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9/11

9/11/2007

Hard to believe it’s been so long. I remember I was working for United Blood Services in Mississippi and was by myself down in Alabama at a hospital drawing blood from people who were having surgery. I had just pulled up at the hospital and a co-worker told me a plane had hit the WTC.

It didn’t click with me that it was a big plane. Maybe a single engine with some student who got lost…After setting up for my 9 donors I switched on the TV to see if the news had anything else about it. Did they ever…As I turned it on they cut from video of the first plane hitting to a live image of the second plane hitting. I remember feeling physically ill.

My boss called my cell phone and ask me how many people I had packed out for…Normally for that drive I would pack for 20% over what I was projected. That day I had 9 people scheduled but I’d packed out for 18 because I didn’t want to break supplies down…He said he was on his way down with more stuff and more people. It was a 2 hour drive from the office in Hattiesburg to the hospital in Alabama. He also said people were calling asking where our office was and I had at least 10 people on the way.

Now to put this in perspective for one person it would take ~30-45 min to do the interview, prep the equipment and draw a full unit. And to make things more interesting if you have someone bleeding you can’t leave them for obvious reasons. So I had to do all the interviews and then bring two people at a time in to draw their blood.

There was so much emotion that day…A man who had to 50-60 years old cried the entire time he was there. It was a bad, bad day. I ended up drawing 19 units by myself and then my boss told me to pack up and head back to the office where there was a full house and all beds were full and both blood mobiles were operating in the parking lot.

That day I worked from 5am until 3am the next morning. I stuck 94 people. All in all we drew ~450 units of blood. Even though there were very few survivors every single blood product we made was used at area hospitals. It’s unfortunate that so many people had to die but at least a lot of people were helped in the process. A silver lining I suppose.