Metro Atlanta student grateful to be alive after receiving blood donations during shortage

ATLANTA — Ansley Booth has type O-negative blood, which is recognized as a universal donor. But Booth found herself in need of blood after being dealt a devastating blow. Six years ago, Booth faced a six-month hospital stay during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Doctor couldn’t find a reason why it happened, and it hit me like a truck at 18 years old,” Booth said. “I was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder called severe aplastic anemia. That’s when the bone marrow can’t make the red blood cells it needs to be able to cycle through your body correctly.”

Booth needed more than a dozen units of blood and platelets just to stay alive during a time when other people were competing for the finite resources. She underwent blood transfusions, received immunosuppressant therapies and even read college acceptance letters while in the hospital.

“While people were going to the hospital more and more, the blood shortage just got higher and higher,” Booth said. “Keeping me alive while I was going through all these things, through sepsis, e coli, all these things that were very scary, especially during a global pandemic when everybody was suffering. When it’s not there, when people don’t have it, lives are at stake.”

Garrett Reid, regional donor services executive with the American Red Cross of Georgia, said more than 20,000 units of blood have gone uncollected currently during what he called a national emergency blood shortage.

“We’ve not been in one in a little over two years,” Reid said. “As we came out of the holidays, we tend to see blood collections wane a little bit. When we fall short of what we want our inventory to be, we have to be able to ramp up and overcollect to build back up that blood supply.”

Reid said Georgia was in relatively better shape than other states, but encouraged people to donate blood for emergencies that could happen at any point. 

First-generation college graduate Ansley Booth is following a career path to one day work in medicine. Since her hospital release, Booth has worked as an emergency medical technician with Grady Health and a patient care tech with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Booth is also working with the Red Cross to speak to students across Metro Atlanta to pay her gratitude forward and give back to the community that saved her life.

“There are people who can’t do anything,” Booth said. “It’s a privilege to be able to work, to be able to do the things that you love and may take for granted. “There’s not a week that goes by where I’m not thinking about the people I’ll never meet who were selfless enough to donate and to give blood to help people they don’t know.”