LYING alone in a Russian hospital room while suffering hallucinations, pain, sickness and fatigue, Tracey Banks thought she was going to die.
The Ravenswood woman had travelled to Moscow and paid $50,000 for a stem cell medical treatment, in an attempt to halt the debilitating progression of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis.
Ms Banks said she had been told the treatment would take her close to death and she would have to fight her way back.
‘‘I understand what that means now,’’ she said.
‘‘I was lying on the bed and I was finding it hard to blink – I didn’t have the energy. I was trying to breathe but I didn’t have the energy to breathe, and I kept thinking this breath is my last.’’
Ms Banks spent 30 days alone in a hospital room as doctors removed her stem cells, purified them, administered aggressive chemotherapy to destroy her immune system, and returned her stem cells through an infusion.
She said the nurses were amazing but didn’t speak English, and she never knew what was coming next. ‘‘Every day, there was like four infusions, and there was six injections, and they’d just walk in and obviously prep, but it was just like a stab.’’
She said the chemotherapy caused hallucinations and she didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.
‘‘Everything over there had no colour. It was winter, so outside it was thick snow, minus 10 degrees,’’ she said. ‘‘Inside, the rooms are totally white, and the food’s white ... and you kind of lose yourself when there’s no colour.’’
After a week of chemotherapy, Ms Banks’ purified stem cells were returned to her body via tubes in her neck.
‘‘It’s a horrible sensation, it’s a real tightening of your chest, difficult to breathe, and a really harsh, scratching sensation,’’ she said.
She had to spend a final 10 days in isolation before she could return home to her loved ones, including her 11-year-old son.
More than two months later, she is seeing small signs of improvement, but her doctor said she likely wouldn’t see results for six to 12 months.
The stem cell treatment aims to pause the progression of multiple sclerosis, but MS Australia says that it is unproven and high-risk, with research ongoing in Australia and overseas to better understand it.
Ms Banks always felt that she had no option, having watched her mother die after she was diagnosed with the same condition.
