Putting an end to 8 years of pain, we hope

Dr. David Harshfield, M.D., M.S.

I haven’t blogged anything for the past three days because I’ve been busy helping Maria recover from long-term injuries resulting from a head-on car crash 8 years ago.

Maria thought she got off with just a concussion and minor airbag and seatbelt injuries when a woman with macular degeneration made a left turn in front of her at a Crawfordsville, Ind. intersection in March, 2004.

But not long after that she began having discomfort and then outright pain in her SI joints and lower and upper back. She went to specialists in Crawfordsville who, it turns out, were completely out of their depth when it came to treating her condition.

It wasn’t until she hooked up with Dr. Susan Myshka, a Jonesboro, Ark., chiropractor, that we got to the bottom of the matter and started putting her dislocated spinal structure back in place.

But the years of walking around out of whack took their toll in her knees and hips and neck and it wasn’t until Dr. Myshka heard a lecture by Dr. David Harshfield, an interventional radiologist from Little Rock, that we had any hope of a permanent remedy.

Guided by MRI scans, Dr. Harshfield uses platelet rich plasma (stem cell) therapy to regenerate damaged or degraded bone and tissue.

Susan has a shoulder problem and also needed Dr. Harshfield’s help, so I drove her down to Little Rock for an MRI scan on Friday. Maria got her MRI a week earlier here in Jonesboro.

Yesterday, I drove them both to Little Rock for the stem cell therapy.

Dr. Harshfield takes a dozen vials of the patient’s own blood, spins it down with a centrifuge to separate out the components and pulls out the stem cells from the blood. Then he injects it into the areas that need regeneration. You can read a detailed description of the procedure on his web site here.

He differs from some others using this therapy in that he coordinates with a chiropractor who can keep the various skeletal structures in place during the regeneration period.

I was highly skeptical when Susan told us about Dr. Harshfield and his work, but my doubts evaporated yesterday when I met him, listened to him discuss Maria’s problems and read his credentials. I’m persuaded he’s on the cutting edge of a medical breakthrough that will change the way we treat all kinds of medical problems.

Maria goes back for a followup visit in three months, by which time we hope she will be fully recovered. Dr. Harshfield claims about a 90 percent success rate.

In the meantime, she’s recuperating from the multiple injections and enjoying some powerful pain meds. while I do the cooking and other caregiver stuff.