大象传媒

大象传媒 Radio 5 Live Breakfast recently heard from Marilyn, whose daughter Alice was kept alive for longer with blood donation during her leukaemia treatment. Marilyn says more young people need to start donating.

Her story prompted a incredible reaction from 5 Live listeners, and the NHS Blood and Transplant service said they saw a five-fold increase in registrations to donate blood that morning.

Lots of people got in touch with 5 Live's Your Call programme to share their stories of blood donation and how it has helped them or their loved ones.

Warning: This article contains some graphic medical descriptions.

“When I was pregnant with my daughter about nine years ago, I experienced a very rare condition where I had a weak vessel in my cervix, which burst open and I was just losing blood uncontrollably over a six week period.

“I had a number of transfusions and then what transpired was that my daughter grew enough in my womb to basically stem the flow of the blood and I was able to go through the rest of my pregnancy.

"I had to be induced on a certain a date because they knew when she came off the vein, there was going to be a haemorrhage and so they had stored my blood type, which was B positive, waiting for me for when I was due to give birth and subsequently did haemorrhage and I had another transfusion.

“Having 'B positive' as my blood type was something that I really attached on to psychologically, and it got me through some very difficult long times when I was going through those transfusions and I had to stay positive.”

"A few years ago I got pneumonia and deteriorated very quickly. I ended up on a treatment called ECMO, which is a very rare treatment - only five machines in the UK can do it. During the three weeks that I was in a coma on that machine I had 30 transfusions.

“When I recovered, I can remember coming round in hospital and the brilliant team in there kept saying to me 'do you want to watch TV?' and I didn't, I just wanted to comprehend where I was after three weeks of being out of it.

“When I eventually said ‘yes please will you put the TV on?’ the first thing I saw on there was the London Marathon. I'm a keen runner, I'd done a marathon a few months before becoming ill, and at the time when I saw that, I was in my bed in tears because I really thought I was never going to walk again I was so weak.

“But I did come out of hospital and recovered very well and a year after I came out of hospital I did the London Marathon. I set up something called 'pledge a pint' and so instead of people sponsoring me with money I asked them to sponsor me by pledging to become a blood donor.

“We originally said we'd like to get 250 people, which we got, then we moved to 500 and then we stopped counting when we got to 1,000 people. That was six years ago and there were a lot of people who started [giving blood] as a result of that.”

“My daughter has multiple life-threatening and life-limiting conditions. She has diseases of her heart, kidney, liver, she has vasculitis, severe hypertension and she also has something called idiopathic thrombocytopenia.

“Last year Erin had 56 blood transfusions in 52 consecutive days. It started off as a transfusion every few days. She was losing blood and her body was destroying her platelets. So she was having blood transfusions to recover but it became so severe there were days where she had three transfusions a day. She was being topped up daily just to get her to the following day, and that was horrific and I really thought we were losing her.

“We really believed that we weren't winning; it was the transfusions that were just keeping her going. These selfless people that were going in and making these donations were keeping me with my child and it was so humbling and overwhelming and terrifying.

"It just went on and on and on. She was constantly attached to a bag of blood or platelets and it was just, it was an extraordinary time and I am humbled and so grateful for the donors.

“Eventually they found a good drug for her and they kept her going and she actually started school last year, she was able to start primary school."

“I had my daughter in 2013 and had pre-eclampsia so they decided to do a caesarean just so she was out and safe.

“About 25 minutes after I had her, I had a series of haemorrhages that they just couldn't stop. So after the main [operating] theatre, they then kept giving me blood transfusions to keep me going.

“My husband only told me about three months later that they came out and said to him at one point that I was very likely to die. They couldn't get the bleeding to stop and they couldn't get my blood pressure down. Then they came back and said she's likely to have a major stroke. So [the fact] that I'm alive, but also alive with all of my faculties intact, it's down to that blood.

“Please do donate because you never know when you might need it. Up until that point I'd never had a medical issue in my life and something like that - it could well be you and you just need need need that blood. It just keeps you alive.”

"About 25 years ago I had a burst appendix. It burst during the day and over the evening I was being sick what they call 'coffee grounds', which is like dried blood coming out of your system.

"By the time I was 'blue lighted' into hospital I was pretty ill and they had to stabilise me before operating. The doctors were wonderful and I can never thank the doctors enough but I needed eight packets of blood to get me through the operation and begin the recovery procedure.

"If it hadn't been for that blood then I wouldn't be here today so I'm eternally grateful for anybody who gives blood because they're saving someone's life.

"Even now I get caught and it brings it back to me and I get quite emotional about it really because those people, they just go in and sit there for not that long donating a little bit of blood, which seems such a fairly easy thing to do but actually it has such an impact on people's lives and, like I say, I wouldn't be here."

Listen to Your Call on 大象传媒 Radio 5 Live every weekday 09:00 - 10:00.

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