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Baby Sister's Gift of Life
FIONA SEXTON
Caulfield Glen Eira/Port Philip Leader
26 June 2006
AUGUST 3, 2000, is a date etched in Linda Cartledge's memory.
In that one day the Bentleigh mother learned her two-year-old daughter Kristen had acute lymphocytic leukemia and gave birth to Kristen's saviour sister Emily, whose umbilical cord blood was used in a stem cell transplant four years later.
Emily's tissue beat one-in-four odds to be a perfect match with Kristen's.
That meant Emily's cord blood, with its healthy stem cells, could be used to replace Kristen's diseased bone marrow.
The blood was stored until January 2004, when Kristen received the transplant after two relapses and 3 1/2 years of chemotherapy.
Now aged eight and in Year 1 at school, Kristen has been in remission ever since.
"(That day) a lot of things went wrong, but a lot of things went right," Mrs Cartledge said.
"(My pregnancy) was a week overdue, so my obstetrician had been planning to induce labour the next day."
Mrs Cartledge said after telling her obstetrician the disturbing news about Kristen, he suggested saving her unborn child's cord blood for a possible future transplant.
"I was induced that night so the cord blood could be processed the next day," she said.
"Then we found out it was a perfect match . . . we were ecstatic, absolutely thrilled."
Mrs Cartledge said using Emily's stem cells rather than donor bone marrow gave the transplant a greater chance of success.
Dr Karin Tiedemann, of the Royal Children's Hospital, said such transplants provided the "only or best chance of survival" in children with acute lymphocytic leukemia that had recurred despite chemotherapy.
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