Meeting with George Goss

I met George Goss two weeks ago. He made his disease history public on his blog. He was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis some time ago and underwent HSCT in Heidelberg University last year. The treatment seems to be successful in his case. One year without the disease progression and with recovery from some neural deficits. We had a good talk about the HSCT in MS and autoimmune diseases. You can read his story on his blog – which is something that made me think or rethink about doing this sort of transplantations some time ago. This talk reminded me why I moved to Heidelberg from Warsaw. There are people like that with the different diseases for which we do not know treatment, yet. But for which we have our imperfect stem cell transplantation or other new experimental treatments. Their lives will get too hard until we find perfect remedy, let there be one. Although they are seriously ill they still have dreams, that might seem small to us, but are unimaginable to them. To see the kids grow, to walk the mountain with a son, to walk with hands in pockets without crane, or just walk. Many of this small dreams could become true. I do believe that. Yet the cure might not be always obtained, sometimes those dreams might be more realistic aims that we can strive for. This is also a part of medicine. Sometimes it is the only thing we can be part of. Not only cure, not 5 year survival rates, percentages of remission, guidelines, publications but fulfilling the small dreams others carry in life, before it is too late. Before they will be replaced by something else. By living the life without the hope for change.

We are here. June 2011. I wish we did have the answers of the future. But we can only move forward towards them with uncertainty, without knowing the answer. Doing something, taking the risks we sometimes cannot asses, learning from everything, improving and moving further forward with a vision toward some sense of certainty. Believing in something, making it happen.

 

There will be some changes to this site with new clinical protocols and contact data for the patients coming in the next few months.

 

Thank you George for reminding me of my little dreams.