I’m thankful for advances in medicine which have saved my life at least three times. I’ve tried to repay that debt a bit by donating blood or plasma when I can. One of the very first times a blood donation saved my life, I was only days old.
My parents married in 1960 and had a miscarriage before I was born in 1963. I was about 7 weeks early and mom was convinced there was something wrong with me. She told the Dr. that I was yellow and he dismissed it as “a redheads complexion.” and wanted to discharge us but she insisted there was a problem. Then she overheard nurses and Dr.’s outside her room and one said, “they’d be better off if they just lined babies like that up and shot them.” Obviously that did nothing to calm her fears. She didn’t mention the comment but refused to leave the hospital. The Dr. finally ordered some bloodwork just to appease her. He came back quickly and said I needed a complete blood transfusion.
I had a disorder which had only been discovered a couple years earlier. ABO incompatibility was a situation in births where the baby was not the first baby, where the mom’s blood had made antibodies against the baby’s blood type and after the birth when some of the mom’s blood had mingled in the baby’s body, those antibodies attacked the baby’s blood in its own body. So my blood was too thick to use 1963 blood typing on. Their decision to put 2 1/2 times my body’s blood volume of type O blood through and “wash out” all the original blood, undoubtedly saved my life. So I had a short time of being type O before my natural B+ was re created.
Thankfully my Mom was a fighter. No Dr was going to convince her that she didn’t know when her child needed help. She proved that again when Brett was 6 months old and had pneumonia, and when Lance was born and they told her to institutionalize him and forget him. Again when he was 6 and the ER Dr. tried to give him stitches without pain meds because “children like that don’t feel pain. He just cries from reflex.”
Mom was a fighter, and so were her mom and grandmothers. Here I am with her And my dad.
i thought the baby was you, but at first i thought it was a 'new' photo -- i see young people looking like this all the time! we have the same blood type. if those nurses and doctors say those nasty things today, the bastards would be without license and the hospital would be out millions to pay the offended parties.
Well your mum was a true fighter….nothing like a good mum to know exactly what her baby needs! The words spoken in that hospital would be severely reprimanded & hopefully struck off their medical register…
