Blood Donation

Cara is my neighbor and my best friend I ever had. Cara was in hospital for her delivery. During her Caesarean section delivery, she had to have an emergency hysterectomy. She was awake the whole time and never panicked, even when her husband Erik was asked to leave the room." Cara also was suffering from gestational diabetes and liver dysfunction, and began to bleed uncontrollably during the operation. "When they let Erik back into the operating room, her blood on the floor was almost touching the walls of the room". "In all, she lost 10 pints of blood by the end of that first night--and the average amount of blood in your entire body is 11 units." Fortunately, Cara was delivering at Hennepin County Medical Center, which has a trauma unit and high-risk obstetrics unit. "Erik said that if she had been at a smaller hospital, they would not have been able to keep up with her needs." Cara delivered a baby and the baby is doing fine and her name was Thea.

While the experience was intense and the recovery extremely difficult, Cara has recovered completely and now has a passion about donating blood. Cara gratefully says, "Donated blood saved me and now I know that we all have the ability to give other people that same chance."

"You hear stories about people being organ donors, giving their heart or other organs after they die,". "But what I have to say is, 'You don't have to die to give blood.

How many of you here thought about blood donation? Only 35% of eligible Americans donate.

Why are so many of us not giving blood? Are we scared of needles or simply we never thought about it? But if all people are thinking in the same way we would have lost Cara and her little daughter would not have seen her mom any more.

As I said before human body carries an average of 10 to 12 pints of blood, and the pint you donate will replace it self within 24 hours. The actual blood donation part takes about 10 minutes and the rest of your hour is spent during registration taking personal information, health records, etc...And the sting of the needle only lasts a second.

Statistics said 6 out of 10 people are eligible for giving blood and the fact is, every two seconds, someone in America needs blood-some patients need regular transfusions to survive... some are going through surgery, and some come in from accident.

A year later, When Cara celebrated her daughter Thea's first birthday; Cara shared her story with her friends and asked them to offer a particularly meaningful present. she received so much blood when she needed it--11 units in one night alone "So for Thea's birthday, she thought she would give back by signing up 20 people and having a blood mobile come to her house to collect blood, to give back what she had received."

None of us are doctors and none