‘Pay it back’

Katie Delderfield thinks about it when she’s walking down the street.

She wonders, Did that person donate blood for me?

She stops herself when she makes a mental criticism of a stranger’s haircut or somebody’s choice of clothing and she thinks, Maybe that person gave blood to me. Maybe that person helped save my life.

“It’s a surreal experience watching people pass on the street,” Delderfield says. “You think, ‘Wow. That could’ve been one of my donors.’”

Without blood transfusions — lots and lots of blood transfusions — Delderfield, 24, would not be here today, beginning a master’s degree program in communications at Gonzaga University.

In 2000, doctors diagnosed the West Valley High School graduate with aplastic anemia, a disease in which the body stops making enough blood cells.

She needed hundreds of transfusions (she stopped counting at 450) and, not long after her diagnosis, she received a bone marrow transplant.

Now, Delderfield wants to try to give back some of the blood she received. She has organized a “Pay it Back” blood drive to be held Friday — the sixth anniversary of her bone marrow transplant — at the Inland Northwest Blood Center and at West Valley High School.

She has been a dedicated volunteer at the blood center for years, but this is the first time she has organized a drive. Her work to raise awareness about the importance of blood donation earned her a national award in 2004 from America’s Blood Centers.

“She’s amazing,” says Brett Johnson, marketing coordinator for the Inland Northwest Blood Center. “She’s avid about going out to the community to convince them to donate on behalf of those cancer patients who are still in need.”

Delderfield was 18, just a few weeks away from heading to the University of Idaho, when she underwent elective surgery on her ear to remove scar tissue and improve her hearing.

The outpatient procedure should’ve taken an hour, but it dragged on and on.

Delderfield’s mother, Marji Evenson, learned later, from the alarmed surgeon, that they couldn’t stop her daughter’s bleeding during the operation.

“She had no platelets, but we didn’t know it,” Evenson says. “We didn’t know it, but that surgery basically saved her life.”

Specialists ordered a flurry of tests. By the time she received the diagnosis of aplastic anemia, her condition was going downhill fast.

“She was dependent upon blood transfusions,” Evenson says. “At first it was every three to four days. Then we got to the point where the transfusions were probably every 30 hours.”

But even with all of the transfusions, Delderfield’s body would not make blood on its own. The only answer was a bone marrow transplant in Seattle.

A nurse told Evenson, “Now we’re going to test all of her siblings.”

But she has just one brother.

So the nurse said, “If her brother doesn’t match, we’ll test you and your husband,” Evenson recalls.

But Evenson’s husband is Delderfield’s stepfather. Her biological father died in 1992.

Luckily, though, her brother, Jon Delderfield, was a perfect match.

She underwent nine days of chemotherapy before the transplant, to kill off her own bone marrow.

“We had our definite times of touch-and-go after the transplant,” Evenson says. “After the transplant is a very scary time.”

But the transplant worked. Delderfield slowly started to get better.

She has since needed to have her hips and knee replaced, as a result of the treatments she underwent.

The articulate, bright young woman is studying communications and leadership and hopes to become a motivational speaker.

“I know that’s a totally dorky profession to want to be in,” she says with a laugh.

Her mother suspects that whatever she does, her daughter will always work to support the efforts of blood centers since they did so much for her.

“She wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for blood donors,” Evenson says. “The last thing a parent needs to have to worry about is whether or not there’s going to be a bag of blood on the shelf for your child. … We’re just so amazed and grateful to all who donate blood. And we need more people so more moms and dads don’t have to worry.”