Second of all, I had an entry half-written that I was going to fill out with a few more horror stories from today; one of those Reader Beware type of things that those of you non-nurse folk might wish you hadn't read. Stories like how we had to whip out a pair of scissors and cut into a lady's neck while she just sat there and tried to breathe. How the other lady wouldn't stop bleeding after surgery and I couldn't for the life of me get in contact with the surgeons. And how that one man's heart tracings showed that he was probably having a heart attack while he sat in bed and chatted to his neighbor. I was going to tell you all about how the past two shifts have been kind of stressful, and you would have felt so sorry for me and then we could all go on with our lives.
Instead, I get to tell you about something much cooler.
I think I've mentioned before about our floating blood bank here on the Africa Mercy. If someone around here needs a transfusion, the crew member with the right blood type is called down to the hospital, the blood is taken and then given directly to the patient. None of those fancy refrigerators for us, thank you! It was during the screening process to be a donor last year that I found out I had hepatitis, but since I've had almost a year's worth of clean labs, I'm back on the list now.
I was in charge down in A and B Wards this evening when the lab tech handed me a slip of paper with Abiba's results. Hemoglobin: 6.9. This was way lower than her previous result, so I paged the doctor, got orders for a transfusion, and thought no more of it until I brought the order form to the lab and saw a gleam in the tech's eye. You're A-Pos, right?
At which point I remembered that, yes, this woman and I share a blood type. And, yes, I'm the next one on the list to donate.
So I went back to the wards, tied up a few loose ends, drank a glass of water and told them I'd be back. Naomi, the lab tech, propped me up on a bed in the empty ICU, and before I knew it, the fourteen gague needle was in my arm and the bag was filling up. We chatted while I bled, and when it was finished she signed the blood over to me to deliver to the patient. I brought the bag, still warm in my hands, to B Ward and checked it with Abiba's nurse. If you click on the photo and make it bigger, you'll see that my name appears on that form no less than three times. That's got to be some kind of record.
I grabbed blood tubing and a bag of saline and primed the line before hanging it above Abiba's bed. It's something I've probably done close to a hundred times before, but this time it was so different. I stood there for a little while, mesmerized by the sight of the dark, red liquid dripping slowly into her arm. She was resting quietly, and when she opened her eyes, I pointed to the bag and then to the bandage in the crook of my own arm. She smiled slowly and then made a small motion with her free hand, as if she was knocking on a table. It's goodWe all talk about pouring our blood, sweat and tears into our patients.
Now I've actually done it.
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