PORTLAND, Maine — Karen McWatters knows firsthand the importance of blood donations. The Greater Portland native was near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon when the first of two explosives detonated.
“[Rescuers] said at the site I almost bled out right there,” she recalled. “Lying on the sidewalk, it just looked like my foot was broken and I had a bit of a hole in my leg.”
She couldn’t see that the back side of her left leg was blown out, blood pouring out of her body so fast it almost killed her. When she regained full consciousness days later in the hospital after several surgeries, doctors told her they ultimately weren’t able to save her leg.
On Thursday, McWatters joined city officials, business sponsors and public safety personnel at the Red Cross Blood Center off Forest Avenue in Portland to raise awareness for the need for blood donations.
Her public appearance comes as the trial for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 21, one of two Chechen brothers accused of planting the marathon bombs responsible for killing three people and injuring 260 others, will soon get underway.
The other suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was later shot by police in a Boston suburb after a multi-day manhunt and ultimately died in the hospital.
The trial, at which McWatters said she will have to testify, has shifted public attention back to the nearly 2-year-old attack.
“It weighs on all of us,” she said. “It’s going to be hard to relive what happened, as we’re just starting to put our lives back together and move on.”
Part of moving on from that experience for McWatters has been advocating for causes important to her, such as blood drives.
“It was the first time for me that I needed a lot of blood — I needed platelets,” she recalled of the bombing. “There were a lot of people that day who needed a lot of blood. So many people’s lives were saved because of the blood that had been donated previously.”
Timothy Nangle of the Portland Fire Department said that even on an average day, patients in northern New England need about 700 units of donated blood each day.
“We do respond to a lot of trauma,” said Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce at the Thursday morning news conference at the blood center. “We all can’t live without a certain amount of blood in our bodies, and that’s something law enforcement, emergency responders and doctors in hospitals can’t come up with. You [blood donors] are the angels, because you’re saving up that much-needed blood that everyone takes for granted, but is so essential.”
Portland City Councilor Ed Suslovic said at the event he’s been donating blood regularly since 1977, and 16 years ago, donated bone marrow to aid a sick 10-year-old who needed it.
“We roll up our sleeves and we save lives,” he said. “When you give blood or platelets, that’s what you do — you save lives.”
Also in attendance at the news conference were Red Cross of Northern New England Blood Services CEO Michael Kempesty and Silvio Mazzella, chairman of the American Red Cross board and a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise owner. Dunkin’ Donuts has partnered with the Red Cross in Maine for eight years to encourage blood donations, and it is offering $5 gift cards this month to anyone who donates blood through the organization.
A similar event is scheduled to kick off at 10 a.m. Friday at the Red Cross Blood Donor Center on Hammond Street in Bangor. Kempesty and Mazzella are scheduled to be joined at that event by Amy Eyles, a bilateral lung transplant recipient who benefitted from blood donations, and Toni Ouelette-Dupuis, tissue and transfusion manager at St. Joseph Hospital.
