When I had my firstborn, I had signed all the papers ahead of time refusing the use of blood for myself in the event of an emergency during childbirth. I haemorrhaged after the birth, I didn't even get to see the baby until the next day. I have no memory from shortly after the birth until I started coming around in the recovery room four hours later. The first thing the nurse said to me was how stupid I was to refuse blood, and how lucky I was to still be around. My next memory was waking up in the hospital room; it was dark again so at least 12 hours had passed. My haemoglobin level, I was informed, was about 40% of what it was before the delivery. I passed out the first couple of times the nurses tried to get me up to the bathroom. It took 5 days for me to recover sufficiently to be able to go home; my doctor really would have preferred to have me stay another day or so. The congregation congratulated me for taking a stand... they had no idea how traumatic it was for me to think about what a close call I'd just had... but Jehovah Had Protected Me?, right??
To be honest, I really pushed all conscious thought out of my mind about the possibility of one of my children ever being in a situation where blood would be an issue. When they introduced the blood card for unbaptized minors, we were forced to think about it, and I couldn't imagine putting my kids through the frightening ordeal that I'd gone through. We "forgot" to renew that card, even though we continued to renew our own. Incidentally, a young chap in our congregation passed away after a long battle with leukemia, his parents refused to allow blood transfusions from the beginning.
What bothers me most, though, is knowing that my parents, without a doubt, would have let me or any of my siblings die rather than allow a blood transfusion. A couple of times we had these morbid "practice sessions" that basically rehearsed what they would say to the doctors. I still have a hard time with that.
Love, Scully
