MARK CELEBRATES 2 YEARS "POST TRANSPLANT"

Our son Mark Mulumba is our middle child. When our daughter Carol battled sickle cell disease, her hematologist and oncologist doctors told us that she will need a bone marrow transplant to save her life. At that time, Mark was 5 years old. Fortunately the bone marrow doctor found out that Mark's DNA/HLA typing matches that of Carol. Mark donated his bone marrow to our then 7 year old daughter Carol Mulumba. Mark underwent general anesthesia in order for the doctor to harvest bone marrow from his bilateral femur.

On October 28th at 0900am Carol received the GIFT OF LIFE from his brother Mark. On October 29th, Carol received Mark's cord blood that was saved at the time Mark was born "five years ago". This page is dedicated to our HERO son Mark and all other HEROES who have donated the gift of life to save some one's life.

"I knew how sicklers were treated in Uganda; like walking corpses. That I had given birth to one was very painful because I knew she would suffer all through life taking medicine. I cried so much and was very depressed. The baby was so sick I sometimes just thought of poisoning myself and leaving all the suffering behind. I wished so many times that I had aborted," Ms Mulumba agonisingly recalls her feelings.

In 2001, doctors told Carol's family about an experimental technique in which cord blood is frozen at birth and stored to await a day when a patient needs a transfusion.

Since the 1980s, some 20,000 cord-blood transplants have been made to treat some 75 illnesses, including heart disease, cancers, stroke, diabetes and neurological disorders, according to the Cord Blood Registry in San Bruno.

Collecting cord blood does not require doctors to alter the way they deliver a baby and the process is generally regarded as a safe way to harvest stem cells, which are otherwise taken from embryos or adult bone marrow, said Kathy Engle, communications director for the Registry.

Hunting for a transplant match for their daughter, the Mulumbas scoured public cord- blood banks around the country, but without luck. When Lukiah Mulumba became pregnant in 2003, the Cord Blood Registry, a private company with the largest cord-blood bank in the world, offered to store her baby's cord blood for free as part of a program it offers to some 3,500 close relatives of patients with diseases treatable by cord blood.

The procedure, Carol's parents were told, was experimental, but promising, and the family decided to try it, said Carol's father, Abudallah Mulumba.

As Carol grew older, her pain worsened. But analgesics like morphine stopped working.

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Hope lives: The Cord Blood Registry in San Bruno stores umbilical cord blood that can be used to help treat illnesses including heart disease, cancers, stroke, diabetes and neurological disorders. (Courtesy photo)

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"I'd say, 'Sickle cell monster, don't come to my bed, I'm trying to have a peaceful night," Carol said. Her growth was stunted and her eyes became yellow and jaundiced. Ultrasounds of her brain showed a stroke was imminent.

In 2008, the family decided to try a cord-blood transplant. The doctors used chemotherapy to force Carol's bones to stop producing cells so the new blood could catch on.

There is only a one in four chance that a sibling's blood will be a match, according to the Registry. But after a month, Carol's blood work showed 100 percent healthy blood cells.

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/peninsula/2011/07/umbilical-cord-blood-still-enigma#ixzz1aGS0Ia4E