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Blood.

It is our life force.  It is a clever fluid that carries oxygen to our cells.  It takes our every breath, to every part of our bodies.  And then it lets us breathe out again.  In.  And out.  In.  And out.   And repeat.

Without it our cells would be gasping, asphyxiated.

And we would die.

Blood.

It looks alarming when we see it outside the precious tubes of our arterial network.  It is so bright, so vivid, and so shiny that it almost seems to have a life all of its own.  If you look at a drop of blood closely it seems somehow thick with vibrancy and hope.  A crimson lustre, full of promise and potential.

It scarlet-shouts at us: lookatme lookatme lookatme.  Full of its own importance, for it knows: without it, we would die.

Blood.

Most of us don’t think much about it.

From time to time some of it may leak out of us, in scratches and cuts and scrapes, and we wipe it efficiently away- red blots on white tissues- and discard it without a mind, for we know our clever bodies will make more and more and more.  And repeat as required.

For without it, we would die.

But sometimes people can lose more than they can make.

And sometimes, some bodies have diseases that break down the blood too quickly.

And some other people, through no fault nor folly of their own, make thousands and thousands of the ruby red discs, but those bloody little frisbees are left wanting: wrong shape, fuzzy edges or missing some parts, so the intelligence of the body sends them to the liver.  For termination.

And yet, without these biconcave saucers: they will die.

This child is one of those.

Thankfully, she doesn’t need your blood this week, but one day soon, she will.

Please, roll up your sleeve, and share some of your carmine elixir of life.  You’ll make some more, I promise.  In fact, you’ll do it without even knowing.

She, however, simply can not.

Blood stores are at a critically low level at present, so you will be hearing me parp on about this all week.

Please call 139596 to make an appointment, or visit the Red Cross Website to find a location, check your eligibility, or share this information with your friends.  

Not everyone CAN donate, so those of us who are able to, have the ability to SAVE A LIFE… I think that’s a super-power.

…Thanks and Love, From The Ashers xx

Today was transfusion day.

My Girl

By the time you read this it will all be over, and my girl, will be tucked up tight in bed, dreaming of who knows what.  She usually stirs quite a bit, this night.  If sleep is the subconscious downloading, then I guess she has loads to down.

When she was a bub, we would have fractious nights in the lead up to a transfusion, but the night after was always the worst for me.  Leaving the hospital that night was always wonderful.  I’d sink into the seat of the car, Coco all bundled into her capsule, and I’d just sit.  I would bask.  In the relief and the relief and the relief.  There was no other time in my month-or-so quite like it.  In that car, at that moment, we were as far away from the next transfusion as we could possibly be.  Every second from then on moved us closer to the next one.  So I would bask.  I would waste some of those precious moments, allowing the soothing to trickle over me, knowing that the night ahead would be long and strange.  That she would wake and cry and stir and wake.  She would need feed on top of feed to try and rehydrate after the mid-transfusion diuretic.  Nappies soaking.  Mind churning.

Things are easier now of course.  We have grown used to the process, and the procedures.  She told me today that if she looks at the cannula before it goes in she feels “all funny in her tummy” and that even though she can’t feel the blood actually going in, it hurts if we move the tubing too much.  These are things I haven’t known before.  So perhaps it will get easier still.

She has a good memory, my girl.  She recalls all the parts of these two days.

On the first day we get the blood taken for cross-matching, and she remembers the time her skin got pinched and drawn into the tourniquet and had to be pulled out.  She remembers the time blood went spurting everywhere.  And she remembers all the times, like yesterday, when it takes one or two or three attempts to get that sample out.  So sometimes she might cry when it doesn’t seem necessary.  Because she remembers well.

On the second day we receive the blood.  We present to the hospital and we wait until hand-over is done and rounds are completed and then, at last, it is our turn.  She is on edge until then, my girl.  She knows what is coming, and that no amount of playing in the little park, or watching the fish in their tank will blunt that feeling of foreboding, or the feeling of that needle piecing the plump baby flesh, just near her dimpled knuckles.

She remembers well, my girl, so she tells the doctor that her right hand is the best one for puncture.  “This vein, right here”,  she says, tracing the blue feint on the dorsum of her hand.  They hear but don’t listen, so the left hand is tried first.  Then back to the right.  Usually she starts crying at a reasonable volume, well before they take the first stab.  I lie on top of her, and hold her arm firm at the shoulder, to make sure she doesn’t move, but she never does.  Even as an infant, when they wanted to wrap her up like a cat in case of writhing, she never did.  I know without looking when the needle goes in, and then, when they blow that first vein, as her screams spike and spike.  He eyes widen, as big as the moon, as if she is surprised, still, at how it feels.

This day, it was different.

Earlier on, the music therapist had spent some time with us, singing to Coco, playing and showing her instruments.  Calming her.  She asked Coco’s favourite song, and I said: The Lion Sleeps Tonight, regretting it instantly, as the therapist played that stupid song over and over, those wimmewehs scratching on the blackboard of my jangled nerves.  But it soothed my girl.  She snuggled into my arms, and as that beautiful hippy played and played, and it was true that music is a salve for the soul.

When we went into the treatment room we played the wimmewehs on the iPod, and as that first vein was blown, she cried, but perhaps not as much as she used to.  Calmer or not, there’s only so much sleeping one lion can do, so we changed to Green Spandex.  The funeral song, from the when that feels like yesterday.  We stared into each other’s eyes, my girl and I.  I think she was expecting me to cry, and I know I was expecting her to, both for different reasons.   Blue eyes locking onto brown.  We couldn’t be more different sometimes, my girl and I, but we held our eyes, and we held our strength.  I’m sure we both felt like weeping, for some reasons different, and some the same, but we didn’t.  We breathed deeply and we held each other and we waited for the pain to pass.  It hurt.  But we got through another little bit.

Sometimes we couldn’t be more alike, my girl and I.

Blue eyes and brown

If you have already donated blood in the last 3 months, Thank you, From The Ashers.

If you haven’t, you could call 13 95 96 to find out how.

A little thing with a little thing…

We have a little girl who has a rare little thing called Pyruvate Kinase Deficiency.  It doesn’t sound like such a big thing, just a little deficiency, but it turns out pyruvate kinase is kind of important.  It turns out that if you have red blood cells without it, your spleen breaks them down, and if it breaks down enough of them, you end up anaemic.  So every three or four months or so, our rare little girl, with her rare little thing needs a bit of a top up.  With blood.  Maybe blood from you.

She always says she’s fine, and that she doesn’t need a transfusion, but sometimes when you’re six years old, the fear of the needles just might sway your thinking.  We always ask her if she thinks she’s ready for a transfusion, knowing full well she is, hoping that the day will come when she is able to weigh up the advantages and realise that she does need the blood.

We haven’t gotten there yet.

So this morning we made the decision.  The thing that parents all over the world have to do every day.  To make a choice that your kid will cry and sob and plead for you to change your mind about, but one, that as the parent you know is in your kid’s best interests.  It might be about getting some kind of surgery or medical procedure, it might be about eating vegetables, being home before dark, going to bed at a reasonable time.

Sometimes being parent is fun and easy and things just seem to flow along without incident.

And then sometimes it can be a bit hard.

Sometimes your little girl will look at you with her big blue eyes, her sclera all yellowy-green from the jaundice that heralds the end of this cycle of blood, with tears running down her golden little cheeks, and say, “Please Mummy, can I go to school today? I don’t want to go and get the blood cross-matched.  My haemoglobins are fine.”

And your heart breaks open just a little bit.  Partly because you know you can’t grant her wish of going to school today, like all the other carefree children her age, who right now, might have as their biggest worry whether to take the red or the green handball to play with at little-lunch, but also partly because you know she already knows too much about the workings of a hospital.

But mostly because you know that this is not the last time she will have a transfusion.  She will have them again and again and again.

Hopefully one day it won’t be this hard.

The Red Cross ALWAYS needs blood. They don’t need it one day.  

WE need it today.  

You can call 13 95 96 to make an appointment.