Catholic doctor fights cancer with stem cells from umbilical cords

Published: 2007-08-30

MAYWOOD, Ill. (CNS) -- About 10 years ago, Holly Becker's future appeared bright. At 24, she had just graduated from college, moved out of her parents' home and taken a job in sales and marketing. But then something went terribly wrong. She started running temperatures of 105.4 degrees and she couldn't eat. Doctors diagnosed Becker with stage 4 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The cancer had already spread to her spleen, liver and bone marrow. She spent six months undergoing chemotherapy without success. She was in desperate need of a bone-marrow transplant, but no donor was available. "I was really as bad as somebody could get," she told the Catholic Explorer, Joliet diocesan newspaper, in a telephone interview. Running out of options, she went to the Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood for an umbilical-cord-blood stem-cell transplant. "Cord blood has opened the door to curing patients who otherwise would die," Dr. Patrick Stiff, director of Loyola's Cardinal Bernardin Cancer Center, told the Catholic Explorer. "We actually have transplanted patients in whom the only other option was a hospice program." Before receiving the cord blood, Becker received full-body radiation treatments twice daily and high-dose chemotherapy to wipe out her immune system. Becker credited her family and friends for helping her through the ordeal. She said getting the cord blood was easy. "It's just like a blood transfusion," she said.

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