For the past three and a half years I have been a volunteer writer and photographer for the American Red Cross. I have interviewed so many people whose life was saved or enriched by blood transfusions.

I’ve heard many times that the blood that’s already on the shelves is what’s needed to save a life in an emergency. Right. I get it I always thought. But I didn’t. Until now.

I have been out of the hospital for less than a week. I went in for a routine major abdominal surgery and ended up bleeding internally. By the time I left the intensive care unit (ICU) after a second surgery, five blood transfusions, my wonderful surgeon and a team of incredible nurses saved my life.

I admit I’m writing this in a lot of pain and on medication. So, my recollections of what happened are told through that haze. I have an incision that spans hip to hip and several staples that will be in for another week. When I stand up, or walk, or move, I feel a deep searing agony.

But throughout my pain, I still am in complete awe that the blood I never thought I would need was there because someone I didn’t know took the time to give it.

I remember my blood pressure being really low before I was transferred to the ICU. I’m not a numbers girl. I have never remotely paid attention to what number makes a good blood pressure. I know my top number (systolic blood pressure) hit 71. When my mother died the top number was 61.

It was low enough that both my sisters got in the car and drove nearly 15 hours from their southern states to come be with me.

Low enough that I moved from the fourth floor that houses post-surgery patients at Bryn Mawr Hospital to the third floor ICU for monitoring.

Low enough that the blood pressure cuff just stayed on my arm and routinely took my pressure every few minutes.

And my hemoglobin number from constant blood checks became the most important number of each day. The only thing that brought that number up was getting another blood transfusion.

I remember when the nurse told me I was going to get a blood transfusion I lovingly spoke about my time with the Red Cross. I wondered where the blood was coming from and she said something like “When I need it I just go to the shelf and get it.”

The only reason it was there is because as I’ve already said, someone I didn’t know took the time to give it. I just can’t get over that.

When you’ve been told it’s the blood on the shelves that saves a life, you can’t understand what that means until you contemplate that you needed FIVE transfusions to survive.

What if the blood wasn’t already on the shelf? What if when the nurse went to just get it out of the blood bank at the hospital the shelves were empty?

In the United States, someone needs blood every two seconds and the Red Cross supplies about 40% of our country’s blood supply. That blood is only there because of generous donors like my son Kai, who as a teenager is also a Red Cross volunteer and has donated platelets and whole blood.

Kai couldn’t have known that one day his mom would be on the receiving end of another donor’s generosity. He donated because he likes to help people and wants to be a doctor one day. His blood may be on a hospital shelf right now. Is yours?

If you would like to donate blood or platelets, visit RedCrossBlood.org for info on how to become a blood donor.

To the people whose blood is now flowing through my veins, I want you to know I will make it count. Thank you from my healing body and ever grateful heart.

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- Written by Jenny Farley