Woman’s transplant story inspires blood donation awareness
By Tiffany Tarpley
Click here for updates on this story
ELYRIA, Ohio (WEWS) — January is National Blood Donor Month. According to the American Red Cross, “only about 3% of age-eligible people donate blood yearly.” But those who do can be the difference between life and death.
Medina County wife, mother and farmer, Courtney Miller, shared her story with News 5’s Tiffany Tarpley to promote blood donor awareness. “If it helps one person then it’s worth it to me,” she said. “You never know who you’re going to be able to help.”
The now 32-year-old was diagnosed with autoimmune liver disease in 2014. Years later, Miller is grateful to have received a liver transplant thanks to a living donor, Kyle.
“In [2023], I was told that instead of one day you’ll have a transplant; you will not get out of your 30s without a liver transplant,” she said.
Discovering the potential for a match happened by chance. At the time, Kyle was dating Courtney’s friend (now fiancée) Brooke. They were at the opening day of the Lorain County Fair when Kyle noticed a mobile blood drive.
“We were walking around and he goes, my friend goes, ‘You know I don’t even know what my blood type is,’ so he walks up to the Vitalant blood mobile, and he asks, ‘Will you guys blood type me?’ They say, ‘Absolutely,’” said Miller.
He gave blood, and hours later, they found out Kyle was a match for her blood type. He went through additional screening.
“They even go through and see, do his veins and his ducts line up with where mine would be in the liver? It’s quite the extensive process that someone went through for me,” she said.
The liver regenerates, so Kyle was able to donate part of his in order to help Courtney. She spent 52 days in the hospital after the transplant in November 2024 and went through several procedures.
“One of my procedures ended up nicking something so it caused me to lose a lot of blood,” she said. Courtney needed two blood transfusions.
“There’s hope in what you’re going through and there’s light at the end of the tunnel because there was definitely dark days in my recovery,” she said.
She’s doing well today, a one-year transplant survivor.
“There was definitely points where I prayed hard, I thought hard, let me be there for my babies, let me be there for my husband,” she said.
Vitalant is one of the nation’s largest blood and bio-therapy health care organizations. There are three fixed locations in Northeast Ohio, but there are often mobile blood drives, too.
“There’s no substitute for human blood, making each donation that more vital,” said communications manager for Vitalant, Maya Santana.“We see some of the sharpest declines in the donor turnout throughout the holidays.”
Santana said that’s because of unpredictable weather, as well as winter viruses. “We’re urging donors who are healthy and eligible to give, to offset the decrease in donors coming out because of those conditions,” Santana said.
Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.