Received via email
Hi Gina!
I pray that you’re having a good day
and if it’s been a rough week (you’ve been a bit quiet) I pray this brings a
smile to your face. Sending this from work since I can’t seem to get to
my computer at home. With the upcoming birth please be sure to send any
response to my home, wasn’t sure if I should send to your bahbad or aol
address let’s give bahbad a try!
A little background...I work for a
Fortune 500 company, and a company that has been consecutively listed as one of
the Fortune 100 best companies to work. My company employee’s somewhere
in the ballpark of 15,000 employees (give or take some give to recent cuts and
layoffs) and one of the “perks” afforded to us are message boards where
employee’s can post questions specific to parenting, cooking, gardening, auto
etc and wait for a colleague to post their response to the board. One of
the boards that I have been frequently recently is for Pregnancy (imagine
that!) and just a day or two ago an individual posted a question regarding
private cord blood donation...which company to use, pros and cons of each
company and...was it worth it to bank the cord blood? Well, you can
imagine my excitement... I had planned to post a detailed message
regarding public cord blood donation after returning to work
so I could provide a picture of the entire donation process but given the
circumstances I felt the time was right to shed a little light on a subject you
have helped to bring near and dear to my heart! Now I know that on a
daily basis there likely aren’t 15,000 employees surfing the Pregnancy message
board but I do know that there are a number of people that utilize this
valuable resource and I’m hopeful that my quickly drafted post (need to
summarize a bit more for general consumption) will provide some food for
thought...just a reminder that every little thing we do, every time you reach
out to someone the message gets carried along to who knows how many
others. Out of who knows how many people that view this post a seed may
be planted in 1 or 2 but that 1 or 2 may be able to offer the hope that a
patient and family in need have been praying for. It’s a small world,
remember your impact. This one’s for Evan...
Much Love From Iowa,
Kristi
Please note that the attached links should be viewed
on your own time. Thanks! Also wanted to mention that I’m not at
all interested in starting a debate on public vs. private cord blood donation
but wanted to shed a bit of light on an option I had little knowledge of until
a friend pointed me in the direction of public cord blood donation. From
her family’s own tragedy she was motivated to get the word out regarding public
cord blood donation. When the “unthinkable” struck her family they
learned that her own child’s cord blood (which had been privately banked at
birth) was of no use to their son, nor were his siblings...a cord blood
transplant was ultimately deemed the best treatment option and two cord blood
matches from the NMDP’s national registry were used for transplantation and
provided their family with hope for the future.
I have personally never privately
stored any of our children’s cord blood. With baby number one the concept
was rather new and the cost was prohibitive and thus little consideration was
given to private storage. With baby number two I did a bit more research
and in our families case decided not to privately bank our son’s cord blood
because we did not have a child or close family member with a condition that
could potentially benefit from transplantation; and the reality is that most
conditions that might be helped by cord blood stem cells already exist in your
infant’s cord blood. So, along comes baby number three and since the
birth of our last child I have learned quite a bit about public cord
blood donation and have become quite passionate about this public option;
baby number three’s cord blood will be donated to the Be The Match Registry
(National Marrow Donor Program – NMDP), a national registry.
Public cord blood banking (or
donating) means that the baby’s cord blood will be stored in a cord blood bank
and is made available to anyone in need of transplant. It may also be
used for research purposes to help bring us closer to finding “the cure” and/or
new treatments for many otherwise life-threatening diseases such as
malignancies, bone marrow failures, immunodeficiency’s, etc. Depending on
where you live in the country you may not be the least bit familiar with this
public banking option, my own OB/GYN had little awareness of this public option
but once educated on the topic was excited to come on board with our donation
plan!
Public cord banks
pay for the collection procedure and the storing of the baby’s cord blood so
there is no cost to the family for donating the cord blood. There are
currently no cord blood banks located here in Central Iowa though there have
been recent discussions regarding the feasibility of developing a bank for the
state of Iowa. The University of Iowa does currently
operate a research program and collects cord blood donations from deliveries
performed at the U of I but there are no other locally housed banking
facilities in the state. In my case, I am using Cryobanks International
for the donation of our child’s cord blood. Cryobanks offers both a
private and public storage option and works in partnership with the National
Marrow Donor Program to store cord blood for the NMDP’s national registry and
helps to coordinate transplants for patients in need and the process has been
simple enough thus far...the downloading and completion of a health assessment,
getting my Dr. to sign-off on the request and forwarding to Crybanks for
review. Just yesterday I was notified that I have been accepted into the
program and the required collection kit is being mailed out to me this
week...just in time for baby!
The decision to privately
bank umbilical cord blood is an intensely personal one and only you know what’s
best for your family but I did want to remind people of this public donation
option...particularly for Mom’s-to-Be who may not have previously given any consideration
to the options that exist for their child’s cord blood.
Our family is looking
forward to the birth of our baby and are hopeful and prayerful that the
life-giving cells found in his/her umbilical cord blood will give hope and new
life to a family in need.
Kristi
Additional Information regarding
How to Donate, Where to Donate and other questions you might have regarding
Cord Blood Donation are addressed at:
There are a lot of great
resources out there that discuss private vs. public donation including the
American Academy of Pediatrics, National Marrow Donor Program, Be A Hero,
Become A Donor and WebMD just to name a few:
Shortcut to: http://www.aap.org/advocacy/releases/jan07cordblood.htm
Shortcut
to: http://www.aap.org/advocacy/releases/jan07cordblood.htm
Shortcut
to: http://marrow.org/HELP/Donate_Cord_Blood_Share_Life/index.html
Shortcut
to: http://www.bahbad.org/howtogetinvolved/donate-your-babys-cord-blood.aspx