{"id":328894,"date":"2026-07-03T23:41:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T23:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/328894\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T23:41:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T23:41:12","slug":"south-florida-teen-urgently-needs-rare-lifesaving-blood-match-as-she-battles-painful-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/328894\/","title":{"rendered":"South Florida teen urgently needs rare, lifesaving blood match as she battles painful disease"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">HOLLYWOOD, Fla. \u2014 A South Florida teen battling an aggressive illness is waiting on a lifesaving blood donation requiring a rare match.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Life now for Gigi Felix is day in and day out at Joe DiMaggio Children\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cI just feel like I\u2019m a part of the family here,\u201d Felix said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">It wasn\u2019t always like this.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cI was a pretty active kid,\u201d Felix said. \u201cI was in a bunch of different things like chorus, karate, piano.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">But the now-18-year-old says she can\u2019t do those things anymore.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cThe older, I got the more complications I got,\u201d Felix said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The complications came from sickle cell disease, an aggressive form of the inherited blood disorder, leaving her in constant pain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cThe best way I can describe it is a bunch of wooden splinters and like, under your skin, flowing throughout your body,\u201d Felix said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">A cure is just within reach. Her older brother, a perfect match, has already agreed to donate his bone marrow.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cThat\u2019s the one thing that he\u2019s doing for me that\u2019s going to save my life and I\u2019m very grateful for him,\u201d Felix said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">But the only thing keeping her from this lifesaving procedure is a lack of compatible blood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cShe has had multiple transfusions over the course of her life and anybody who has a lot of transfusions ends up building antibodies to red blood cells and she has so many antibodies to red blood cells that finding compatible blood for her is very challenging,\u201d Susan Forbes, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oneblood.org\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.oneblood.org\/\">of OneBlood<\/a>, said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Doctors performing the transplant need 50 units of blood on hand and that blood needs to be a very specific type in order to work in Felix\u2019s body. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The nonprofit blood bank OneBlood is calling for African American donors, or donors of African descent. They must also have the O-negative blood type. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">For perspective, only 7% of the population even has O-negative blood. Statistically, only 1 in 1,000 individuals of African descent will be a blood match.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cOnly about 4% of African-Americans are donating blood, yet they are the people most likely to be a match for a sickle cell patient,\u201d Forbes said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cI have a bunch of friends with sickle cell who have it way worse than me and we all are in this together,\u201d Felix said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">For now, Felix is imagining life after her transplant, doing the things sickle cell has kept her from doing, like going to college and spending time with friends and maybe going somewhere cold.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cI want to go to Canada. I want to go. I don\u2019t know, just somewhere cold to see snow, because that\u2019s a really big trigger for me, the cold weather,\u201d Felix said.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-article-body__copyright\">Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOLLYWOOD, Fla. \u2014 A South Florida teen battling an aggressive illness is waiting on a lifesaving blood donation&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-328894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}