blood drive

Practitioners who are new to Haiti often ask about the blood supply; more specifically, if there is a supply. The answer is kind of, sort of, it's complicated.  Today was a perfect example.

We had a news crew show up at the hospital, and in the middle of "show and tell with Sanjay Gupta," the CNO came into logistics asking about our blood types.  A patient was just admitted who would die tonight if she didn't get blood.  When someone needs blood down here, the first thing we do is ask family to donate (if there is family).  If they're willing to donate, we type their blood to see if they match.  If they're not a match, or if the patient has no family, we look to our staff/volunteers to see if anyone is a possible donor.  No one who knew their type was a match, so those of us who haven't been typed yet (or couldn't remember our type) headed off to the lab to find out if we were a match.

It's a fairly simple procedure to be typed; lance the finger, a few drops of blood in each reservoir, add the chemicals, and spin around.  Jen, our PR person from Miami, ended up being a perfect match.  She hates needles, and it was clear that even being typed was a little out of her comfort zone.  But as she put it, a persons life literally depends on her donating - how can you say no?  I handed her a package of pop-tarts from my uuber-secret-stash on her way to donate...  It's not like the Red Cross back home where you get cookies and punch...

Of course, the work is not done once you find a match. Turns out today we had bags for blood donation without the chemical-anti-coagulants to add to the blood to make it useable...  So a new game begins...  Calling Big Paul from MMRC to see if he can locate some, or maybe we can sweet talk the Haitian Red Cross out of some.  Then there's the excitement of a trip to Hospital General to do the actual donation, and praying that #1, they don't loose the blood you've just donated, and #2, that you make it back in time to get the blood to the patient while it can still do some good (have I mentioned that traffic SUCKS in Port au Prince?).  In this case, the Gods were smiling on us.

Later on I caught up with our heroic donor, and she told me about meeting the girl whose life she saved, and how her eyes had lit up when the translator explained what was happening.  In her own words:

"After all the anxiety I went through---The cool thing-- I got to meet the patient. 'Mesi anpil,' she said. She grabbed my hand and pulled it to her chest. She was weak, but her smile and her eyes said more thanks than her words. It is something I will never forget. I know that my one donation may just buy her some more time. I hope that someone else is able to donate so she has enough blood until her medical problem is corrected. Just seeing that little bit of hope in her eyes meant so much to me."

In the states, we donate blood all the time, but it's more of a karmic donation...  We all give, so those who need it have access to it, and the idea is that should we ever need blood, it's there for us...  I can only imagine what it must have felt like to have that connection with a patient...  Although, I suspect, at some point I will know exactly what it feels like; at some point I'll be the match, and hoping there are still some pop-tarts left in the stash...
 

~PJ