Headlines

Blood recipient thanks those who saved her

By Kelly Hawes
The Daily News

Published March 3, 2006

GALVESTON — Lauren Ward Larsen literally owes her life to blood donors.

“The only thing keeping me alive were the transfusions,” she recalled during an appearance in Galveston on Tuesday. “And every last drop was coming from people I likely would never have the chance to thank.”

The occasion was the fourth annual Star of Life awards luncheon sponsored by the blood bank at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. The event at the Moody Gardens Hotel and Convention Center was aimed at recognizing the people who organize community blood drives.

“Don’t ever think that what you’re doing doesn’t make a difference,” Larsen told the audience.

Every year, she said, donors provide blood to save the lives of people they will never meet.

“On behalf of 5 million of us every year, I want to deliver my deepest, heart-felt thank you,” she said.

Larsen was a healthy 37-year-old woman who was pregnant with her first child. The pregnancy had been uneventful — no morning sickness, no scary test results, little stress.

But less than four weeks from her due date, her husband, Jeff, got a nagging feeling that he should go home and check on her.

“I’ll never forget his words,” she recalled. “He said, ‘Honey, you look worse than usual.’”

Hours later, physicians delivered their daughter through an emergency Caesarean section.

“We watched the doctors bring her out completely blue and lifeless,” Larsen said.

Larsen turned to her husband and uttered the last comprehensible words she would speak for two weeks: “Stay with the baby, honey. I’ll be fine.”

That night, Larsen’s body shut down. Her blood pressure dropped precipitously as blood seeped uncontrollably into her abdomen.

Her liver and kidneys failed, and she slipped in and out of consciousness for a week, then suffered a seizure that sent her into a brief coma.

After regaining consciousness, Larsen suffered from hallucinations as a result of the toxins that had traveled to her brain.

“Those hallucinations ranged from hilarious to horrific,” she recalled.

And the pain was so severe she was willing to die to gain relief from it.

Finally, after six weeks in the intensive care unit, Larsen went home. She still had a long road ahead.

“For example, I had to learn to walk again,” she said.

Larsen decided pretty quickly that she wanted to do something to say thanks for the blood donations that had saved her life. She vowed to run the New York City Marathon, and just 18 months after leaving the hospital, she and her husband did just that.

“I’d like to tell you that we finished in the top 20,” she said, and after the crowd dutifully applauded, she added, “but that would be a lie.”

She finished 22,756th.

“We crossed the finish line after all the grandstands had been disassembled,” she said. “The timekeeper was packing up to go home.”

Still, she’s certain she felt the same pride the winner had felt 41?2 hours earlier, she said, and she had also managed to raise $40,000 and 535 units of blood for the nation’s blood supply.

Since then, Larsen has become a spokeswoman for the nation’s blood centers, traveling the country with funding provided by Johnson and Johnson. Her message everywhere is the same: Blood donations can literally be the difference between life and death.

“More than 1,000 people have needed a blood transfusion since I started speaking to you here today,” she said. “That translates to one patient every two seconds.”

Roughly 60 percent of the population is eligible to donate blood, she said, but fewer than 5 percent of eligible donors actually take the time to do it.

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The University of Texas Medical Branch blood bank is in Room 1.210 at the John Sealy Annex. Hours are 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. weekdays. For information, call (409) 772-4861 or (866) 437-6423.