Story at 10

I had an interesting morning! Yesterday the local news channel ran a story about banking your baby's cord blood. Actually the national ABC news was to do a story about it as well, but it was pre-empted by the arrest of the New York City bomber, rightfully so. I was very interested to see the story. When Jon was born in North Carolina, we donated his cord blood for research. Honestly, I don't think I even asked about it when Joey was born. However, when we found out in March that Mom would need a bone marrow transplant, I started doing some research. I thought I remembered from My Sister's Keeper, that cord blood could be used to treat leukemia. Yes, I realize it is a work of fiction, but it was worth checking out!

When Googling "cord blood", or even "donating cord blood", the vast majority of sites that pop up are for banking your child's cord blood, for the modest fee of around $2,000 initially and $125 a year storage fee. I finally found www.marrow.org which is operated by the National Marrow Donor Program. A beautiful site, their catch phrase is "Donate Umbilical Cord Blood. Give Birth to Hope." Helllooo! It seemed like everything was fitting together. It had taken three years to get pregnant, but maybe it was part of a grand plan. Maybe my daughter, who I wanted to name Hope, would be able to save her grandmother. I could not find any information on donating to a grandparent on the site so I found the phone number and called. I spoke with a lovely and patient woman. I explained that my mother had leukemia and lymphoma and that I wanted to my daughter’s cord blood to be used for her. She explained it was not an option. Family cord blood donations only work for siblings or parents of the baby. It is the same reason children are not generally able to donate bone marrow to their parents. Each of us receives half of our DNA from both parents, so we don’t match either parent. I started quietly crying at that point.

I took a deep breath and asked how I could donate the cord blood. If it couldn’t help my mom, I wanted it to help someone. My kind, patient operator looked it up for me. There are no cord blood banks in my state or the surrounding 3 states. She told me she was sorry, but I could not donate. I thanked her, hung up and cried so hard I got the hiccups.

So I was very interested to see last night’s stories. But first the national story was pre-empted. And the local story was all about banking your newborn’s cord blood. I was pissed. Cord blood banking is expensive and you may never need the cord blood. Donated cord blood could be used, but it thrown away everyday here in the Midwest. I watched the local story, got pissed and because I’m on bed rest and have access to a lap top, I sent an e-mail. I got a call and this morning I was interviewed for tonight’s local news. How about that?