Louisville Woman Writing Her Own Story Thanks to Blood Donors
April 24, 2025
Diagnosed at 5 years old with a vascular condition so rare that it has no official name, Celia Mikel’s body is in a constant state of blood loss.
In her early years, Celia was considered medically complex with anemia and other chronic conditions. In 2006, however, her life was turned upside down when Celia fell ill with what turned out to be a major bleed.
After receiving blood transfusions just to stay alive, a scope of her gastrointestinal tract revealed the real problem: The blood vessels in Celia’s small and large intestines – conservatively, in the thousands – were malformed. Frail and fragile, Celia’s blood vessels are consistently bursting and bleeding, leading to internal bleeds both big and small that will require attention and treatment for the rest of her life.
Celia recalls very little of the initial trauma because she was nearly unconscious, but her mother, TyiaLynn Scott, remembers the life-altering diagnosis like it was yesterday. Doctors at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital sat TyiaLynn down in a conference room and delivered a grim reality: Three other people on record had the same condition as Celia, and life expectancy for the limited example cases wasn’t long (there are now six documented people).
“They said, ‘Well, there was a woman who lived to be 30 years old, but she didn’t have it as severely as what Celia does,’ ” TyiaLynn said. “I just felt this huge weight coming on my shoulders like, I’m going to outlive my child. That’s what you’re telling me.”
TyiaLynn didn’t know if Celia would even survive the night.
“All night long, I would go into her room and pull back the covers and check to see if she bled out,” TyiaLynn said. “I would check her heart rate because if her heart rate is high, that’s an indication that her blood is low. Is she bleeding out or is her heart rate just high because she is dreaming? I could not rest.”
Celia requires blood as often as every two to three weeks. If she’s lucky and her blood-clotting medications are working she may stretch it to one to two months, but Celia must constantly self-monitor for telltale signs of a major bleed – headaches, abdominal pain, nausea, loss of color – around the clock.
The frequency of tests and transfusions might make one numb to the routineness of Celia’s experience, but the reality is that Celia’s life is fragile, and the availability of blood is critical to her.
“It is a regular lifesaving act because I can bleed so quickly,” Celia said. “I’ve had times where I’ve lost like a third of the blood in my body within a couple hours.”
There have been several close calls in Celia’s life. In addition to the near-fatal incident that led to the initial diagnosis, Celia remembers a class field trip to Washington D.C. where she collapsed on a park bench and had to be rushed to the emergency room.
The severity of her bleeds has gotten worse with age because of the growth of her blood vessels. The bigger they are, the bigger the bleeds. Case in point: Just a few weeks after sharing her story with Kentucky Blood Center, Celia had a major internal bleed that put her in the hospital for five days and required six blood transfusions.
The ever-present reality that just one bad situation – a major bleed, the inability to get to a hospital quickly or even the lack of availability of blood, which has impacted Celia in the past – is something Celia and her mom have had to live with.
“Seeing where she’s at, it took me years to get to this point, but I just see each day as a gift that she’s alive because we don’t know how many days we have with her,” TyiaLynn said. “Releasing that and surrendering that and just accepting that each day is a gift helps you appreciate her life even more.”
It’s why, when Celia came to her mother and proposed the idea of moving to Cincinnati to go to college, TyiaLynn acquiesced. Reading was something Celia did to pass the time during her hospital visits growing up, so the desire to pursue that passion at a liberal arts school while gaining independence was understandable.
“She inspires me to not let whatever’s hard in your life get in your way,” TyiaLynn said. “Celia shifts your perspective. When I think about the things that are hard in my life, it’s nothing compared to what she goes through, and so she inspires me to keep pressing on no matter how hard it is to keep being kind. In the midst of really difficult trials, she has endured pain that most people will never even understand or know, and she still does tit with a smile on her face and a kindness in her heart.”
To know what she’s gone through and to know where she aspires to go – Celia wants to go into publishing – makes the blood donation process seem like such a small ask.
“Donation, it can be a little scary, a little stressful, and I definitely understand not liking needles,” Celia said. “No one loves them. I don’t like them, and I have to get them every single week. But I think it’s definitely a thing where it’s like, this is just such an amazing thing to do for other people that, if you’re able to take a minute, take a breath, look at your schedule, figure out even if you just have one day in your month that you could spend 45 minutes to an hour and go donate some blood, I would encourage you to do it.”
The decision to donate blood not only keeps people like Celia alive, “it is allowing me to pursue my dreams,” she said.
