Okay, so on to this thing at Duke. I actually heard about this procedure on the world news - they were doing it for kids with Cerebral Palsy, but I thought they might consider Noa since her condition, like CP, was caused by tramatic brain injury. The doctor they interviewed was at Duke so I just reached out her - this was about nine months ago.
The program is only open to kids that have their umbilical cord blood banked. We did this with Noa mainly because she is adopted, and that when you don't have a lot of possible organ donors tramping around your house you think of these things.
The process is actually surprisingly simple. They insert an IV, transfuse the stem cells into her arm, and let them do their work. The assumption is that the cells know where they are needed and they go there. They have had some cases in which they have had wonderful success, and others in which is appears to make no major difference at all. We just don't know what to expect.
We don't expect this to be a magic wand, or a cure. We hope that it will bring some improvement in one or more areas. We just don't know. There is very little about this on web because it's a new procedure - but here is some stuff about two of the kids who are real success stories:
http://www.cnsfoundation.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7331
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/07/health/he-cpalsy7
And here are some great youtube stories of kids - and the Duke program. Remember, these are the most dramatic successes. We don't know how Noa will do. We're trying to keep some balance - we'll hope for the best, but understand that we don't get to decide what the best will be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITRAchU2C0I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT4ydxomnQ0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr0OOtvKU0A&feature=related
2 comments:
Jeni and Ben,
it's Viv Fleischer here, your somehow related relative through Bruce. This sounds very promising. I've done some research for school about stem cell procedure's and what they can do and, even though the result's are not able to be predicted, I think this will go well. I hope everything get's better for you and I hope I get to see all of you, especially Noa, in the near future!
Thanks so much Viv!
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