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What I am to share here is not something I heard, instead what my wife and I experienced about blood donation. My wife was to have hysterectomy because of a lump in her uterus. Her doctor advised that we need to get at least four bags of her blood type for transfusion during surgery. Her blood type is "B" and there was not enough to buy from blood banks. I had to look for donors like making calls to a military academy and large companies to ask for possible donors.

Unfortunately, it was too immediate and they did not have enough time to ask people who had the same blood type who are willing to donate. The day before the surgery, the Red Cross and a hospital notified me that there were type "B" donations and two bags from each of them! Another good thing was learning that I have nephews who had the same blood type. Our family on my side commonly had type "O" blood. Just to make sure we had more than four bags, my nephews donated another two bags. All the donations were kept by the Medical Technicians department of the hospital. The cost of the blood from the Red Cross and hospital was $20.00 per bag. The condition with the hospital where my wife was to be operated on is for them to pay me back the same amount for any blood that would not be used.

On the day of the surgery, the transfusion started before the actual operation. The obstetrician asked me to stay just outside the operating room so she could show me the mass to be removed from my wife's uterus. With that, I was able to monitor how many bags of blood would be used. Whenever another bag is needed, a nurse would go out of the operating room to get one. In short, I was able to count that only three were used. My wife did not need any transfusion further after the surgery. I had an acknowledgement receipt from the Med Tech Department that they received a total of six type "B" blood bags. Everything went well until my wife was to be discharged from the hospital after three days. In the process of settling her account with Medicare, we were still required to shell out additional cash which was not covered by her health insurance. I did not worry much because we would still be refunded from the unused blood bags.

With that in mind, I headed to the Med Tech department to retrieve the refund. To my disgust, they said that all of the bags were used! I informed them that I was outside the operating room and was able to take count. They said I might have counted wrong! Getting irritated with that remark, I asked them to get the operating room records on the surgery as that would tell how many bags were used. It took an agonizing two hours for them to just inform me that they could not find the records! In my disgust, I raised my voice and called them liars and thieves. My wife was actually ready to leave the hospital within the first hour I was waiting for the operating room records. From the Med Tech department, I approached some hospital officials to help out but they could not do anything. We were asked to come back the following day to follow up on it. I actually had to go back three consecutive days without getting any result. If donor organ is a racket in some hospitals, I think donated blood is one that they don't look into because it can be replaced. That's blood money for them!

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