The Stem Cell Issue

Does anyone else have mixed feelings with all the press about advances in stem cell developed organs? I have been reading about the woman who received a transplanted windpipe developed grown with her own cells and the earlier report on the development of heart valves for children and again and again I wish we had saved Wren's cord blood.

At the time it was a real option. We knew he had a heart problem and there had been early reports on heart attacks being treated with stem cells to restore heart function. I looked into it and received all the forms from Cord blood registry but then I decided not to. I think there were a number of reasons:

1) It is expensive. I think we were quoted $2,000 upfront and then an annual fee in the $100s.
2) The critics said that if widespread treatments became available one could receive donated cord blood from public registries.
3) The long term viability of cryogenically stored blood is unknown although widely held to be good.
4) Our cardiologist at the time said that Wren's heart condition (in utero) was not a factor in whether or not to store the blood.
5) I felt I was grasping at straws and not being realistic about the chance of it being needed.

But now I wish we had. Its not that the treatment is available right now or that the cells could not be obtained elsewhere (eg from his own bone marrow) or that they could be used. A friend told me that there are even companies that will bank your child's milk teeth when they fall out to secure the stem cells in them! Its just that having the cord blood banked would give me a good feeling, a hope that a development I had not anticipated and cannot control would come and perform a miracle. I would like to have that straw to grasp at and imagine as I lay in bed at night.

Do you think I could make Wren lose his teeth early if we needed them? Get some calipers?

Are there any other parents of kids with bodgy heart valves who are watching these developments with hope and dread? Hope that our children will qualify for a 'native' grown valve that will make all these nightmares go away and dread that we blew it by not storing blood or the technology won't be ready or tested soon enough or will take a decade for FDA approval and then we'll have to go to Spain or Japan or England and camp in the street when we get home (because we'll have sold our homes to pay for it overseas).

I think I am still feeling post-surgery anxiety and its looking for something to hang on, right?