By Chris Allen, American Red Cross

People donate blood to the American Red Cross for all sorts of reasons. Some donate because a friend or relative needs blood transfusions. Some donate as part of a company-wide blood drive. Others give out of a sense of duty to help others in need. And others like the kind care Red Cross workers show, and the free snacks afterward.

After two units of blood saved her life, Ama Larson donated blood this past July as a way to pay it forward.

Ama was on a Caribbean cruise with her fiancé Alicka and Alicka’s family in March, when Ama got a severe case of sea sickness. She had been on cruises before and had mild sea sickness, but this went beyond anything she had ever experienced.

“I was throwing up so bad that I got a Mallory-Weiss tear in my esophagus,” she said. The tear is a split in the esophagus where it joins with the stomach and can result in severe internal bleeding.

The ship’s sick bay put out a call for anyone on board with Ama’s O+ blood type but then decided not to go ahead with it because the ship didn’t have the equipment to adequately test donated blood. That left Ama at sea in need of a transfusion.

The captain ordered the ship to speed to its next port, Costa Maya, where Ama and Alicka were evacuated, put on a small airplane, and flown to the international hospital in Cozumel. There, doctors managed to stop the bleeding and stabilize her, some 12 hours after the whole ordeal began.

From there Ama was flown to Ft. Lauderdale, FL, where she received two units of blood, before returning home to Springdale, Arkansas to continue recovering. The experience gave her a new insight. “I decided then that if I could donate I would. It was a very terrifying experience, but it put a lot of perspective in me. We think blood transfusions are only for very sick people or people in terrible accidents, and that’s true, but I was a healthy person, and I just got violently seasick,” Ama shared. So, in July, after double-checking the Red Cross donation policy as “I knew I couldn’t donate until I waited 90 days after the transfusion,” Ama visited a blood drive and paid it forward by donating a unit of blood. Everything went smoothly and the Red Cross workers fawned over her.

Ama is a sociology instructor at the University in Fayetteville, Arkansas and says she will be donating at the university’s blood drive moving forward. She and Alicka plan to get married in November, but their honeymoon will not be a cruise.