The joy surrounding the birth of Dallas, after his parents spent three
years trying to conceive, turned to heartbreak when he was diagnosed
with cerebral palsy at 8 months old. Dallas could not breast feed,
crawl, sit up, clap or speak. He just screamed in an effort to
communicate. Dallas participated in a clinical trial at Duke University
using his own umbilical cord blood stored after his birth. The procedure
to infuse Dallas' own stem cells back into his bloodstream took less
than an hour. No less than five days later, he was laughing, clapping,
waving and said, "Mama".
There is no cure for cerebral palsy and it is very expensive to manage
over a person's lifetime. Whereas it costs about $2,000 to salvage cord
blood at birth and $120 a year to store it. The doctors expect Dallas,
now two, to be completely cured by the age of seven. Dallas and his Mom
and Dad were featured on NBC's Today Show on March 12, 2008.
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