"Michelle Wallace to the lab, Michelle Wallace to the lab." I was just getting up from some chatting and games in mid-ships to head to bed last Wednesday evening when I hear myself being summoned to the lab over the loud speaker. And so to a chorus of clapping and cheers I head down a couple decks to the lab to donate my blood. A patient who had been in surgery for about ten hours with a neurofibroma and had depleted our small supply of O+ blood needed another unit and I was the lucky donor. So my fellow lab tech did the honours of collecting, for her first time since she had been in Guinea, while I walked her through it (and a lovely job she did).
This past week saw a couple of large surgery cases. We were scrambling to keep up with our blood supply for the OR. As soon as we would collect a unit it would be requested for a patient. Due to not having the 6-8 units of B+ blood (which is hard to come by on the ship) requested for a surgery scheduled on Thursday the OR had to postpone the surgery until the next day. And after a long day full of collecting many generous donors we had enough blood to go ahead with the surgery. So it was a busy week down in the lab, a little bit stressful too but in a good way. And it's very encouraging to see all of the people (especially so many who are afraid of needles but were willing to put their fear aside) willing to donate their blood. Because there can be no "Oh someone else will if I don't" mentality when there is such a limited supply of people to donate. So to all those reading, both on the ship and at home in their own country, go be a blood donor! You can save a life!
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