WYANDOTTE, Mich. – Dec. 21, 2015, started like any other day for Margaret Wojno, an operating room nurse at Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital.
“I finished the day up a little bit early," Wojno said. "I was leaving work thinking about the things I had to get ready for the holiday that was coming up, suddenly I felt this massive impact and life changed completely at that point.”
She was in a crosswalk near the hospital entrance when an SUV turned directly into her.
"The next thing I know, this vehicle is hitting you and flipping you up in the air like a folding chair, you came down and then you were under the vehicle and dragged halfway up the driveway of the entrance of the hospital," a coworker who witnessed the accident told her.
For Wojno, most of the following hours became a blur.
“I knew I was going to be transferred downtown to Henry Ford main because the injuries were extensive," she said.
Before leaving Wyandotte, she began receiving blood -- but her condition was grave.
"We started the massive transfusion protocol as soon as she arrived, and that included transfusion of packed red blood cells, platelets and plasma," said Dr. Cletus Stanton, one of the doctors involved in Wojno's care at Henry Ford Hospital's main campus.
"The anesthesiologist had told me that the first time that I was there he gave me 25 units of blood at that point," Wojno said.
Her injuries were massive. She lost her spleen, left kidney, and part of her pancreas and liver; plus she had multiple fractures, including ribs on both sides, spine, pelvis, foot, ankle and leg.
“Even as we were pushing the blood in as fast as we could, she was still losing a tremendous amount.” Stanton said.
READ: Gardner-White hosting blood drives across Metro Detroit on April 5
Wojno only knows what she was told afterward.
“I know from family members and the nursing personnel in the following days that I received up where from 100 to 112 units of blood and blood byproducts," she said. "(They) replaced my blood 10 times over practically, so there’s a point where I had no blood that was my own.”
One of the senior surgeons summed it up best to her as she was recovering.
“He said, 'You are a true miracle, and I have never given anybody as much blood as we have given you,'" she said. "He said, 'I hope to never ever have to give anybody as much blood as we had to give you.'"
The impact of the lifesaving kindness of so many strangers put a different perspective on blood donation for Wojno.
"Even when I gave blood, (I didn't) ever imagine it really doing a whole lot for somebody," she said. "You think, 'Oh, yeah, somebody needed a pint of blood.' Their donations saved my life, and why was I so lucky that they were there to give that half hour of their time to donate that blood?"