Hero of the Week #1

Welcome to my brand new meme, Hero of the Week. First things first, here are the rules:

1. Grab the image above, and save it to your own blog or web space.
2. Create a blog post nominating your hero of the week.
3. The Hero of the Week can be anyone, from someone you know, to someone you've heard/read about, who you think is worthy of hero status. As I'm all for loose interpretation, your hero can be a group of people, not just an individual. It can be a company, organization, etc. It can even be an animal who you feel has done something heroic.
4. Please include the above image, and a link to this blog, in your entry.
5. Come back here and leave me a comment to let me know you're participating.
6. Visit others!

Okay, with the rules out of the way, I'd like to nominate Dr. Malcolm Coulthard and Nurse Jean Crosier as my heroes of the week. Based at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary, Dr. Coulthard and Nurse Crosier didn't just go the extra mile to save the life of a young patient - you could say they went the extra light year.

Their newborn patient, Millie Kelly, was born with a condition called gastroschisis. Her bowels had developed outside her body. She needed an emergency operation to correct the problem. Sadly, Millie went into kidney failure during surgery. Weighing just a smidgen over 6lb, there wasn't a dialysis machine available anywhere that was small enough for her. She was too tiny even for machines designed for children. Millie's mum, Rebecca, was told her baby would probably die.

However, Dr. Coulthard and Nurse Crosier weren't prepared to let this happen. What did they do? Well, they designed a tiny kidney dialysis machine, then put it together in their own time, outside the hospital. Little Millie was hooked up to the dialysis machine for a week, which gave her kidneys enough time to recover from the trauma of surgery. Millie is now a normal, happy, healthy two-year-old. Isn't that amazing? You can read more about the whole story here.

That's my Hero of the Week award nomination for this week? What's yours? I really hope you'll play along. I shall sulk if you don't :).

World's smallest snake found

I've just come across an interesting article on the BBC News Science/Nature page, about the discovery of the world's smallest snake species. Dr Blair Hedges, a biologist at Penn State University, US, turned over a rock on the Caribbean island of Barbados, and found the 10 cm (4 inch) snake, underneath. The snake is as thin as a spaghetti noodle, and is thought to be the smallest size to which a snake can evolve. You can read more about Dr. Hedges' fascinating discovery here (opens in new window).

Not exactly a scary anaconda, eh?

C'elle - Women Power

I've recently been reading up on stem cell therapy, and I've made some amazing discoveries. Current clinical applications mainly involve umbilical and placental stem cells. Treatments have been beneficial to patients suffering a wide range of diseases, for example Alzheimer's, autism, MS, diabetes, arthritis, systemic lupus and heart disease. I've highlighted these particular diseases for a reason. I suffer from arthritis myself, and members of my family, and some of my friends, have suffered/are suffering from the other conditions.

I believe stem cell therapy may have greatly benefited my late father. He died of coronary heart disease at the age of just 41. That's way too young for anyone to die. Although his diet, weight and tobacco-smoking probably played a part in his death, his own father died at just 40 from the same condition. My grandfather was a non-smoker of normal weight. Several successive generations on my father's side of the family have been affected by hereditary heart disease, mainly the men. It's a great shame my father passed away two or three decades before stem cell therapy was discovered. I truly believe this innovative therapy could have helped save his life.

I know some people consider stem cell therapy controversial. But what if I told you that recent clinical research has discovered menstrual blood to be a potential source of the type of stem cells currently used in clinical therapies? C'elle menstrual stem cells are not yet used for clinical purposes. But researchers have been excited to discover that menstrual stem cells have very similar properties to stem cells currently used successfully to treat a wide range of diseases, including the ones listed above. Potentially, menstrual stem cell therapy could bring hope to millions of people around the world, who are affected by a whole host of diseases. Menstrual stem cells could be harvested and stored for many years, and could potentially be used to treat diseases in the donor and maybe even close family members. To find out more about the ailments currently eased by stem cell therapies, read up About the Science.

You may also like to check out a C'elle Client Testimonial. C'elle is also running a special "Caring is Sharing" promotion at the moment, where you can get two C'elle enrollments for the price of one. Would you like to save lives? Or perhaps you'd like to give yourself the best potential chance of surviving future illness? If so, I'd strongly urge you to click one of the links above, to find out more. Here's what a C'elle kit looks like.