Unfortunately, shortages of available blood may affect your ability to receive blood at the correct time, thereby endangering your life.
More than 70 percent of people alive today will need blood at some point in their life.
So even though Ben's blood counts are normal, he has not recently travelled to a foreign country and he is not an IV drug user, the fact that he is gay automatically excludes Ben from any current or future donation of blood. That's because Ben is gay and has sexual relations with his partner of 15 years. The family, especially Ben, was enthusiastic about doing so.īut Ben, despite his age, health and willingness, is prohibited from donating blood. Their donations would help replenish the supply that had been used by Barbara and other patients who experience serious health crises. However, she appeared to be improving.Īs part of my job, I spoke with Ben and his family about the possibility of donating blood. Over the next few days, she needed many additional blood transfusions, thereby decreasing the already low community supply of blood on reserve.
When Barbara finally emerged from the operating room, she was taken to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) with a tube into her lungs to aid her breathing, multiple intravenous medications to stabilize her blood pressure and heart rate, and numerous drains to quickly detect any further internal bleeding. During those 14 hours, Barbara received 18 units of blood and multiple units of other blood products to replace the critical fluids she had lost. Ben was there when his mother lost consciousness and large amounts of blood before being rushed to the hospital, where a surgical team fought more than 14 hours to save her life. In my job as an ICU nurse practitioner, I recently met Ben, a 35-year-old, physically active, healthy male whose mother Barbara was recently hospitalized after suffering an aortic aneurysm rupture.