In Their Own Words: How Blood Donation Saved My Life

By Rachel Victer, blood recipient 

You never know what life will throw at you. You may not ever think you’ll ever be in any kind of a life-or-death situation where you’ll need to receive a blood transfusion. I learned that first-hand when one chilly night in December of 2012, I went to bed feeling just fine to ending up in a hospital room near-death the next day.

It all started after an evening of celebrating the Christmas holiday with a local women’s business group I belonged to. Little did I know that at some point in the early morning hours, an undetected cyst on my right ovary ruptured, and I was slowly starting to bleed to death.

I was at home alone with my young son who was almost two years old at the time. My husband Roger was teaching at the university 20 minutes away. After feeling badly all morning, I thought maybe I had a touch of food poisoning from seafood I had eaten at dinner the night before. It wasn’t food poisoning. By the time I was able to reach Roger, I was in in excruciating pain, frantic, and unable to walk. He rushed me to the hospital. When hospital staff conducted an ultrasound, it was so cloudy from blood, they couldn’t see what was going on. Moments later I was getting prepped for emergency surgery.

As I’m getting prepped for surgery, I find myself looking into the sympathetic eyes of an anesthesiologist who couldn’t give me a straight answer when I asked him if I was going to be okay. The fact I was being wheeled into emergency surgery was simply surreal.

A woman dressed in white with a kind face came to my side and gently asked me if I preferred a minister, priest or a rabbi. The question shocked me. Certainly, this can’t be real. I’m healthy. I’m strong! The only reason they’d ask me that is because they think I’m going to die, I thought. This is not happening. But it was happening, and it was happening to me.

Hours later I woke up to the soft beep-beeps of hospital monitoring equipment.

I felt completely drained and was hooked up to an array of wires. My surgeon told me that my blood loss was so severe that I needed to have multiple blood transfusions, otherwise I would have died on the operating table. I had children I adored. I had a husband I was madly in love with. I was in graduate school with a bright future ahead and at that moment, I had needed blood and I was alive because that blood was there for me.

Let’s go back a few years. I first donated blood in 2006. A large American Red Cross mobile unit arrived at work and a group from my office walked to the blood donating center together. Although I was nervous about my first-time giving blood, I remember the sense of camaraderie, and that good feeling that warms you all over knowing you’re making a good decision.

Remembering that moment in retrospect has made me pause and think. We are all connected in one way or another. Most of us know at least one person who has had a blood transfusion. One day that person could be you. If no one gave blood, people like me wouldn’t be here. In a sense, I feel that that giving blood actually saved my life. We’re truly all connected, so give blood if you can. It may save your own life.

If you'd like to learn more about blood donation, visit: www.RedCrossBlood.org.