The story of Lisa
I would like to share my story of my two boys. Jake is 10 and Tyler is 7. Both of my boys were born with a condition called severe combined immune deficiency also known as ‘the bubble boy disease’. Jake my oldest son was diagnosed at the age of six months old. We are from Connecticut and there is no treatment for his condition in our home state so we transferred to Duke university and he had a bone marrow transplant with me as the donor at seven months old. When I was pregnant with my second son Tyler we had a 50/50 chance that he was going to be born with the same condition. So we decided to have Tyler born at Duke University as well. When Tyler was born they tested his blood to see if he had the condition and unfortunately he also had the condition. He was transplanted with bone marrow from me again at 16 days old. Both of my children’s bone marrow transplants were successful and my boys are thriving. They do need to have immunoglobulins given intravenously (IVIG) or subcutaneously (SCIG) every two weeks, but besides that they are doing very well.