Giving Life, Receiving Life.(mother with leukemia receives life-saving blood infusion from her infant daughter)

Last year, Patrizia Durante, now 27, learned she was suffering from acute myloid leukemia when she was two-thirds of the way through her first pregnancy. She told the National Post, "It was terrifying. I was afraid for the baby. I was afraid of dying and not being there for my daughter. It was very stressful and difficult for my family."

When she did not respond to moderate doses of chemotherapy, the doctors induced labor at 26 weeks so they could crank up the dosage without hurting her baby.

On September 2, 2001, Victoria was born. Weighing three-and-a-half pounds and two months premature, baby Victoria was placed in an incubator while Mrs. Durante renewed her chemotherapy.

By March, however, Mrs. Durante was so ill that doctors at Royal Victoria Hospital in British Columbia could wait no longer for a suitable donor for a bone-marrow transplant. At that point doctors took a calculated risk.

They infused Mrs. Durante with Victoria's umbilical cord blood, which had been frozen. (According to the Post, "umbilical-cord blood is usually banked for later use by the child should it develop a life-threatening illness such as leukemia.")

While clearly Mrs. Durante's body might have rejected the blood (because Victoria's blood was only a half-match; it carried her mother's genes as well as her father's), this might work to Mrs. Durante's benefit. As Dr. Pierre Laneuville, director of hematology at the McGill University Health Centre, told the Post,

"[I]n this case, the incompatibility--that is, the genes that the baby's dad contributed -- theoretically could have been very beneficial in this transplant.... There was the possibility that the immune system of the baby may identify the leukemia as foreign and ...