{"id":1248,"date":"2014-09-08T10:00:27","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T10:00:27","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2016-05-09T15:10:46","modified_gmt":"2016-05-09T15:10:46","slug":"real-life-stories-casey-turner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cells4life.com\/us\/2014\/09\/real-life-stories-casey-turner\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Life Stories – Casey Turner"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Amanda Turner* shares the story of her daughter Casey\u2019s cancer diagnosis and how Cells4Life have given Amanda\u2019s unborn baby the chance to be Casey\u2019s life-saver.<\/h2>\n
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\"Cells4LifeCasey Turner is a typical 12 year old girl; she loves animals and being with her friends. \u00a0Casey loves horses and has rescued many animals, giving them a fresh start in life. She\u2019s kind, thoughtful and encourages everyone to try their best to achieve their dreams. \u00a0But now it is Casey who needs help for a fresh start. Casey was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia<\/a>, blood cancer; a devastating blow to her family.<\/p>\n

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Amanda, Casey\u2019s mum, recalls the moment she found out Casey had childhood cancer<\/a>: \u201cWhen we found out she was very ill it broke our hearts. I was so scared and I didn’t know if my baby girl was going to die, I didn’t know what to do. It has to be the worst day of all our lives!\u201d<\/p>\n

Amanda is currently pregnant and had donated the umbilical cord blood from some of her previous births, so when a friend mentioned that Amanda could store the cord blood of the baby she was carrying for Casey\u2019s benefit, she decided to find out more and requested a Welcome Pack<\/a> from Cells4Life.<\/p>\n

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\"Cells4LifeDetermined to give her child the best chance possible, Amanda began fundraising with the help of a close family friend. \u00a0 The money was to be used for expenses that Casey would incur through treatment and to cover the cost of storing her baby\u2019s cord blood.\u00a0Amanda was impressed with the possibilities that Cells4Life could provide when storing cord blood, not only could storing her unborn baby\u2019s cord blood be used as a possible stem cell match for Casey but it could also be used to give her access to regenerative medicine should chemotherapy take its toll on Casey\u2019s body.<\/p>\n

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Casey\u2019s story was picked up by local news and when Cells4Life heard about this, we decided to make contact with the family. \u00a0\u201cWhen Cells4Life offered the service free of charge to help us, I was taken back. \u00a0The kindness was so fantastic and it took so much stress off us,\u201d Amanda said.<\/p>\n

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Reflecting on donating the cord blood<\/a> of her other children,\"Cells4Life Amanda expresses\u00a0disappointment at not being made aware of all the options available to her. \u201cI did donate my children’s cord blood years ago because I did not know about storing it in a family bank, the NHS only gave information on donating it and don\u2019t give you information about regenerative medicine. \u00a0I think more information should be made available to people to let them make their own choice as to what they do with their baby’s cord blood. If I had not been lucky enough to have another baby, I would have been upset at the possibility I had I lost because of the lack of information that was provided to me. \u00a0I’m glad I have this chance and I have done what I wanted to do now I know the options available.\u201d \u00a0However, Amanda supports cord blood donation and doesn\u2019t regret her decision to donate the cord blood from her previous births: \u201cit is also good to donate cord blood as it helps many people all over the world. \u00a0I did donate with my other children and then I was happy to do so. \u00a0It was nice to know it can help people.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Cells4Life<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe day you find out a child of yours is very ill like Casey; you never understand how your world crashes down. \u00a0I never thought along the lines that it would happen to us and now for the future I want to make sure I cover all the possibilities that anything can be used to help any of my children for the future as you never know what is waiting around the corner!\u201d \u00a0For now, Amanda can look to the future with the knowledge Casey’s sibling\u2019s cord blood<\/a> could secure the long-term health of Casey: \u201cshe is a loving and kind child and when better, can get back to enjoying what she loves!\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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*Names have been changed at the request of the family for confidentiality, pictures posed by models.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amanda Turner* shares the story of her daughter Casey\u2019s cancer diagnosis and how Cells4Life have given Amanda\u2019s unborn baby the chance to be Casey\u2019s life-saver. Casey Turner is a typical 12 year old girl; she loves animals and being with her friends. \u00a0Casey loves horses and has rescued many animals, giving them a fresh start […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cells4life.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cells4life.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cells4life.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cells4life.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cells4life.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cells4life.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cells4life.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cells4life.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cells4life.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cells4life.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}