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Before I get into this post on how a stem cell transplant helped a young girl with
Neuroblastoma- I would like to say congratulations to the Pittsburgh Steelers on their victory in the Super Bowl. I would have liked to see old Kurt Warner lead his Cardinals to a win, he gives inspiration to old fogies like myself. However, it was a great game and both teams have reasons to be proud.
Emily Smith, 8, a young girl from Nacogdoches, Texas, had her Super Bowl victory about 6 years ago. At the age of 17 months, Emily was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma, a
cancer that begins in the nervous system.
Emily had a 9 pound tumor that was wrapped around her heart. Her prognosis wasn't good. She was terminal. Chemotherapy was tried- it didn't work.
Doctors decided the only way Emily could survive was a bone marrow transplant with
stem cells taken from her own bone marrow.
The procedure would replace Mary's defective and damaged blood cells with her own clean stem cells that had been previously extracted from her own bone marrow. Stem cells are immature cells found in bone marrow that develop into red and white blood cells and platelets.Emily had more than 250,000 cells extracted, which were then transported to Children's Medical Center in Los Angeles, where they were cleansed of cancer and purged of all diseases.Just prior to her transplant, Emily was given an aggressive amount of chemotherapy, and placed into a chemically-induced coma, according to her mother."She was in a coma when they inseminated her with the stem cells, and she woke up the day before her second birthday," Mary said.Five days later her stem cells began to graft, and she was on the road to recovery.She spent the next five weeks in the hospital following her transplant, and then moved with her mother to the Ronald McDonald House for three months.Emily does have some complication due to the chemo but:
But to the uneducated eye, Emily appears like any other 8-year-old girl, fascinated by puppies and Hello Kitty, and bursting with energy.Very touching story. If you look closely, Emily was treated in a similar fashion to those Multiple Sclerosis patients at Northwestern University-- do you see a trend here?
Read the whole story on
stem cells saving Emily here