of stems and decisions to be made...
It’s Monday and I’m back at the office.
Last weekend was a relatively a busy one. As you can read, I got this blog up, we registered to the confinement house, and yesterday we met with the sales person from Stemlife. We had originally planned to meet on Saturday and have tentatively made an appointment about a couple of weeks ago, but I could not give the exact time as an ex-colleague is also interested to hear about. Anyway, no response from the ex-colleague and I totally forgot about the appointment (or was it my highly tuned skill of postponing things again) until the day itself. So I called the sales person at the very last minute and made the appointment. But unfortunately the appointment had to be cancelled at the last minute as she had to attend to an emergency. So, I rescheduled it to the next day. It was only then that I realized that the appointment will happen on a Sunday, a rest day. So, ms. Stemlife sales person, if you are reading this, “Sorry to make you work on a Sunday.”
StemLife is one of those companies that stores cord blood in Malaysia. Cord blood is the blood in the baby’s umbilical cord which is supposed to be full of stem cells. Since I was sleeping throughout most of my biology classes in secondary school (except those few times when the teacher told the girls to not to giggle when he was explaining that chapter about reproduction), having me explain about cord blood storage and stemcells will be like having the blind leading the blind. SO please bear with me.
Anyway, since I have read up quite a bit, I will try to explain what I know about what I know on the subject. Mind you that this is based on my current understanding on the subject and if you were to make major decisions, I would suggest that you do further research and not to rely solely on the information from me.
First of all, stem cells. From my understanding, us, human beings (as with all living beings), are made up of cells and each type are different depending on its function. So there are brain cells, liver cells, blood cells, bone cells and even the egg and the boy’s little swimmers are cells. If you take a clock and reverse it back in time (to when you are still a small being in your mommy’s womb before any of your organs are developed), all these different type of cells are at one time the same type of cell (which are stem cells). So in a way, stem cells are the basic construction block of the human body. What makes it so special is that it has the ability do be develop into any particular type of cell (e.g., blood cells, nerve cells, liver cells etc.). So you can say that they are probably like the joker card where it can represent any cards in the deck. Or the * keystroke (wildcard) when you are doing a file search in your computer but dunno what the exact filename is. Or imagine that you are trying to make a mr gumby with play dough. Then stem cells will be the playdough that you use to make mr. gumby’s hands, legs, head and pee pee if you wish so. Therefore with this understanding, I think it is pretty clear of the purpose of stemcells and why it is important to store it in case something happens in the future.
From the info that I read in the brochure, the 3 sources of stemcells are from bone marrow, cord blood and embryo. The first 2 sources are being used clinically. This means that people do make use of technology to ‘harvest’ and use them. The third one (embryonic) is not being used clinically. I guess it is mainly due to the controversies about the ethics of using it, but that is a separate discussion in which I am not even going to attempt to discuss it here. For this company, they offer the service of getting the baby’s cord blood during delivery and store it for you for any needs in the future.
In the true nature of ”There’s no such things as a free lunch”, this service do come at a cost.
Generally speaking, the cost itself is reasonable for the service that they provide, but we had to put brain cells to work here because the one time cost of the procedure is a significant sum. Compound it together with the hospital bills, confinement house cost, and the odds and ends, its cost will lighten the wallet quite a bit.
Anyway, personally, my thought process is summed up in an im conversation with Ah Web (another ex colleague) some time ago. As long as I can afford it, it is really not a decision to make for myself, I am making decisions for another human being who will be entrusted to me, so I had better spend more calories thinking about it.
Btw, for those (like me) who went searching for info from stemlife in here and needed more info, the CEO of the company also writes a blog which is posted here.
Also, so that I do not sound like I am bias and moonlighting as a sales person for this company, there is also another Malaysian company called cryocord. I have not done much research on it yet, and if any of you have any info, do share so that we can make a balanced judgement.
Before I forget, I would also like to add that I am not affiliated to the said companies nor being paid or received kickbacks, discounts or gifts (although I don’t mind a free back rub from time to time) for writing this blog entry.
Crap! my bi-weekly report is due today. Better get back to work.
edited to include note to isaac's mommy:
note to Isaac's mommy: No i did not ask them if we can save money by storing the cord blood ourselves in our home fridge. I'm afraid that the sales person will think that i'm a doofus if i ask so, but from my partly-educated guess, i think we can't store in our home fridge as we might run into the risk getting to answer questions in the nature of "Honey, why does this tomato ketchup taste funky?"
Last weekend was a relatively a busy one. As you can read, I got this blog up, we registered to the confinement house, and yesterday we met with the sales person from Stemlife. We had originally planned to meet on Saturday and have tentatively made an appointment about a couple of weeks ago, but I could not give the exact time as an ex-colleague is also interested to hear about. Anyway, no response from the ex-colleague and I totally forgot about the appointment (or was it my highly tuned skill of postponing things again) until the day itself. So I called the sales person at the very last minute and made the appointment. But unfortunately the appointment had to be cancelled at the last minute as she had to attend to an emergency. So, I rescheduled it to the next day. It was only then that I realized that the appointment will happen on a Sunday, a rest day. So, ms. Stemlife sales person, if you are reading this, “Sorry to make you work on a Sunday.”
StemLife is one of those companies that stores cord blood in Malaysia. Cord blood is the blood in the baby’s umbilical cord which is supposed to be full of stem cells. Since I was sleeping throughout most of my biology classes in secondary school (except those few times when the teacher told the girls to not to giggle when he was explaining that chapter about reproduction), having me explain about cord blood storage and stemcells will be like having the blind leading the blind. SO please bear with me.
Anyway, since I have read up quite a bit, I will try to explain what I know about what I know on the subject. Mind you that this is based on my current understanding on the subject and if you were to make major decisions, I would suggest that you do further research and not to rely solely on the information from me.
First of all, stem cells. From my understanding, us, human beings (as with all living beings), are made up of cells and each type are different depending on its function. So there are brain cells, liver cells, blood cells, bone cells and even the egg and the boy’s little swimmers are cells. If you take a clock and reverse it back in time (to when you are still a small being in your mommy’s womb before any of your organs are developed), all these different type of cells are at one time the same type of cell (which are stem cells). So in a way, stem cells are the basic construction block of the human body. What makes it so special is that it has the ability do be develop into any particular type of cell (e.g., blood cells, nerve cells, liver cells etc.). So you can say that they are probably like the joker card where it can represent any cards in the deck. Or the * keystroke (wildcard) when you are doing a file search in your computer but dunno what the exact filename is. Or imagine that you are trying to make a mr gumby with play dough. Then stem cells will be the playdough that you use to make mr. gumby’s hands, legs, head and pee pee if you wish so. Therefore with this understanding, I think it is pretty clear of the purpose of stemcells and why it is important to store it in case something happens in the future.
From the info that I read in the brochure, the 3 sources of stemcells are from bone marrow, cord blood and embryo. The first 2 sources are being used clinically. This means that people do make use of technology to ‘harvest’ and use them. The third one (embryonic) is not being used clinically. I guess it is mainly due to the controversies about the ethics of using it, but that is a separate discussion in which I am not even going to attempt to discuss it here. For this company, they offer the service of getting the baby’s cord blood during delivery and store it for you for any needs in the future.
In the true nature of ”There’s no such things as a free lunch”, this service do come at a cost.
Generally speaking, the cost itself is reasonable for the service that they provide, but we had to put brain cells to work here because the one time cost of the procedure is a significant sum. Compound it together with the hospital bills, confinement house cost, and the odds and ends, its cost will lighten the wallet quite a bit.
Anyway, personally, my thought process is summed up in an im conversation with Ah Web (another ex colleague) some time ago. As long as I can afford it, it is really not a decision to make for myself, I am making decisions for another human being who will be entrusted to me, so I had better spend more calories thinking about it.
Btw, for those (like me) who went searching for info from stemlife in here and needed more info, the CEO of the company also writes a blog which is posted here.
Also, so that I do not sound like I am bias and moonlighting as a sales person for this company, there is also another Malaysian company called cryocord. I have not done much research on it yet, and if any of you have any info, do share so that we can make a balanced judgement.
Before I forget, I would also like to add that I am not affiliated to the said companies nor being paid or received kickbacks, discounts or gifts (although I don’t mind a free back rub from time to time) for writing this blog entry.
Crap! my bi-weekly report is due today. Better get back to work.
edited to include note to isaac's mommy:
note to Isaac's mommy: No i did not ask them if we can save money by storing the cord blood ourselves in our home fridge. I'm afraid that the sales person will think that i'm a doofus if i ask so, but from my partly-educated guess, i think we can't store in our home fridge as we might run into the risk getting to answer questions in the nature of "Honey, why does this tomato ketchup taste funky?"
Labels: stemlife
posted by Duckie at
10:39 AM
