to write our Blog - so watch there for any other changes -
http://macandjill.createit.com.au 
