...or a pint, if we're being literal, filled the bag resting on a scale beneath the hospital bed. I've done this before. It's not the first time...but this time I know who needs it, and that makes all the difference.
I met Mariam* just a few weeks ago - barely responsive and wilted into the hospital bed a few hours after her arrival on the ship, unable to swallow for a week before that because of a painful growth on her jaw. "We need an ER nurse," my charge nurse said, and so I followed her over from the B ward dance party to a sobering A ward, to the young woman in bed 20. "How are you feeling about your IV skills? She's got just about nothing for veins." I untied the baby from my back, we had a small IV line infusing a few minutes later and I returned to a wild and cheerful B ward praying for the lives in A ward, for the dying cancer patient Vince who was slowly slipping away after a traumatically bloody episode a few nights before, for the skin-and-bones infant a few beds down, little Ana, and for the little mother just a few years older than me who could no longer eat or drink.
Rushed to the ICU a day or two later, Mariam has been with us since then. Despite tests and retests, we're still not entirely sure what's wrong. Why can't she breathe properly, we ask. Where is the fever from? What happened to her electrolytes...and most recently, where did all the blood go?
Out of 400 crew members, there are five of us with Mariam's blood type registered as donors. Two of us donated this morning. The crew is a living blood bank available for patients in need. I put in her new IV in the quiet hours of early morning, knowing it would be my blood infusing through it come sunrise, thanking God for letting me find a good vein on the battered and bruised arms, for the one IV catheter from home that slid in so easily.
They walked it down the hallway after the tubing was clamped and cut, a double handful of life to infuse, still warm, into Mariam's veins. A few hours later another nurse donated another unit, allowing Mariam's body to find some relief and rest now that it has a bit of blood again.
It is a privilege to donate for someone that I know. To share my life and heart with hers, to know that I am truly making a tangible difference in her life. To feel the sore prick in my inner elbow and be reminded to pray for her and her family, for her attentive husband who held his own prayer service at the bedside day by day, for her small son that needs her home again. Because I know that even more important for Mairam's life is a need for realization that what she needs to accept is not a gift of human blood for transfusion, but the free gift of Christ's blood for sacrifice. In the end, that is what will be the difference between life and death, both in her life and in mine.
"For you know that it was not with perishable things such as gold or silver that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect." 1 Peter 1: 18-19
*Patient names in all my posts may be changed to protect patient privacy.
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