First Kiwi to try stem-cell treatment

Photo: Grahame Cox

Ashley Thomson with friend Raven Carter.

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Ashley Thomson has been trapped in his own body for the past nine years.

Before the accident that changed his life forever, the popular party-lover was always on the go and dreamed of a career in skateboarding.

At school on Auckland's North Shore, he excelled in most sports, especially athletics, played tennis in summer and snowboarded in winter. But skateboarding was his first love. "I lived and breathed it," he said.

Then one night in 2000, at age 19, larking around at a party, Ashley was picked up and dumped "like a body slam" onto his neck. He heard the snap and then "boom, lights out".

"It was like a surge, a shock going through my body," he tells Sunday News, sitting in his wheelchair in the lounge of his Albany home.

"I was knocked out for a couple of seconds but came to. Someone went to pick my body up and I was limp." Everyone at the party knew something profoundly bad had happened.

Ashley was taken to Auckland Hospital and was in intensive care for months before moving to the Otara Spinal Unit.

He was rehabilitated for five or so months, "learning to get as mobile as possible again", including the use of a wheelchair. When he was first sent home, he needed 24/7 care while he slowly recovered feeling in parts of his body. "You notice little things all the time," he said. "I've got good sensation in my legs and feet and I'm able to wiggle one big toe."

Able to move his arms but not his hands, and his legs immobile apart from that single toe, Ashley keeps fit in the summer months by swimming a couple of mornings a week at Takapuna pools "doing backstroke with my feet tied up, just in the pool and going for it". He also has a home gym with a standing frame he uses to lift weights three or four times a week.

In 2002, he decided he needed to keep his mind active as well, so he enrolled at AUT University to study engineering design. He finished last November, but with the excitement of the possible treatment in India, his attention wavered and he did not graduate.

The devastation which Ashley, now 28, and his family felt after the accident has given way to hope, and he is determined to fight for any chance to walk again. Because his spinal cord was severely damaged but not severed, he has high hopes for the revolutionary stem-cell therapy tirelessly promoted by Superman star and tetraplegic Christopher Reeve. He needs $120,000 to fund the first part of his treatment and is holding fundraising events.

"I've seen something that is out there that seems too good to be true, but I've got a strong gut feeling it's going to do some good things for me," Ashley said.

"The best case scenario is to have this body fire back into life, to get out of this chair, and stand up." He needs to be in Delhi by September to begin the controversial treatment, run out of the clinic of Dr Geeta Shroff. She claims to have an inexhaustible bank of stem-cells from a single embryo, which she uses to treat Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, motor neurone disease and spinal cord damage.

Dozens of her patients say they are improving after her treatment. Critics say that is a placebo effect.

Ashley is in contact with American woman Amanda Boxtel, who says thanks to the stem-cell treatment she is learning to walk again after being a paraplegic for 17 years following a skiing accident. A Facebook message to him from Amanda reads: "Hey Ash: So proud of you! Never give up on your dream. You WILL show improvements in India, guaranteed.

"Sending love and encouragement always. In a weird way, once you receive stem-cells, we'll be related in the global Dr Shroff stem-cell family. Welcome to the fam Bro." Ashley's treatment starts with an initial three-month visit to the Indian clinic, followed by several one-month follow-up treatments.

Ashley has started a website www.riseup.co.nz for the public to donate money, and check on his progress.

Donations can be made to Ashley Thomson Trust National Bank 06 0287 0646377 025.

- © Fairfax NZ News