Dear Dr. Tim and Dr. Lynne
Aleck has been playing with his sister Anora early this past Sunday morning, about 15 minutes after we let them out, so it was shortly after they got up. I was not encouraging him in any way – he was playing energetically on his own accord with Anora.
We are incredibly happy about his progress and that he is enjoying life so much more now. He is much more involved in all our family pursuits and even ‘helps’ me with gardening, comes and sees what I am up to when cleaning the pool, goes and spends time with Henk in the garage when he is tinkering around and tears around the yard like the best of them etc. Now when we call him with the others from relaxing on their favourite cushions to go for their final toilet break before bed, he is quick to get up and go for our evening walk, whereas in the past, we would need to coax him for quite a while before he would follow us.
In the morning, when we wake up, he used to be the last one to get up and go outside, now he is the one – with his sister – that wakes us up in the morning – breathing in our faces and nudging us to get up! :-).
As mentioned in the assessment, the only sign of his arthritis is the slight limping on his wrists for about 8 steps when he gets up after sleeping for a while and, when he runs, his back legs appear a bit stiff as they do not angulate fully. But there seems to be no discomfort, maybe his wrists are just a little weak after all his previous suffering.
Please will you also give our regards and thanks to Dr Isabelle and please let her know how well Aleck is doing? We will always be grateful to her for contacting us again when you brought the treatment to your practice and for her initial caring of Aleck when we first brought him to Blue Hills. Thank you also to the nurses who worked so hard and with so much patience during the stem cell process.
Thank you once again for all you have done.
Diane and Henk