Ask anyone who knows Susan Hoskinson, longtime staff member with the American Red Cross Central & Southern Ohio Region, and they’ll describe her as the kind of person who brings a wave of positive energy into any room she enters.  When she was feeling lethargic for days on end, she knew something was wrong.

“I went to the doctor, and he told me I was anemic. We started treatment and I went on with my life,” Hoskinson said of that initial meeting with her doctor. She returned to work and tried to get back to normal, but that lethargic feeling never fully went away. Sometime later she returned for more testing.

“I had blood drawn that day at 4 p.m. and my doctor called me at 6:30 p.m. telling me to get to the hospital immediately because I needed a transfusion,” Hoskinson recalls. “I went in the next morning at 7 a.m. to start the transfusion.”

In her role with the Red Cross Susan specializes in business operations, a vague term for the glue that keeps the operation rolling. Whenever someone, from any line of service, has a question there’s a good chance Susan has the answer. She often works in tandem with Kurt Anders, chief operating officer for the region, so when she texted Anders that morning as she went in for the transfusion it wasn’t out of the ordinary, but the conversation was anything but routine.

“I told Kurt that I wasn’t coming into the office that day, but I was kind of doing Red Cross stuff and texted him a picture of me getting the transfusion.” As she looked up during the transfusion, she saw the Red Cross logo on the bag. “I told the nurses doing the procedure that I worked for the Red Cross and they said ‘oh so you know exactly how this works’ but it was the first time I’d been on this side of the operation. It was interesting to see it from the other side.”

Three months later and Susan’s levels were back to where they were before the transfusion, so she returned for another one and some more testing. “I got an ultrasound on Thursday afternoon and was told that my doctor would reach out Monday to discuss the results since they weren’t in the office on Friday. Bright and early Friday morning the doctor’s office assistant calls and tells me that my doctor wants me in for surgery at 8 a.m. Monday. I needed a complete hysterectomy.”

Susan had multiple pounds of fibroid tumors consuming most of the blood in her body, leaving her in a weakened state. Since she was not at immediate risk of death, she was able to postpone the surgery for two weeks, allowing her to get things lined up and covered during her medical leave, projected to be six to eight weeks. During that two-week delay Hoskinson needed another transfusion to keep her going, and after that delay Susan finally went in for surgery.

“The surgery, for the most part, went fine,” Hoskinson recalls being told after the procedure. “Two surgeons were in there having to maneuver around because of how the tumors had embedded in me. It was an extensive surgery, and after it was done, I needed another transfusion, my fourth one overall, but I’m happy to say that since that day I’ve felt great!”

The tumors were tested and thankfully none were cancerous, a fear the doctors had as they had grown larger between the ultrasound and the surgery.

Hoskinson looks back now with a deeper appreciation for the work her and her colleagues do on a daily basis. “I’m here today because of the blood on the shelves those days I needed it,” Hoskinson concludes.  “If it wasn’t for a donor that I've never met rolling up their sleeve and saying we have no idea who Susan Hoskinson is but we're going to give her something that her body can't do on our own right now, I wouldn’t be here.”