Stem Cell Treatment

A local pediatrician contacted me with some good information about cord blood and stem cell treatment. Savannah's cord blood was completely damaged at her birth due to the circumstances. Had her cord blood still been good, it could have been used to help her. If you have a healthy baby, you may want to strongly consider banking your baby's cord blood for later in life, should they need it. It has been proven to help children with Leukemia. You may also consider donating your child's cord blood to a family in need. As valuable as cord blood is, it's such a tremendous waste to have it just thrown out.

Cord blood contains something totally amazing called stem cells. Stem cells are some of the coolest cells ever because when injected into the body, unbeknown to doctors, they just immediately begin to go to town at repairing whatever needs to be repaired. Stem cells are cells that don't have a determined role. Like actors, awaiting a casting call, stem cells wait for signals to tell them what to become. Doctors can't tell the stem cells what to do, that's why not all procedures are successful, but the body will determine what the role of the stem cells should be, and usually the stem cells get busy on repairing damage, whatever it may be.

There has been some controversy in the media about stem cell research. I, myself, don't agree with human embryonic stem cell research. This is where human embryos are grown in a lab, and once the embryo is mature enough, stem cells are harvested for research, and then the fetus is aborted.

There is however, another type of stem cell, and that is of an adult. Adult stem cells can be harvested from bone marrow. Come to think of it, I think this is why chicken soup is so healing (because the bone marrow from the bones cooking gets into the broth).

Adult stem cell treatments aren't yet being conducted in the U.S., but here is a pretty neat video about a facility in Germany that is doing them.



Unless Savannah gets any treatment, this is what we have to look forward to for our daughter. *sigh* As parents, you want nothing more than for your child to be happy and healthy. You want to see them walk, talk, run, play, swim, jump - you know - do all of the normal things that we do that we all so often take for granted.

There are so many things to be thankful for in life. Count your blessings.