COVINGTON, La. -- When a young marine learned his life had changed forever, he didn't know he would be the first person ever to try a groundbreaking medical treatment.
Doctors in Covington are hoping that they are taking the first step, to one day help people with spinal cord injuries walk again.
Now medical history may be made right here in our own backyard.
Marine Cpl. Matt Cole, 29, did two tours of duty in Iraq. He's been a crew chief for an amphibious assault vehicle and a gunner for a troop transport vehicle. But his second tour was cut short on May 17, 2005.
"We were attacked with mortars and rockets by insurgents on our base. The first mortar that dropped exploded behind me, which sent shrapnel into my back and damaged my spinal cord," said Cole.
Cole was paralyzed and also had a collapsed lung. His platoon was told he probably would not live.
"I couldn't get enough oxygen in, so they pretty much wrote me off when they put me on the Medivac chopper. It was little about an hour from the time I was injured to the time they flew me out," said Cole.
He went from hospitals in Iraq, to surgeries in Germany, being immobile in Bethesda, to rehab at the VA in Tampa. Faith and family, hope for a cure, and the marine discipline got him through this life-changing time as he sat and watched the destruction of Hurricane Katrina unfolding back home on the hospital TV.
"My turning point is when I really came to and realized all that had happened and what was in store for me. It was that that got me through, and having that positive attitude, because just know as they say, 'God helps those that help themselves and so do people. People help those that help themselves as well,' " said Cole.
Cole's girlfriend stuck by him in sickness and in health and became his wife the next June. And then a few years later, his mother-in-law discovered something spectacular going on in the medical field right in his backyard in Covington.
"We thought it was great to treat a veteran first. That would be wonderful," said Dr. Gabriel Lasala of TCA Cellular Therapy. He is a stem cell researcher and cardiologist.
TCA cellular therapy got FDA approval in March to be the first in the world to take the healing stem cells out of a person with spinal cord injury, multiply them in a lab to 50 million, store them in special tanks, and then later infuse them back into the patient's own spinal fluid in hopes that they will travel to the injured part of the spine and repair it.
"So we hope that these neurons that are there, and they are not being completely cut off, could recover some how, some of their functions," explained Dr. Lasala.
So on Aug. 19, Cole along with family members, his wife who was expecting their first baby, and his pastor all watching, became the first spinal cord patient in the world to try this treatment.
"Heavenly Father, I thank you for the love that surrounds Matt and all the people that are here to lift him up to you the great healer," the pastor prayed at the bedside while the nurses and doctor prepared Cole's mid-back for the injection.
With prayers on the right of the bed and the latest in modern medicine and scientific research on the left, the medical team hopes its work will one day change lives.
And maybe it could. Two months later in October, Cole, now the father of a little girl, met with Lasala for a follow-up visit. And he is noticing changes.
"The first thing I noticed was some tingling and most recently an increase in deep muscle sensation. So it's positive that there may be bigger things to come," said Cole.
"I think it is very encouraging that just after two months there is a mild improvement in something that indicates there is a connection between his limbs and his brain. It is a sensory connection. It's not a motor connection. Motor is what makes your muscles move, but there is a connection and that is extremely encouraging," Lasala said.
Cole hopes he will make a difference for future spinal cord injury patients, and that the government and insurance companies will take note and fund this as a treatment. He said he wants to make a difference like he did in Iraq.
"I enjoyed it. I'd do it all over again. Worked with some great men and women and we did a lot of good, and it was an experience that I think all young men and women should have," Cole said.
Cole is the first person to report improvement from adult stem cells.
A second patient now has also gotten the treatment.
Doctors are expecting some recovery of neurologic functions in patients but they say it is unrealistic to expect them, at this point, to walk. But they say this improvement is extremely significant.
