GREELEY — While lying in bed during a 50-day stay at North Colorado Medical Center, Andrea Linn thought about the nurses caring for her, about her family living without her and about the several hundred blood donors in Greeley, Denver and beyond who helped keep her alive.
“I was just so humbled to hear that 642 people stepped up for me,” Linn said Tuesday during a thank-you celebration at the hospital for some of the 234 local donors. “An army of absolute strangers saved me, and because of them, I can see my son and daughter grow up.”
Linn also thanked the nurses who threw 6-year-old son Jacob’s birthday party at the hospital, where she was treated for a rare blood disorder from late July to September.
And she acknowledged the doctors, volunteers and administrators at the North Colorado Blood Donor Center, which became her emotional and physical lifeline during her fight.
“Because you saved my life, you impacted so many other people,” said Linn, 36. “There are a lot of lives out there you have touched.”
Like a lot of harried moms, Linn didn’t want to concede something was wrong with her in late July.
“I just didn’t have time to be sick,” she said.
But when she began suffering from a shortness of breath and felt tingling in her fingers, Linn decided to get medical attention.
At North Colorado Medical Center, doctors learned Linn suffers from hemolytic uremic syndrome, which causes blood clots to form in small vessels throughout her body. The disorder was causing her kidneys to shut down.
She quickly underwent dialysis and one of several plasma exchanges. Over the course of her treatment at the hospital, her body rejected some of the donated plasma, and she required blood transfusions, Linn said.
Her days were a grueling routine of four-hour plasma exchanges and four-hour dialysis treatments every other day. She became so exhausted that she needed a walker to make short trips down the hallway.
“But I was never alone,” Linn said. Husband Mark, Jacob and 9-year-old daughter Larissa were with her, as were her parents and in-laws, friends and other family members.
The donation center, meanwhile, was trying to keep up with Linn’s bodily demands as well as those of other patients at the hospital, said donor recruitment coordinator Andrea Hawkins.
In a typical month, the hospital collects about 726 units of blood. So far this year, about 7,900 units have been donated.
“There was no way we could keep up with the demand from her,” Hawkins said.
The hospital supplemented 234 units of fresh frozen plasma and 11 units of whole blood supplied by North Colorado Medical Center donors with donations from the Bonfils Blood Center in Denver. In all, Linn received 642 units of plasma and blood, Hawkins said.
Adults typically have 11 to 12 units of blood in their bodies.
During Tuesday’s ceremony, Linn shook hands with nearly all of the 88 donors in attendance, including Tom Lee, 73, who started donating blood more than 35 years ago.
“A friend at work convinced me to go to the hospital and give blood, and I thought, ‘What the heck.’ It was the right thing to do,” Lee said, who started giving blood every 60 days.
Only a bout with prostate cancer from 2002 to 2007 stopped him from donating.
“I never really thought about it, but I guess I do help people,” Lee said. “That’s nice to think about.”
Monte Whaley: 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com
Want to donate?
Basic requirements for donating blood:
Age: At least 18, or 16 with written consent from a parent or a guardian
Weight: At least 110 pounds
Health: Good, with no history of hepatitis or HIV/AIDS
Maximum frequency: Every 56 days
Where to donate: To find a donation loca- tion or a blood drive, go online to .
