As Reported By Chuck Pleiness, The Macomb Daily, Detroit
The news on Mr. Hockey continues to get better and better.
“Right now it’s all going in the right direction, so we’re hoping that continues,” said Murray Howe, the son of Detroit Red Wings legend Gordie Howe. “It’s exciting to imagine that he may continue to improve over the next nine months, because it’s really only been one month and he’s already had so much progress.”
Howe was all but on his death bed before undergoing an eight-hour stem cell therapy treatment in Tijuana, Mexico on December, 8, 2014.
“He pretty much had one foot in the grave,” Murray Howe said. “He wasn’t really eating. He couldn’t stand under his own power. He wasn’t really talking. We just hated to see him in the condition he was in.”
“We were thinking he maybe had two or three weeks to live,” he continued. “We just didn’t want him to be laying in a bed for the last three weeks of his life. We took him out there with no expectations. We were just completely blown away by his response (to the treatments). I’m still astonished. I’ve never seen anything like it in medicine.”
Gordie Howe, 86, had suffered a significant stroke on October 26, 2014 which impaired his speech and caused him to lose functionality of the right side of his body. He also had a couple mini strokes prior to the stem cell treatment.
“The more I read I just was astonished at No. 1 the safety of it,” Murray Howe said. “There’s really very little chance of adverse reaction, and the success that I’ve seen are just mind-boggling. They said, ‘We can’t guarantee that your Dad is going to get better, but we suspect that he will and we hope that he will. We’d really like to give it a try.’ The fact that the whole clinic was willing to do it for free and they felt that our Dad could be helped by this spoke volumes. They had their reputation on the line. If something went wrong or if it didn’t really help, they would look silly.”
The two days of treatment has yielded miraculous results.
“By day five he was completely walking on his own and every day since he’s continued to improve,” Murray Howe said. “He completely walks on his own now. Last week we walked about a half mile in total to a mall. He had to sit down about two or three times just to rest, but he’s completely walking on his own.
“I kicked around a soccer ball with him,” Murray Howe continued. “He’s playing driveway hockey with his grandsons. He’s faking out his great-grandson and then shooting the puck through the five hole. You really couldn’t even tell he had a stroke at this point. It’s so phenomenal.”
Howe, who spent the first 25 seasons of his career with the Wings, still holds franchise records for games played (1,687), goals (786), points (1,809), power-play goals (211) and game-winning goals (121).
“He’s able to converse very easily, but he’s still a man of few words,” Murray Howe said. “He’s never been a big talker. He’s more the quiet type. He doesn’t spontaneously converse unless you talk to him or ask questions. He can easily converse when you chat with him.
“His short-term memory is still not that great but he had some component of dementia way before his stroke,” Murray Howe added. “We’re hoping that improves more, too. From my perspective, that’s definitely improving, both the complexity of his humor and his understanding of concepts to me is amazing.”
Since the treatment Gordie Howe has gained 20 pounds and continues to get stronger.
“We’re hoping (he continues to) improve,” Murray Howe said. “Really, if he gets no more improvement than what he has today, then we are still ecstatic. He’s happy as a clam. He’s strong as a bull. We could have never asked for more than that.”
Howe, who finished his career with the Harford Whalers at age 52, is the NHL’s all-time leader in games played (1,767) and ranks second in goals (801), third in points (1,850) and ninth in assists (1,049).
He made the last of his 23 NHL All-Star Game appearances that season at Joe Louis Arena. He got to play alongside his sons, Mark and Marty, in the World Hockey Association for six seasons where he totaled 30 goals four times and reached 100 points at least twice.
Howe’s wife of 55 years, Colleen – known as “Mrs. Hockey” – died in 2009 after a lengthy battle with Pick’s Disease, an incurable neurological condition that causes dementia.
