Please, Please Donate Blood!

I have had a crazy end for 2010 and a wonderfully blessed beginning to 2011. My youngest is a fun loving, full of life child. She smiles all the time, and is one of the happiest children I have ever come across. My older children had been sick with a head cold, so when myself and my youngest got sick, I felt it was par for the course. Well my youngest wasn't getting better, then one morning she woke up and her lips were blue. I knew I had to get her to the ER right away. That blue lips and her struggling to breath was a serious combination. Not that pneumonia isn't serious, but what I was about to have happen scared me even more.


There are few things that have happened in my life where I felt the world give out on me, and this in one of those times. In the ER they took her blood, and immediately you could see that something wasn't right with her blood. The Doc came back in and said that her body wasn't producing any Red Blood cells, and they were not sure why. So my mind went straight to the worse case scenario. You know all the bad words like, Bone Marrow, Cancer, among other things. Your body needs Iron to produce Hemoglobin, in order to produce Red Blood Cells. Well when they test your Iron levels someone(Adult or Child), to be in the Healthy range needs to have a level from 10 to 15. They will give someone a Blood Transfusion at a level of 7(Adult or Child). When she was admitted to Riley's Children's Hospital her level was at a 3.3. She had to have 2 blood transfusions.

I know this is probably scaring a few people right now. I will say it scared me to Death. She had just barely turned 2 and I was freaked out. Then after some more tests were run, and hours of worry, they finally had a theory of what had happened. For some reason the milk she had been drinking along with other unknown factors, her body had been blocking the absorption of Iron. So no big Bad words were wrong with her! So then it was OK well now what do we do? Well literally the Blood that someone so kindly Donated saved her life. She spent a week in the hospital getting better, and making sure she went 48 hours without any infection in her blood. I can't tell you how blessed that made me. That what was wrong, was a treatable condition. The event was serious, I was lucky that she lived through it. I was told that it had taken her body a year to get that bad, and I didn't know. It had compromised her Heart and I was told they were not sure why her heart was even still beating. So my Christmas miracle and New Year was getting to bring her Home!

The reason I am using this as my First post on my New Blog is that something so simple as donating Blood, could save someones life. I am so Thankful to the person who Donated blood, that my Child benefited from that all I can do is the same thing and spread the word. Go to the Red Cross's website, give them a call, and find out what you have to do to donate. There are people everyday with similar stories to mine. Such a small thing to give, but what a great benefit it is to save a life!

Riley's Children's Hospital was such an amazing place to have her go to. I was so blessed we were so close to such a great hospital. One thing I really never knew much about was how much good work Ronald McDonald House does for families of sick kids. Next time you are there just think about giving some of your leftover change to them. All the money donated to Ronald McDonald House goes to help the families. I never knew what they did till I saw them first hand.

Thank You for stopping by my blog! Have a wonderful day!!

Save A Life Give Blood!!!