‘Passing the life raft.’ Recovered med student donates plasma to critical COVID-19 patients
The last time we checked in with Anna Grace Downs, she was leaving the Baptist Health Lexington hospital after a harrowing few weeks battling COVID-19. The 26-year-old University of Louisville fourth year medical student spent more than a week in the ICU. She was about to be put on a respirator when she started getting better.
Three weeks later, Downs walked into the Kentucky Blood Center to give a donation of her plasma to help other COVID-19 patients. Doctors hope the antibodies in the plasma of recovered patients could help critically ill patients fight the disease, which attacks the immune system with bewildering speed.
Mark Dougherty, the head of infectious disease at Baptist and Downs’ doctor, asked Downs to donate, and she didn’t hesitate.
“When I chose to be a doctor, the goal is to help others,” she said before she was hooked up to give the plasma. “It feels like this is the natural next step, passing the life raft to the next person who needs it.
“It helps me make sense of my suffering in a way.”
While she was in the ICU, Downs found out that she had “matched,” at a residency in Internal Medicine/Pediatrics at Ohio State University Medical Center and Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. She went home to her childhood home for the last bit of recovery, which she described as slow with “a lot of fatigue and weakness,” but no fever and increased oxygenation. Every day, she’s felt better.
“My parents have been waiting on me hand and foot,” she laughed.
But there’s no doubt, she said, that her illness will make her a better doctor.
“We’re always seeing patients and trying to be empathetic, but we still tend to reduce it down to the patient’s diagnosis, instead of thinking about their nausea or making sure they sleep better,” she said. “Now I know the feeling of that vulnerability, and it will give me more empathy for that patient in the ICU and their families.”
Dougherty’s team at UK first used the plasma treatment on two critically ill patients at Baptist, who made some improvements. The doctors are reluctant to say the plasma is the cure, but they are joining a consortium of hospitals that will continue to use plasma and research the results. The Kentucky Blood Center is hoping to get enough plasma from recovered patients to start a plasma bank that can be used by hospitals all over Kentucky.
Downs is the fifth plasma donor at the Blood Center. Plasma donors have to either have a negative test and no symptoms for two weeks or be symptom-free for 28 days, said spokeswoman Mandy Brajuha. The first cases only started showing up in Kentucky in March, so she expects more donors soon.
When Downs first went to the hospital, Kentucky had only about 100 cases of COVID-19; as of Tuesday, there were 2,000 cases, of which 100 people have died.
Downs sat for 45 minutes on Tuesday with yet another needle in her arm as the machine separated out her plasma from her blood. She understands that people are tired of quarantine, especially as Kentucky appears to be “flattening the curve.”
“But please stay home,” she said. “Because this is real, it’s pretty bad and I don’t want anyone else to get it.”
This story was originally published April 14, 2020 at 4:41 PM with the headline "‘Passing the life raft.’ Recovered med student donates plasma to critical COVID-19 patients."
