Dear Andrea -

While this isn't MY personal experience - and not yet entirely hers - please focus on keep smilin's very recent thread I am home... Dr.S is AMAZING!!!!!!!! http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread116803.html in which she notes, in her opening post:

We have to fight for the insurance company to come on board in order to proceed which he recommends a 5 day inpatient coma ..sadly, I will have to remain at Drexel in the ICU unit for some time... [Emphasis added.]

And someone else (my apologies, I've forgotten whom) had previously mentioned that the German program - which to my knowledge wasn't treating Germans in any event - had closed down.

This is a HUGE development! It means that Drexel's IRB - for which I have information suggesting that it was always the stumbling block, notwithstanding public statements that the door was being blocked by the FDA - has finally come on board, and is permitting the work to go on in Philadelphia. This may even open the door, for some patients at least, to obtaining insurance coverage for the procedure, which could in turn have a cascade effect, encouraging other hospitals to come on board.

Good times.

Mike