<p>It was an opportunity to give more to the most ill patients battling COVID-19.</p><p>Emily Cornpropst has experienced the coronavirus crisis like few other people have. As an emergency department nurse at Franciscan Health Indianapolis, she treats the sick and ailing on a daily basis. She was diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, herself, one of the first in Indiana to get it.</p><p>Her condition never grew dire. Still, she spent three weeks recovering at home.</p><p>Now back at work, the Center Grove area resident is again providing care to patients in need. After she recovered from the virus, she had another avenue to help: donating her own blood.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery<p>"I’m one of the fortunate ones who didn’t get seriously ill and was able to survive through it, so now I’ll be helping others," she said.</p><p>Cornpropst started donating convalescent plasma in mid-April, with the hope that her blood was laden with antibodies that could help other patients fight the virus.</p><p>She plans to donate every two weeks for as long as she can.</p><p>"It was a way to make lemonade out of lemons. I felt really blessed to be able to do that, and make good out of a lot of bad that’s going on right now," she said.</p><p>For the past 10 years, she has worked as a nurse in the emergency department at the southside hospital, just across the county line. The COVID-19 crisis is like nothing she’s ever seen in her life.</p><p>Before she was diagnosed with the disease in early March, the emergency department at Franciscan Health was preparing for the expected rush of patients, but the onslaught of suspected cases had not yet materialized.</p><p>That changed after her recovery. New protocols, protections and floods of patients have pushed medical personnel to their limits.</p><p>"We’re adjusting to our new normal," she said. "But as an emergency nurse, this is what we’re here for. It’s a pandemic, and this is what we do."</p><p>Cornpropst was one of the first people in Indiana to be diagnosed with COVID-19. She started showing symptoms March 15, and at the time, only 11 confirmed cases had been reported throughout the state.</p><p>That morning, she felt fine, with no indication she was ill. She attended a meeting with the small group at her church. But by that evening, she had developed a fever.</p><p>Her fever was quickly followed by intense body aches in her legs, a small cough and then a lost sense of smell.</p><p>"It came on so fast. Sunday morning I was fine, and it just came on all at once," she said.</p><p>Because Cornpropst was one of the first in the state to be tested, it took a week for results to confirm she had COVID-19. She was quarantined at her home, staying in a separate room with no contact with her husband or two children, she recalled.</p><p>Her symptoms wavered between intense and mild, but Cornpropst was never in serious enough condition to be admitted to the hospital.</p><p>"It was the strangest virus I’ve ever had," she said.</p><p>With so much time alone, Cornpropst tried to fill her time productively. There was plenty of time spent binging shows on Netflix and surfing the internet. She didn’t want to immerse herself in television news about the coronavirus, but at the same time, she wanted to know more about how the virus worked and find medical research on it.</p><p>She was careful to not bury herself in bad news.</p><p>"I was torn about that. Of course, I wanted to know about it, medically speaking, but I feel like that’s a time when fear and anxiety can take over. So for me, my theme song was ‘Faith over fear’ during this whole thing. I was just going to have faith that the Lord would see me through this, and the whole country through this," she said.</p><p>One thing she learned during her down time was that hospitals in other parts of the U.S. were using convalescent plasma to treat some patients. The option, which has been used in the past to treat respiratory viruses, involves collecting plasma, a part of the blood, from people who have been diagnosed and recovered from the disease.</p><p>That blood may have antibodies in it that fight the virus, and it could have a positive impact when given to patients who are struggling to beat it.</p><p>Versiti Blood Center of Indiana has been helping collect that plasma locally.</p><p>"What we’re doing is trying to find people who have recently recovered, put them on a machine to collect their plasma, then allocate it into doses. Each one of those doses has the antibodies, so we can transfuse that into a patient who has an active infection, and helps them fight off that infection," Dr. Dan Waxman, vice president of transfusion medicine for Versiti Blood Center of Indiana, said recently.</p><p>Cornpropst wanted to be part of that.</p><p>After two weeks of quarantine, Cornpropst took another COVID-19 test. Her mother suffers from severe asthma, which could be devastating if she contracts the virus, so Cornpropst wanted to be absolutely certain she was healthy. She took the repeat test, and again, it came back positive. Then a third test was positive.</p><p>The infectious disease specialist at Franciscan Health Indianapolis was perplexed.</p><p>"We were sure it was going to be negative. I was shocked," she said. "My doctor said he didn’t know what to do with me, because they were planning on sending me back to work. So we made the wise decision to wait."</p><p>Finally, in early April, her doctor determined that she was almost certainly immune to the disease and no longer contagious. Cornpropst returned to work at the emergency department.</p><p>At the same time, a Franciscan Health physician approached her about donating convalescent plasma. She had not forgotten her initial interest in donating, and arrangements were made to do so at Versiti Blood Centers of Indiana.</p><p>The pre-donation process was intensive. Cornpropst had to have a negative COVID-19 test, be free of symptoms for 14 days and take an antibody test.</p><p>"It was much more thorough than I realized," she said.</p><p>Finally, on April 17, she was able to donate, she said. She plans on continuing to do so as long as her plasma is needed.</p>[sc:pullout-title pullout-title="At a glance" ][sc:pullout-text-begin]<p>Convalescent plasma donation</p><p>What: A blood-related treatment for COVID-19 that has been approved by the FDA as an Emergency Investigational New Drug</p><p>What is convalescent plasma: Plasma that has been obtained from people who have recovered from a disease and contains antibodies to the disease. Preliminary evidence suggests COVID convalescent plasma may benefit some patients with COVID-19 leading to improvement.</p><p>Who can donate: People are eligible to donate convalescent plasma if</p><p><ul><li>They have a lab-documented positive COVID-19 test and it’s been 28 days since their last symptom.</li><li>They have a lab-documented positive COVID-19 test followed by a negative COVID-19 test and it’s been 14 to 27 days since their last symptom.</li></ul></p><p>How to donate: Information for people who want to donate is on Versiti site, <a href="http://www.versiti.org/covid19plasma">www.versiti.org/covid19plasma</a>.</p>[sc:pullout-text-end]
