And then one morning, after some inconvenient but unalarming bouts of fatigue – what her and her husband chalked up to the typical sleep-deprived adjustment of motherhood – Kris woke up and was able to move her eyelids but little else. She couldn’t get out of bed and couldn’t move her extremities.
“I could not scrunch my cheeks into my eyes,” Kris said. “I couldn’t squint.”
For all intents and purposes, she was paralyzed.
Kris was able to communicate to Tom by her side that something was wrong, and he carried her out of bed and rushed her to the hospital.
After an unnerving couple of days of tests in the hospital, doctors diagnosed Kris with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks healthy nerve cells.
“Your nerve cells just kind of stop producing what they need to produce, and your body attacks itself,” Kris said. “My brain wasn’t sending the neurons to the rest of my limbs to tell them what to do.”
Kris got to the hospital just in time. Any longer and it could have spread to her lungs and resulted in death.
The exact cause of Guillain-Barré syndrome is unknown, but it can be triggered by an infection or surgery. In Kris’ case, doctors believe it was jumpstarted by her C-section.
To treat GBS, Kris was given intravenous immunoglobulin, a transfusion where antibodies from healthy donors are injected directly into the bloodstream to suppress the immune system’s attack on the nerves.
The IVIG treatments are not a cure, and a full recovery is not guaranteed. Kris and her husband were told to consider moving from a two-story house to a one-story because of potential long-term immobility.
Fortunately, after months of physical therapy, Kris made a full recovery within a year. It was a painstaking process to rebuild the strength to do basic things like hold a fork, take the dog for a walk or get up a few stairs, but the IVIG treatments allowed her to be a mother again to their baby – and that took thousands of blood donors to do so.
The antibodies needed for a single IVIG treatment are procured from the plasma of literally thousands of donors.
“They stopped it with that medicine,” Kris said. “Without the donors, honestly, I wouldn’t be here. My husband would have been raising our baby by himself.”
Now 51 years old with two kids, Kris is a consistent blood donor and a chairperson for the Kentucky Blood Center drives at Pax Christi Catholic Church in Lexington. She is motivated by the simplicity of donation – “It just takes an hour of your time,” she says – to have a major impact.
“Life turns itself upside down,” Kris said. “I was a blood donor before all this, but when you start thinking about the young kids who are going through leukemia treatments and need blood, or even a woman at our church who was fighting cancer and needed surgery and required blood, it changes your perspective.”
As much as donating is about saving lives, Kris believes it’s about giving the gift of time.
“Eventually we’re all going to get something,” Kris said. “In a lot of cases, blood transfusions can extend your life and extend your time with loved ones.”
Kris’ message to those who hear her story is one of gratitude and action. She hopes others will understand that she too once felt young and invincible, but she is now a living example that life can change in the blink of an eye, and that the generosity of others is so important to the health of so many.
“You don’t know when you or your mom or your dad is going to be the recipient,” Kris said. “What you do know is that you can at least help someone who needs it now. My challenge to others is to think of the greater good. God forbid something ever happens to you, but pay it forward without feeling like you’re going to be owed. It’s the right thing to do.”
