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Giving Plasma

Crystal

“Plasma treatments allowed me the opportunity to take care of my children again.” Quote from Crystal, a plasma donation recipient.

Before my plasma treatments, I was disabled. I was partially paralyzed and couldn’t walk, feed myself, or even brush my hair.

Within months, I went from healthy to totally disabled

I was just going about my life as a wife and football mom until, one day, I started experiencing numbness and tingling in my feet. I thought the discomfort and pain were from a new pair of shoes. Soon, I began to feel excruciating pain all over my body. I had chronic fatigue, too, which left me so exhausted I felt like someone had let all the air out of me.

Within just six months, I went from being totally independent to not being able to feed, bathe, or dress myself. I had to give up my job as a cosmetologist, which I loved, and my parents needed to move in to take care of me and my two children. I went from doctor to doctor to find out what was wrong and endured test after test.

I was told I’d be a vegetable

I was finally diagnosed with two neuromuscular autoimmune conditions—chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) and myasthenia gravis. There is no cure for either of them, only treatments, and doctors told me I would never walk again and would be a vegetable for the rest of my life. I was devastated.

Plasma treatments were my lifeline

It’s been four years since I was diagnosed. I am no longer totally disabled and I’m healing naturally. I am so grateful for the intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) plasma. With no cure for my condition, it was my only lifeline. Without plasma, I don’t know what I would have done. And although I no longer need it, there was a shortage recently that caused fear in everyone in my community who depends on plasma. I’m so grateful that people donate plasma because we really, really need it.

Crystal practicing yoga.

“If plasma treatments were not an option for me, I don’t know what I would’ve done because there’s no cure for the diagnosis that I have. Receiving plasma treatments was, to me hope...I had a chance of a normal life again.”

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