You'd never know it by looking at her, but Jaclyn Albanese has been through more at age 19 than most people go through in a lifetime. It started with fatigue.

"I was always sick, I have, like, infections that I wouldn't get over and I kept going to doctors and one doctor told me I was a hypochondriac," said Albanese.

Tests revealed she had leukemia.

"I said, Jaclyn, do you know what, do you know what that is? You have cancer, you know. And she says, 'Dad don't worry about it, I'll just do whatever I have to do and I'll get through it,'" said Al Albanese, Jaclyn's father.

That meant multiple rounds of chemotherapy, which put the leukemia in remission, but only for a while.

"So they said, 'we're going to look for a bone marrow transplant' and they couldn't find a match for me," said Jacklyn Albanese.

What saved Albanese's life were stem cells from a placenta and umbilical cord blood. It turned out, that blood, which is normally thrown out after a baby is born, is loaded with the very cells that can replace diseased or damaged bone marrow.

"Actually the stem cells in cord blood can achieve survival rates that are at least equal - and in some circumstances, better - than with bone marrow," said Dr. Pablo Rubinstein, of the New York Blood Center.

The beauty of cord blood stem cells is that what used to be a waste product can be collected, washed and stored in liquid nitrogen freezers, waiting for someone like Albanese to need a match.

The New York Blood Center currently has about 25,000 units in storage. But a bill before Congress would allow a critical expansion of the program.

"If we can expand the inventory to about 150,000 for the whole country we will be able to provide the better matches for all members of our community in the United States. including Mexican-Americans, African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and people from the far east and Asia," said Rubinstein.