Hi, we’re the Yankoviches from northern New Jersey,
and we just want to discuss
how we arrived at banking the cord blood
for our children; we have three of them.
After doing research, I realized that
there are a lot of benefits to this, and
the benefits far outweigh the cost.
My next step was to determine which
cord blood company to bank with,
which one what I thought offered the most benefits
for my children, for their future.
After that, it was really a slam dunk to choose
Cryo-Cell and to choose them for my
daughter Courtney, and it was really easy to sign up,
and they were very helpful with giving me information,
and never looked back since.
We obviously had more children
after that, and it wasn’t a question
of who I was going to bank it with;
just when I was going to make the phone call;
how far along my wife went in order to get
the kit sent over so that we could be prepared
in case she should get into labor early.
From there, I looked at it more
of life insurance; you hope to never use it,
but you’re glad you have it when you need it.
And we actually needed it at one point
with our second child, Rebecca.
We noticed something early with her
that she wasn’t developing as quickly, and
there were some delays, and we went
to various different doctors. Basically, in the end,
she was diagnosed with apraxia,
and the recommendation to treat that was therapy
This wasn’t on the list of one of the curable diseases,
and I just wanted to know, maybe
there is a chance cord blood could help us,
so I just contacted Cryo-Cell,
and to my surprise, it was
something that was treatable; it was
something that another family had used;
it just wasn’t listed. They were very
helpful to get me to the right facility,
to the right doctor. We actually ended up
going to Duke, which is one of the best
children’s hospitals in the USA, and
everything worked out great from there.
It is now a year after the second dose,
a year and a half after the first,
and we’re seeing tremendous improvement.
The first time we infused her,
it was just small things
like buckling her seat belt,
making a little more eye contact.
The second infusion, she just exploded with language.
No, to re-state what my wife had said,
literally her vocabulary was limited
to 10 words, maybe 20 words at tops,
and even those 10, 20 words …
You had to pump her to say them, and they weren’t full words
The second infusion just boosted her
to, like, actually complete the word.
Complete a sentence. Thanks, daddy.
Rebecca, do you want to play outside?
Yeah, let’s go outside.
Spell your name. R-e-b-e-c-c-a. I love you!
Her vocabulary increased.Now it’s, like,
the vocabulary’s, like … a couple of hundred words.
Her expressive language has also blossomed.
She would always play independently by herself.
She now plays so nicely with other kids.
It brings a lot of joy in our hearts to see this big change in her.
A lot of people have said to me, Oh my gosh,
Rebecca has made so much change
over the course of a year. What did you do?
So I tell them, and they are like,
Oh my goodness, this is amazing!
You infused her with the stem cells,
and she’s made so much progress with just everything.
She’s like a totally different kid.
It’s amazing to see. You’re like, Is this the same child?
Did you bring me a stunt double or something?
‘Cause this is not the same Rebecca I saw a year ago.
Looking back, the best thing
we probably ever could have done
for our unborn child is this.
Cryo-Cell had me ready to bank it once they’re born
because it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
to bank it for them, and
you don’t get a second chance.
If you have to sacrifice something to get to it,
I think it's worth the sacrifice.