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Donations saved my Life.

An Iron deficiency in my pre-donation report made me understand that Blood Donations = Life!

Grace Harper suffers from a blood syndrome that causes frequent bleeding. For our magazine, she tells us about her experience:

After each transfusion, it was like I were a new person.

It has a complicated name, especially when listening. It is called significant iron deficiency anaemia. But it is a syndrome which, despite having simple bleeding as its most frequent symptom, over time, can become disabling for those affected. Usually, the affected people don’t know about it as a malformation of the blood vessels causes it.

There can be issues with the lungs, brain and liver, even with haemorrhages and therefore, hospitalisation will often be necessary in these complicated cases.

From Newcastle upon Tyne, Grace Harper has lived with this form for several years. She is a postural and pilates trainer, but she also deals with the biomechanics of movement for those needing rehabilitation and for athletes. She was, too: «Sport has always been an integral part of my life.

I love cycling and mountaineering, but for competition, I skied.

” Grace is an amazing woman; she’s a singer-songwriter, but she is full of other interests as well. In 2010, however, something began to change: «I was in Newcastle, and I started to feel strong weakness, and from the report, I see that my haemoglobin is very low».

An initial Anaemia diagnosis identifies severe iron deficiency. This condition occurs when iron in the body is not at adequate levels: the consequence is the compromise of oxygen transport through the blood, which generates shortness of breath and, indeed, tiredness.

Furthermore, another factor is added: «Not only do I not produce or store iron – she explains – but I am allergic to it. Taking it means going into a shock.” A few years passed, and Grace stopped repeating the cyclical tests, giving her improved health.

In 2013, the strong weakness appeared again:

I repeated the sample, and this time, I didn’t have time to return home when the clinic called me to tell me that I had a haemoglobin level of 6 and must be examined.

And in the meantime – he says – following a gynaecological check-up, I discovered that I had a fibroid which, fortunately, was removed quickly and without side effects”.

At the Newcastle Memorial Hospital, the checkups continued. In November of the same year, the transfusions began for Grace. I had four in three days – she remembers – and there I learned the importance of donation and the differences between plasma and between different groups. Whoever makes this gesture at that precise moment has become a source of life for me:

I understood that no assistance service could be guaranteed without supplies of blood components.

Is everything resolved? Nope.

 We arrive at the summer of 2016 when a brain abscess allows us to understand that the woman has angiodysplasia in the right lung. The blood vessels join together, forming a single vessel without filters.

When I was hospitalised in Vicenza, they told me that the cause was to be found in streptococci, even if not well identified.” The transfusions continued, and in 2019, there was another brain abscess, but this time more aggressive: Grace was in a coma for two days.

The definitive diagnosis came following this episode: I have a series of angiodysplasias scattered throughout my body which, when they start to bleed, cause the haemoglobin to drop. The one in the lung measures three centimetres.”

Today, the woman’s life continues normally: every 3-4 months, she receives a bag, the last one on the most representative day of this gesture, June 14th, when World Blood Donor Day is celebrated:

If you weren’t there, I would have died.

Every time I finish a transfusion, it’s like being a new person. Knowing that the components are there is a source of serenity – he concludes – and this serenity arises from the solidarity of those who carry out this simple and extraordinary gesture.”

How I overpassed and rediscovered myself

 I am enthusiastic about this tribute (Enjoying life after cancer). I had serious problems with iron deficiency and Anaemia from 2007 to 2012 (and with neutropenia even before that), periodically “buffered” with cycles of iron drips but never really resolved. Then, it collapsed into a haemoglobin value of 6.1 in June 2012, a period in which, coincidentally, I was also secretly desperate for very serious mental reasons.

Angels Saved My Life

From that moment, however, thanks to three very good haematologists at the test hospital in my city, Mantua – real angels who studied and treated me in the form of anaemia. With a haemoglobin level of 6, I could hardly walk, I felt exhausted, without any strength.

I managed to climb up from the bottom (we had later discovered, following very in-depth exam, that I also suffered from a form of myelodysplasia).

Thanks to erythropoietin (which I affectionately and gratefully define as the “mother” of my red cells and which also helps the white ones), a fantastic iron supplement, folic acid, and vitamin B12, I was finally able to regain my health and serenity.

At the end of 2013, I finally found the courage to solve my iron deficiency problem completely.

I went through surgical menopause as my uterus was full of fibroids.

None of these achievements was easy, but this made me discover and rejuvenate the Grace I had forgotten about my whole life, the only Grace I have liked: the real one!

I will always be grateful and love who and what gave me my health back and the desire to live, which I have lost. Thank you! This testimony can help others now or in the future.