YORK, Pa. (WHTM) — Ebony Kennedy-Santiago had survived a lot all those years, since she was diagnosed with sickle cell anemia shortly after birth, but this time things looked more dire than ever.

“They were pretty much telling my family, ‘Say goodbye. We don’t think she’s going to recover from this,'” Kennedy-Santiago said, recounting an experience that happened 14 years ago. “and i was here at york hospital. “They gave me a blood transfusion. My body rejected it.”

And then there was no more blood for her in York — not because there was no blood, period, but because there was none that matched her very specific needs. She was airlifted to Hershey, got compatible blood and survived to tell the story and to give birth to a second child; another thing doctors doubted was that she could even have one, because sickle cell anemia — which features irregularly-shaped blood cells that can’t flow normally through the body — is hard enough on the patient’s body, never mind what’s necessary to support a pregnancy.

Now Jayani is 17 — a senior in high school, deciding where to go to college — and Somara is 5. And Ebony has her hands full with two girls, who are doing well (even if the little one is known as “sassy Somara”), plus a disease that causes injuries most of us wouldn’t get — and turns what might be a quick urgent-care visit for the rest of us into a four-day hospital stay, as happened to her earlier this month; she showed us a machine she now carries, which continuously cleans a wound she’s had for three years.

“No one has any clue what I go through on a daily basis just to stay alive,” said Ebony. Part of the challenge is what you might call a high-quality problem, but it’s still a problem: On the surface, she (like some other sickle cell patients) looks rather healthy, meaning their suffering isn’t top of mind to people who meet her.

Remember how there was blood in York during that critical moment 14 years ago but not the right kind of blood for Ebony, who guesses she has benefited from thousands of blood donors during all the transfusions she has received in her life? That could still happen.

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“One of the biggest issues we have right now is that our blood donor diversity doesn’t match the patient diversity,” said Steve LaCour, the lab supervisor at WellSpan’s blood donation center . “If we have a more diverse pool of blood donors, then it’s going to make us easier to find that blood that’s going to be a match for those special patients.”

For Ebony, that often means an African-American donor whose blood is more likely than the blood of other people to be compatible.

Still, on the other hand, more is more when it comes to other blood donations. When abc27 News visited the donation center — at 25 Monument Road, Building C, in York Township — LaCour and his staff were celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. And it turns out a blood bank has something extra-special to celebrate about the Hispanic community, because Hispanic people are extra-special blood donors: About 60% of them (compared to about 40% to 45% of the overall population) have a universal blood type most of us — albeit not Ebony — can use if we ever need a transfusion.

People who donate at the center this week can get a free t-shirt and free beef or chicken empanadas.

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