Struggling with severe or chronic pain? This novel therapy may be the answer
When Tim Noonan’s shoulder tore in 2014, stem cell therapy eased his extreme pain – 10 years later, he returns for more of the novel therapy
By the summer of 2014, a lifetime of ugly golf swings had finally caught up with me. After day two of a three-day golf tournament in Thailand, I woke up with a debilitating pain, like someone had inserted a knife into my left shoulder and was sadistically twisting it. Even worse, I could no longer lift my left arm more than an inch or two from my hip.
Forty-eight hours later, sitting in a top international hospital in Bangkok, my CAT scans were up on a screen. “Yup,” the doctor said impassively. “A torn rotator cuff, and a big one at that.” A partial tear and I might need only a trimming or smoothing. But with this one, I would need to have the tendon reattached. “I recommend surgery as soon as possible,” said the doctor, “hopefully the pain will subside in three or four months.”
But six months later, nothing had changed and I was still wallowing in pain at home in Bangkok. Already in my mid-50s, it was finally time to exchange one pain for another. Surgery it would be. But just as I was about to schedule a date, a confidante in Hong Kong reached out. “Hey there, king of pain,” she said, “have you thought about stem cells?”
I had, but there were just so many crazy things I was hearing. “All these tales of horror and mutant nightmares,” I told her. “What if I wake up with two heads or something?”
“Well,” she replied, “two heads are better than one.”