News

Dec 2013   It's hard for me to remember exactly what was going on inside my head almost four years ago when I first saw an advertisement for cord blood banking. That was three children and a lifetime ago. I was a different person. I wasn't a mother yet. I had never nursed, budgeted for child care, disciplined a child of my own, bought kid's apps for my iPhone, or gone days (Weeks? Months? Years?) without a good night's rest. Nevertheless, cord blood banking advertising is designed to elicit a visceral reaction in parents-to-be, and it still has that effect on me now even after all the time and effort I have invested in educating myself on the subject. People are irrational and emotional, especially when dealing with fear, money, or children. Cord blood banking involves all three of these!

Dec 2013   Cords4LifeUK was founded in memory of a British toddler named Charlie Harris - Beard. In April 2011 at the age of 11 months, Charlie was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML), and within the next four months he went through four intensive cycles of chemotherapy to suppress his blood cancer. But AML cannot be cured without a stem cell transplant, and unless he could find a matching donor, Charlie was given only three months to live.

Dec 2013   I did not set out to write a novel about cord blood. I stumbled upon the idea in an unlikely place - a book club, where I'd been invited to speak about my first novel, HOME REPAIR. I mentioned that I'd been thinking about my second novel, a much darker novel than the first one, more complicated. In fact, I told the group, I'd been thinking about it for 30 years. But I was stuck on a plot point.