Fort Collins woman who received life-saving blood meets donors

Most blood donors remain anonymous, but over a year and a half after a medical emergency, Melinda Peterson decided to reach out to the 54 community members who helped save her life.

After experiencing pregnancy complications that resulted in a weeklong coma in March 2014, Peterson, who had been a Fort Collins resident for only about a month, said she should have died.

“Pretty much everything that was in the medical journal that should have killed me didn’t,” Peterson said. “Everybody’s just amazed with the fact that I’m alive, but without blood donations, I wouldn’t have even had that opportunity, because I needed to get transfusion pretty much right away.”

After her transfusion, Peterson began volunteering at UCHealth’s Garth Englund Blood Center, where she was inspired to contact her donors.

This process can only begin a year after a patient receives a transfusion, and it has never happened at the Blood Center, said Christina DiGiallonardo, a blood donor recruiter.

When Peterson expressed interest in meeting her donors, DiGiallonardo helped contact each one to invite them to an event so Peterson could thank them. Although only six of Peterson’s donors participated in that Nov. 17 event, 54 people stood behind her to represent all of her life-saving donors.

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“While some of them didn’t want the recognition or they didn’t want to be thanked specially by her, it was amazing to hear the emotional response, even just on the phone,” DiGiallonardo said. “I heard lots of comments like, ‘Tell her we would do it again for her in a heartbeat, but we don’t need any special recognition.’”

Peterson said several audience members also came up to her after the event and revealed themselves to be donors, despite not wanting to participate publicly. DiGiallonardo said there were also donors who wanted to meet Peterson but were unable to make it to the event, so continued meetings will be arranged.

“I was just blown away by how easy that was, because I was really nervous,” Peterson said. “It was really comfortable, really safe, and people were just really kind — that’s the kind of people that are frequent donors. They’re very giving people.”

Loveland resident Angela Wilson was one of the 54 donors, and although she said the event invitation was “way out of the blue,” she was honored to participate. Wilson has been donating blood consistently for 17 or 18 years.

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“I know [blood donation] is for a good cause … but never would I have ever imagined that someone would say, ‘Hey, I’d like to meet you,’” Wilson said.

While contacting each of Peterson’s donors, DiGiallonardo discovered that one of them happened to be a volunteer at the Blood Center alongside Peterson.

“When you donate here and your blood is staying local in the community, you can be walking around, you can be face-to-face with a person that you saved, and you wouldn’t even always know it,” DiGiallonardo said.

About blood donations

• UCHealth’s Garth Englund Blood Center needs 35 to 40 donors per day to supply Northern Colorado with blood, but many days, it doesn’t get that many.
• The Blood Center collects at two locations, 1025 Pennock Place in Fort Collins and at 2500 Rocky Mountain Ave. in Lovelandm and at blood drives on its Hero Bus.
• Donated blood is used at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland, Greeley Emergency and Surgery Center and Estes Park Medical Center.