A toddler who was left in a vegetative state after nearly drowning in the family’s swimming pool regained consciousness after doctors infused her with stem cells derived from the cord blood her family had stored.

KMOV is reporting that Sparrow Morris of Pineville, Missouri, fell into the family swimming pool when she was just a year and half old. By the time she was found, the child had been unconscious and without oxygen for 45 minutes, which caused severe brain damage. She was left in a vegetative state and was unable to sit or speak.

Fifteen months after her injury, doctors at Duke University decided to infuse the little girl with her own cord blood stem cells as part of a trial.

“We knew the research was new and we didn’t know exactly where the science was going to take it, but it could be beneficial for Alzheimer’s, cancers and certain things like that, so we saw the value in it and banked her cord blood,” said Tonya Morris, Sparrow’s mom.

Within a day, Sparrow started to show improvement.

“We saw this difference in her,” Morris said.  “She was very energetic, very excited, and it was the first day that she had initiated conversation with us.”

One of eight children, Morris said they decided to bank Sparrow’s cord as a kind of insurance policy for the future. 

“We didn’t think we’d ever have to use (the cord blood). We just saw the value in it and decided it was money well-spent,” she said.

Cord blood costs about $3,000 to bank, then about $150 a year to store it.

“We knew that if there was some significant research done, and we had this for our children, who would highly likely — it was like 75 to 80 percent chance of matching her cord blood, a sibling’s cord blood — and we had that for them and they faced something in life, it would be there,” Morris said.

It was there for Sparrow, who is now five years old, and it saved her life.

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