Little Ivy’s parents Stephen & Sky Summers are determined to do everything within their ability to enable their little girl lead a normal life. Ivy’s parents lost their first twin during labour due to premature delivery. Ivy, the other twin, survived. Ivy was directly taken to NICU and kept there for the next 5 weeks. When doctors broke the news that Ivy could suffer from physical impairment due to premature birth, the news was devastating for her parents. Within 2 days after Ivy arrived home, her disabilities started to become more apparent.
Ivy’s mom was terrified, butall to her surprise little Ivy began to turn stable. Many panicky episodes were encountered and it required her parents to keep a close watch over her. Slowly Ivy outgrew this state, but she was never able to eat anything solid. Before her 2nd birthday, the diagnosis of cerebral palsy was confirmed. Undeterred by all disabilities, Ivy was a happy, brave child and her parents were also determined to make her lead a healthy life.
Cerebral palsy is a condition that causes damage to the brain cells during the early developmental years. This can result in various motor and cognitive disabilities, thereby hindering the child from leading a normal life. Like most conditions in childhood, Cerebral Palsy is detected early and the diagnosis is also confirmed before the child turns 2 years.
The doctors said that, Ivy would remain in the wheelchair and the only way out would be a stem cell transplant. A person’s own stem cells is generally used as the first line therapy for cerebral palsy, but as Ivy’s parents had not preserved Ivy’s umbilical cord stem cells, there was no possibility of using her own stem cells. Eager to see their baby on feet someday, with the help of leading practitioners, Ivy’s parents are persuading the USFDA to approve the stem cell transplant using donor stem cells to treat the condition.
The financial resources needed for the entire course of therapy is also raised parallelly by her parents through various laborious fundraising activities such as crowd-funding. If every expectant parent makes a wise effort to preserve their baby’s stem cells at birth at stem cell banks, this one-time activity can redeem them from various future hassles as those encountered by Ivy’s family.
Why is preserving your baby’s umbilical cord at birth so beneficial: https://lifecell.in/about-stem-cells
However, if you have already made a choice to preserve your baby’s stem cells choosing a right stem cell bank also matters. Apart from cerebral palsy, there are many more conditions that require matching stem cells from donors for treatment. In such a case your baby’s own stem cells preserved at a private bank will not be of use. So ideally choosing a community stem cell bank that gives access to both donor and own stem cells will be the right choice.
Community stem cell bank also retains your baby’s stem cells exclusively for your child for the first 2 years. This is the span when most of the conditions needing own stem cells can be detected. Then the stem cell units get into the community pool ready to be utilized by any community member if matched when needed
Primary benefits of Community banking:
A. Access to both own and donor stem cells
B. Unlimited retrieval of stem cells whenever needed
C. Eligibility to retrieve stem cells for the entire family
REF:https://dailyrecord.co.uk/news/real-life/family-hope-raise-160k-groundbreaking-11105817#ICID=sharebar_whatsapp
