I Needed A Blood Transfusion (#6)

The blood clots had been removed and I thought everything was fine.

Boy was I wrong.

I just kept on losing blood. When the doctor finally came in to tell me I had to get a transfusion I could see the concern on his face; and when your doctor looks concerned you know you should be very afraid.

A friendly nurse came in and hooked me up to a machine. She was there for about 15 minutes and she couldn’t get the machine to work. On the outside I remained calm but on the inside I was panicking. I knew I only had a little time left on earth unless they gave me the blood quickly. My doctor had ordered the blood transfusion right away and here was this nurse that couldn’t get the machine to work. And the worst thing was… she was nice. This made it impossible for me to show her my anger.

I didn’t say a word the entire time she was fidgeting with the machine. Thoughts were racing through my head uncontrollably. Was this my punishment for getting pregnant at 16? Who was going to raise my son? Would he have a terrible life because he didn’t have a mother? Would another girl raise my baby? Who was going to protect him and teach him everything he needed to know about life? I was good while I was pregnant. I didn’t smoke, drink, do drugs…I even went to the gym. Why was this happening to me?

She left the room and a new nurse came in to give it a try. She worked on it for about 10 minutes and while she was there she cursed a few times (if that wasn’t a dead give away that things were bad, I don’t know what was). She looked at me apologetically and explained that the connector was broken and that there weren’t anymore. I was furious, why would they only have one connector in the entire hospital? There I was hemorrhaging to death and I knew it would probably be a heart attack that would kill me first. Tears started streaming down my face and I was shaky all over. I just wanted to close my eyes and rest but I couldn’t. What if I didn’t wake up?

A third nurse came in and it took her less than three minutes to hook up the machine (I resorted to counting the minutes to try and calm myself down).It turned out the other nurses hadn’t hooked one up before and they were doing it wrong. I started crying even more. This nurse had just saved my life.

The I.V. was taped to the top of my right hand. It hurt when they put it in so I clenched my teeth and closed my eyes. When the blood first went into my vein it hurt. It felt like a cold bee sting. After a few seconds my whole arm stung but I didn’t say a word. I wanted that blood in my veins and nothing was going to stop it.

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