Graciela's Story

A Giving Spirit

The last tally put Graciela Diaz at 7,015 volunteer hours at Laredo Medical Center.
She’s been volunteering as a member of the Active Auxiliary to Laredo Medical Center for over 25 years.  “When I started, it was still known as the old Mercy Hospital,” she says. 

Serving as the Auxiliary’s president, Graciela once helped establish an endowment fund for Laredo Community College and has spent much of her time in Laredo offering a helping hand to others. As long as her oldest daughter Marizel can remember Graciela has been the great succor of people, “apart from her volunteer work at the hospital and at Retama South Nursing Home, she was always an unofficial volunteer driver for friends and neighbors who needed to get to doctors’ appointments or medications,” says Marizel proudly.  “She always put everybody else before herself.”

On February 28th, Graciela showed up to help at the Laredo Bucks Blood Drive.  As usual, she came to help usher the more than 250 people that would donate blood at the Laredo Entertainment Center.  “I directed them to the blood drive and gave donors refreshments,” she says looking back, “I had no idea that I would later be a recipient of blood.”

That day, Graciela was still recovering from a distressing emotional blow.  Her sister-in-law had passed away two weeks prior.  Graciela’s daughter Marizel remembers that the tragic event spurred her mother’s chest pain.  “On March 4th she finally went to the hospital,” recounts Marizel.

A day later, a cardiac catheterization revealed that she needed open heart surgery.  Four short days later, Graciela went in to the operating room for an open heart surgery.  It was then that things took a turn for the worst.  After her surgery Graciela developed coagulopathy, a bleeding disorder which led to major blood loss.  Her kidneys, liver, and brain started shutting down.  Twelve units of blood and at least four units of platelets were used that night to keep Graciela alive and more was used in the days that followed in order to minimize problems that had resulted from the blood loss. 

“The blood and platelets literally saved Mom’s life,” says Marizel thankfully, “that was a great part of what helped her.  I want people to know how valuable their blood donation is.”

Graciela is now dealing with and overcoming the physical aftermath of the almost fatal blood loss, but her giving spirit remains the same.  “I plan to go back and continue my volunteer work again,” she says.