Although it pains me to write this...I feel I must appeal to each & everyone of you for the importance of giving blood. As you know...our beloved Austin was hospitalized for six months in isolation and various other times throughout his battle with leukemia & HLH. Recently, his nurse Jill (whom he loved with all his heart) sent me this information about the amount of blood and blood products that Austin received. This is staggering...basically...Austin received approximately 8 gallons of blood products. I know this is confusing for some...but this is the information I received from Jill. Please read and please - if at all you can...give your blood to help save someone else. Austin told me one time he felt guilty for taking all this blood away that could have perhaps saved many more than him...but yet when he looked up at the bag on the IV pole...his heart felt better, because it said "volunteer." Please if you can...please give blood!
From Jill:
As for the transfusion info.....
Platelets
Austin got 73 transfusions of random donor unit platelets. His usual transfusion consisted of 10 random donor units of platelets with EACH transfusion. So that is about 730 units. Usually when people donate platelets, they are donating one unit. So for this type of transfusion, the usual ten units would be coming from ten different donors.
He also got 110 additional transfusions of pheresis platelets. A pheresis unit is about 6 units from one (and the same) donor. So he got about 660 units from this type of platelets.
Blood
He got 93 transfusions of blood. Each unit is about 300ml. So that is a whopping 27,900ml of blood. ALMOST 28 LITERS OF BLOOD! (6.5 Gallons)
Plasma
22 units of fresh frozen plasma. Each unit is about 200ml. So that is about 4,400ml (just under 4 and a half liters). (1 Gallon)
Ok, so for the total, he got 298 transfusions.