A blood drive in Brevard on Tuesday will help a Florida woman pay back a gift she received last Christmas: a new chance at life.
Lisa DeLaura, 60, of Stuart, Fla., thought she was a goner last Christmas Eve, when she suffered a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and woke up in a hospital intensive care unit in the most grave condition, said her daughter, Kristen Sikorsky of Hendersonville.
Sikorsky, who works for the U.S. Forest Service in the Pisgah Ranger District, rushed down to the hospital in Florida as fast as she could. “When I got there she was in the ICU… I was amazed she was alive,” Sikorsky said. “Those first few days there, nobody expected her to live. It was like seeing her for the last time every time I went to the hospital.”
DeLaura underwent three emergency surgeries to repair ruptured arteries, requiring 83 units of blood products. She pulled through “miraculously,” her daughter said.
“She said the darnedest thing to me when she woke up,” Sikorsky recalled. “She said she was glad it happened. The gift of life inspired her to better herself.”
These days, she’s almost entirely healed and is enjoying a new, healthier lifestyle in Florida, where she and her husband work on and transport yachts for a living, Sikorsky said.
The mother asked her daughter to organize a community blood drive thinking “this would help her repay the gift of her life,” Sikorsky said.
The American Red Cross blood drive will be from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, April 2, at 49 Pisgah Highway, Brevard. Their goal is to collect 40 lifesaving donations.
They’ll accept donors of all blood types and procedure types. With parental consent, teens as young as age 16 can participate, subject to health and weight critera.
Interested donors can make appointments with the American Red Cross blood donor app via RedCrossBlood.org, using the sponsor code “Pisgahforest.” Donors are encouraged to complete an online health history questionnaire ahead of time to speed up the donation process, by going to RedCrossBlood.org/RapidPass.