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Jim Durgeloh, 59, was desperate to avoid surgery. After a career as a construction contractor and hours of leisure time spent on a motorcycle around his Longview, Wash., home, he was facing an operation to replace his left hip.
“That’s pretty invasive,” he said, nervous about a surgery that would require being cut open and implanted with an artificial hip; Jim’s brother had died from complications after a similar operation. In the search for an alternative, he and his wife, Janet, happened upon the website for La Jolla-based StemGenex Medical Group, which touts itself as “the world’s first and only Stem Cell Center of Excellence.”
But what caught the Durgelohs’ attention were the words of Rita Alexander, its chief administrative officer and a founder.
Alexander wrote that she had suffered debilitating rheumatoid arthritis until a stem cell treatment sent her into remission. “Today it remains my passion to advocate for those diagnosed with debilitating illnesses to have access to cutting edge stem cell treatment,” she wrote.
“Rita was very inspiring,” Janet Durgeloh says.
Durgeloh’s doctor in Washington was skeptical about...