New mothers donation to mom with leukemia a potentially life-saving gift

MONTREAL Mai Duong wept as she spoke of the anonymous new mother who has recently donated the umbilical cord that just may generate the stem cells required to cure Duongs leukemia.

A mom is saving another moms life and thats huge, Duong told reporters at a news conference at Hpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont Tuesday.

Im very grateful to that lady. Were never going to meet, but she had the possibility, in giving birth to (her) own child, ... to give the cord, that otherwise would be tossed in the garbage. She decided to do more and she is going to potentially save my life.

Duong, 34, launched a campaign two months ago to encourage non-Caucasians to sign up to Hma-Qubecs Stem Cell Donor Registry. Duong was hoping to find a compatible bone marrow donor for herself and improve the chances of other non-white patients requiring life-saving stem cell transplants.

Duong suffers from acute myeloid leukemia and the only potential cure is a stem-cell transplant.

Duong was born in Canada, but is of Vietnamese descent, which makes finding a compatible donor difficult. Donor and recipient being of the same ethnic background greatly increases the chances of success in stem cell transplants, but Asian donors are under-represented in the registry. Duongs campaign has resulted in a marked increase in non-white donors signing up with Hma-Qubec; Asians now represent four per cent of potential donors, up from less than one per cent when the Save Mai Duong Campaign began.

The campaign raised $500,000 for a media blitz and found bone marrow matches for three Quebec patients of Asian ethnicity. But it did not succeed in locating Duong herself a good bone marrow match.

Her next best option now is a transplant of stem cells from an umbilical cord, and doctors recently found a cord that was a good enough match. Using cord blood allows doctors to use donors who are not a perfect match, but there is more chance of infections and complications.

Duong said she is thrilled to get this chance, although her recovery is not certain and she does not look forward to returning to hospital to prepare for the transplant. She will likely be admitted to begin chemotherapy and radiation therapy in about a week, and must be kept in isolation during treatment to avoid infection, which means she wont be able to see her four-year-old daughter, Alice, for six to eight weeks.

Duong was pregnant with her second child when a routine blood test in January 2013 revealed she had leukemia. She had to end that pregnancy to start chemotherapy. Her leukemia went into remission but she relapsed in May of 2014.

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New mothers donation to mom with leukemia a potentially life-saving gift