When Sheila Gannon, from Denver, Colo., was 28 weeks pregnant she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She would need a bone marrow transplant. Unfortunately, not one of her siblings was a match and no one on the national registry was either. That left her one option: cord blood.

After receiving chemotherapy treatments she received her cord blood transplant. "I was not meeting the criteria for cord transplants anywhere in the country, but luckily my oncologist and the doctors at Rocky Mountain Cancer Center developed a new protocol and performed my transplant here," Gannon says. "In conjunction with transplant, I received five more doses of chemo and eight doses of total body radiation. The actual transplant is an infusion of two vials of blood cells. It only takes a couple of minutes, but it takes between 21 and 28 days for your new stem cells to engraft."

How is she doing now? "Great!" Gannon says. "I still have to deal with various side effects of the treatment (e.g., nerve damage in my feet, Graft vs. Host disease, etc.). But I have been cancer-free for 15 months! I spend most of my days chasing Sawyer, who will be 2 next month!"

Cord blood is the stem-cell-rich blood from the umbilical cord and the placenta. It is either collected before the placenta has been delivered during the birthing procedure, or after the umbilical cord has been detached from the baby.

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