A Walking Blood Bank

       Many of the surgeries performed on board can cause some blood loss and therefore blood transfusions are necessary, as is normal in all hospitals. What is not normal however is the means of obtaining blood for transfusions. In most hospitals there would be a large supply of banked blood coming from numerous donors around the city, with pretesting and typing done long before getting to the hospital. Here we rely on crew members to sign up to donate their blood (and so we so lovingly call them our walking blood bank). As a lab tech on board I do the pre-screening blood collection and testing, posting of notes on peoples doors requesting them to come in and give, collection of units, testing of units and finally delivery of the unit to the operating room.
        It is very encouraging to see crew members willing to give not only their time and money to be here, but also the blood flowing through their veins. Without it the surgeons would not be able to do a number of the life-saving surgeries. Sometimes, if the patient is a B type, finding blood can be difficult as Africans have a higher percentage of type B blood compared to any where else in the world. During my time here we had a specific need for this type in one of the big cases and ended up having to overhead page people to come and be tested. There was a line-up outside our door for an hour of people who before had maybe been a little hesitant to donate (that needle is not small!) now wanting to know their blood type to see if they could help.

Bringing my blood to the OR.

       As many of you know I am also not a fan of needles and have never donated blood before. After trying to recruit all my friends to donate I realized that I should probably donate as well. So in January I filled out my form and had my pre-testing done. After poking countless other crew members I ended up on the other side of the needle today to give my blood. It really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. And about 10 minutes after donating I brought my own blood to the OR to be given to a patient in surgery. Yet another interesting experience unique to Mercy Ships.