Tere­sa Lan­deau-Her­bert

I am a re­peat re­cip­i­ent of blood prod­ucts. I have ben­e­fit­ted from the ser­vices of the blood bank not once, not twice but THREE times, for which I am for­ev­er thank­ful.

This is my sto­ry...

In 2006 I vis­it­ed the blood bank to do­nate blood for my moth­er who was ward­ed at the time. Af­ter be­ing screened, the nurse in­di­cat­ed that my “count was low” and if I gave blood, I could end up on a bed next to my moth­er. I was ad­vised to have this is­sue checked out, but I felt “nor­mal” and I left the blood bank and re­turned to my dai­ly rou­tine.

Fast for­ward 7 years and it was 2013 and I found my­self at the emer­gency de­part­ment. Af­ter be­ing triaged, I was asked if there was any pos­si­bil­i­ty that I could have dengue fever. This was on the back­ground of my blood count com­ing back with a low read­ing. The haemo­glo­bin was five (5). I re­quired an EMER­GENCY blood trans­fu­sion, which high­light­ed the im­por­tance of this ser­vice, and I made the first with­drawals from the blood bank.

Jump­ing ahead to 2015, I had surgery to cor­rect the cul­prit of my anaemia. I had the surgery and made my sec­ond with­draw­al.

In De­cem­ber of 2016 I found out that I was preg­nant. Al­though a hap­py oc­ca­sion, I felt a bit scared and ap­pre­hen­sive as I was in my late 30s and had my blood con­di­tion to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. I even­tu­al­ly joined the Ma­ter­ni­ty Clin­ic at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. The doc­tors, nurs­es and oth­er staff were all very car­ing, at­ten­tive, and help­ful. The cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing my de­liv­ery were dis­cussed and I had a planned C sec­tion on the 22nd of Au­gust 2017. Yes, you guessed it, I made a third with­draw­al from the bank as I had lost a lot of blood at surgery and need­ed to re­place some of it.

This is a snip­pet of how I be­came a re­cip­i­ent on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions. I can hon­est­ly say that I would not be stand­ing here to­day, shar­ing to any­one had I not re­ceived blood trans­fu­sions more than once.

My ex­pe­ri­ences helped me to un­der­stand the im­por­tance of vol­un­tary blood donors - per­sons will­ing­ly do­nat­ing in­to the pool of blood reg­u­lar­ly.

I have learnt some im­por­tant lessons along the way:

1. ↓Not every­one who wants to give blood would be able to, but you can en­cour­age oth­ers to go for screen­ing.

2. ↓The process of be­ing screened for blood can de­tect un­der­ly­ing con­di­tions like hy­per­ten­sion, di­a­betes and anaemia of which the donor is un­aware. Their de­tec­tion at screen­ing al­lows for the per­son to seek ear­ly med­ical ad­vice and in­ter­ven­tion. It can be seen as a “mi­ni-phys­i­cal”.

3. ↓One per­son’s do­na­tion can save up to three (3) lives.

4. ↓Al­tru­is­tic or vol­un­tary do­na­tion has been linked to pos­i­tive health out­comes, in­clud­ing low­er risk for de­pres­sion and longer life.

5. ↓Your blood, as a donor, is au­to­mat­i­cal­ly test­ed for in­fec­tious dis­eases like HIV, he­pati­tis B and he­pati­tis C. Once again, ear­ly de­tec­tion of these con­di­tions is im­por­tant.

I tru­ly am thank­ful for those who do­nate…you all are tru­ly life savers. I en­cour­age every­one, that can – Be­come a true Vol­un­tary Donor To­day!