How a baby’s umbilical cord helped save this woman’s life

Jessie Quinn of Sacramento was 36 years old when loss of appetite, weight loss, some eye issues and finally pelvic pain sent her to the emergency room in 2010. Tests quickly revealed she had acute myeloid leukemia — a type of blood cancer that progresses quickly — and doctors told her that chemotherapy would probably not be enough; she would need a bone-marrow transplant.
Quinn, who has a science background, knew that finding a donor would be difficult. In college, she had donated to a bone-marrow registry after learning that people like her, with a mixed racial heritage, have a much harder time than others finding a match.
In fact, when she and her doctors scoured the registry for a match for her, only one name came up: her own.
“I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry,” Quinn said.
While searching unsuccessfully for a match for five months, Quinn underwent four cycles of chemotherapy to keep the leukemia at bay. What eventually saved her, though, was an experimental transplant using stem cells from the blood of a baby’s umbilical cord, an approach that can be used without perfectly matching blood types.