Teen Beats the Odds, Touts Blood Donors
Literally in the blink of an eye, her life changed. It happened on a drizzly night in Olympia in January 2002. In seconds, Monique Dugaw went from an athletic and pretty 17-year-old with a bright future to a mere highway statistic with a broken body and a face he mother could barely recognize.

Rescue workers thought she was dead. At times during the ensuing months, she wished so, too.

But her indomitable spirit and tenacity ultimately saw her through a long, painful rehabilitation and recovery.

Early on, Puget Sound Blood Center played a role.

Transfusions Saved Her
“Am I going to die? Am I going to die?”

Along with her name, that question was all Dugaw could utter when the Griffin and McLane fire departments first arrived on the accident scene. But it was enough to let the crews know she was alive.

“I was slumped over the wheel, conscious but not very responsive,” she remembers. One fireman protected her with a blanket while his cohorts spent an hour cutting through the twisted metal that encased her.

Dugaw’s car had crossed U.S. 101 and smashed into a tree minutes after she left a friend’s house for her parents’ home nearby. She had not been drinking (“My father would kill me!”), and phoned ahead to her mother. The always-disciplined Dugaw would have beat her midnight curfew by 15 minutes, she though.

But it had been a long day of skiing and she was tired. Her eyelids fell slowly.

The wet, windy weather was so bad that two medical evacuation attempts had to be aborted and the Capital High School junior was loaded into an ambulance, where paramedics placed weights on her legs to hold them in place. Her femurs – the large leg bones running from knee to hip – had been broken and telescoped upward.

Her pelvis also had been broken, as had her tailbone, right ankle and right middle finger. Her right elbow had been dislocated and shattered, a lung puncture and internal organs damaged.

She also suffered head trauma, bleeding in the brain and multiple facial lacerations. “I lost more than half of my blood from the injuries,” she says.

Once at Providence St. Peter Hospital, blood transfusions began and her condition stabilized. “That saved me,” she says. “I wouldn’t be here today if people hadn’t donated to Puget Sound Blood Center, because the Blood Center supplies the hospital.”

She still had a long ordeal ahead of her, however.

A Different Perspective
Dugaw’s parents arrived at the hospital at 6a.m. Her mother had returned to bed assuming that her daughter’s late call soon would be followed by her safe arrival. Then Barbara Dugaw received the grim news from the hospital. “’Critical condition’ is not a term a mother wants to hear describing her child,” she would later say.

But it was true. “Mom threw up when she saw the gash in my head,” says Dugaw.

She was transferred to Harborview Medical Center, where reconstructive surgery was performed immediately on her left cheekbone and forehead. She also had surgery on both legs; to hold them together, doctors inserted metal rods and secured them with screws in her hips and knees – permanently.

She was in the intersive care unit for a week, fed through a tube. After a month at Harborview, she spent another month at St. Peter for rehabilitation. Her body was coming back, but her mental state was not doing as well.

“My parents were advised to put me in a nursing home! I was 17!” They took her home instead. “I was in pain and depressed for months,” she remembers. “I couldn’t walk – not even to the bathroom. After having been physically and socially active, it was really difficult. My life had always been so precise and planned… then to almost die and have to state my whole life over… I was having a hard time.

Whiht her parents support, though, she planned her recovery. And by May, she returned to school.

Despite residual short-term memory loss, she made up all of her studies and immersed herself in school life. “I was getting myself back on track,” she says.

But things were different now.

“It was pretty sad. I was no longer known for being involve din leadership, being a cheerleader and on the soccer team – I was known only for the accident now, not my accomplishments. I had to rebuild my identity.”

Ironically, the accident accelerated that effort.

“High school kids are always worrying about tests and boyfriends and girlfriends. I was struggling with pain and putting my life back together.

“My perspective had changed,” says Dugaw. “I was forced to grow up quickly.”

Champion
When Tori Fairhurst, a Blood Center donor group recruiter, showed a video about blood donation at Capital High, Dugaw was inspired. She told Fairhurst her story.

“I felt better after talking to Tori,” said Dugaw. Then last fall, Fairhurst lined up local schools for Dugaw to address and later, some blood donor groups.

The teen enjoyed speaking. “I spoke at a Blood Center outreach and the people were in tears. It made them understand how valuable their blood donations were. I said, ‘Oh my gosh! This really means something. I can help people.’ And I’m helping myself, too, just talking about it.”

She continues to champion the Blood Center not only to local groups, but also in a KRXY 94.5 FM radio commercial. Soon she will be featured in a Blood Center video (editor’s note: the video clip you can watch on this web page is from the video mentioned in this article).

As a result of her advocacy, her post-accident confidence has soared. She resumed skiing, became Capital High’s Lake Fair Princess, is involved in the school’s leadership scholarships and in the fall will attend Washington State University with an eye toward a career in broadcasting.

“I’ve finally gotten my life back together,” she says. “And Puget Sound Blood Center has helped me do it. Not just from the nearly six units of blood I received – but emotionally.

“Being able to share my story has allowed me to continue recovering.”