SIERRA VISTA — Every two seconds, says the American Red Cross, someone in the United States needs blood.
Eighteen months ago, one of those people was Lindsey Roberts.
Roberts suffered a serious pregnancy condition when her daughter, Laney, was born on Oct. 8, 2013. She lost consciousness as the doctors wheeled her into the operating room, where she received four units of whole blood to help save her life.
Lindsey Roberts, left, listens to donation procedures during a blood drive at Cochise College on April 8. Roberts’ mother, Michele Bowmaster, is holding Roberts’ daughter, Laney, in the background.
On Wednesday afternoon, the blood she donated at Cochise College was one of the 15.7 million donations collected each year by the Red Cross to serve local and national needs.
“I wish I could find the people that donated so I could thank them personally,” she said. “Knowing I can save up to three people’s lives with one donation today, I just want to give back and say thank you.”
A year and a half prior to Roberts’ first ever blood donation, her husband was at boot camp at Fort Jackson, S.C., when she went into labor. Her birth partner accompanied her to the hospital in Tucson, where she had an uncomplicated, natural delivery. But right after Laney was born and Roberts held her in her arms, she knew something was wrong. Roberts was hemorrhaging. Later, she would learn it was because the placenta did not come loose.
During pregnancy, the placenta is supposed to attach to the uterine wall. But when it attaches too deeply, it becomes a condition known as placenta accreta, placenta increta, or placenta percreta, “depending on the severity and deepens of the placenta attachment,” according to the American Pregnancy Association’s website. Placenta accreta is the most common and least severe; it occurs when the placenta “attaches too deep in the uterine wall but it does not penetrate the uterine muscle.” The other two types occur when the placenta attaches much deeper in the muscle or penetrates the muscle wall and attaches to another organ.
Lindsey Roberts and her daughter, Laney, on the Cochise College Sierra Vista Campus.
Although placenta accreta can be detected through an ultrasound, Roberts did not have any of the risk factors associated with it. She knows she was fortunate in the operating room: she survived. Roberts eventually did stop bleeding and doctors did not have to perform a hysterectomy. There is video footage of Roberts holding Laney after she came out of surgery, but Roberts doesn’t remember it. The fog cleared up about 12 hours after Laney’s birth, and their lives as mother and daughter began without further complication.
Nine weeks later, Roberts packed the car and drove with Laney 13 hours for their first visit with Roberts’ husband and Laney’s father, Dylan, in San Antonio, where he was sent for AIT school. Today, the family lives near Fort Campbell, Ky., and Roberts is active within the Hope for Accreta Foundation as the organization’s representative in Nashville, Tenn.
“I want to help bring as much awareness as I can to the condition,” she said. “Right now, it’s a paragraph on a page in a medical book and a lot of doctors haven’t seen it. I want to build awareness so more mothers can be saved and more doctors know what to do when they get a case like mine.”
The foundation is celebrating Accreta Awareness Month throughout April with a 30 Day Accreta Awareness Challenge. Part of Roberts’ participation was giving blood, and she wanted to donate in Arizona, where it saved her life. The Red Cross, which collects about 40 percent of the nation’s blood supply, aims to make sure local hospital needs for blood are met first before sending blood to hospitals across the United States.
It was especially fitting that she donated in her hometown of Sierra Vista, where she graduated from Buena High School in 2005 and her mother still lives part time, and at Cochise College, where she earned her nursing prerequisites before transferring them to Eastern Arizona College to finish up her degree. After graduating, she worked for Cochise College in the counseling office as a graduation assistant, and then as a medical assistant for an office in Sierra Vista.
Her latest job, though, might be her most favorite. Roberts is a proud full-time mom, making it her business to donate blood every eight weeks.
“People don’t really think to give blood until it affects them,” she said. “But you never know. My blood could be saving the life of the person who saved mine.”
For more information about placenta accreta, visit www.hopeforaccreta.org.
Blood drives are held at the Cochise College Sierra Vista Campus once each semester, hosted by the college’s nursing program. For more information about blood drives on campus, contact CNA program coordinator Teresa Hagen-Hale at (520) 515-5471.