Gryphon’s Journey

Dear Family and Friends,

We are writing this letter to ask everyone who has been a part of our lives to help our son Gryphon. As most of you know Gryphon was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy. He had slight jaundice at 5 days old and it looked as though it was going away, but on his ninth day of life he woke up orange. Gryphon had to have a double blood transfusion, which exchanged 85% of his blood and he remained at Valley Children’s hospital for almost 3 weeks. When we left the hospital we were given little to no hope that Gryphon would ever hear again and as far as his development the doctor’s weren’t sure. He was diagnosed with Kernicterous, which meant that the jaundice attacked the part of his brain that controls his motor and developmental skills and also his nerves to his ears. During the past year and a half we have been working with physical, occupational and speech therapists, but his progress has continuously been behind.

While looking for ways to help Gryphon, we came across this boy from Sacramento who has many of the same problems Gryphon has, including Cerebral Palsy. The boy’s parents took him to Duke University to get stem cell treatments from his own cord blood. Before the treatments, the boy was unable to walk and talk and shortly after them he began to do both. Unfortunately we do not have Gryphon’s cord blood, so we started looking for treatments done with donor cord blood. No place in the United States is able to do donor cord blood treatments at this time, but we were able to find a company in China that has treated thousands of people with donor stem cells. Through contact with this company in China, we found that the stem cells are all taken from the donated umbilical cords of living children. Eighty percent of their patients have had improvements from these treatments. There are virtually no risks from these treatments except that his body rejects the cells and it doesn’t work.

We have spent two months in prayer and have decided to move forward with these treatments. This could possibly change Gryphon’s life forever! We will be going to China for one month, where Gryphon will have six treatments and therapy between each one throughout that time. We need to raise approximately fifty thousand dollars to accomplish this. I know fifty thousand dollars seems unreachable to some, but if you break it down, it’s actually only 50 people giving a thousand dollars , 100 people giving five hundred or 500 giving $100.00. Here are a few ways that you can help Gryphon, Monetary donations, donations of yard sale items and your prayers. If you have any fund raising ideas please let us know about them and we will send further information about fund raisers we already have in mind. Thank you so much for your help for Gryphon and your prayers. We greatly appreciate your support!

God Bless,

Michael and Aleesha Klomp