Carrying Whole Blood with Us

Having a son who is an EMT, I was fascinated recently reading an excellent series in the Dallas Morning News entitled, “Bleeding Out.” It was about the lessons learned on the battlefields and taking those lessons to the scenes of trauma care, as in a car accident. Thousands of people die every year in the U.S. because they lose too much blood before rescue personnel can get them to a hospital. What we have known from the battlefield for years is that if whole blood is available immediately, the odds are good that the person will live. 

Only a few emergency services carry whole blood with them on ambulance runs which sometimes take them hours away from a hospital. Because of the Dallas Morning News series, conversations are now being had about what it would take for more emergency services to carry whole blood with them. The Dallas Fire Department is now discussing this earnestly. The challenge of course is a limited supply of whole blood since most blood donations are broken down into their component parts for use, e.g., serum and platelets. 

I write this coincidentally before our Blood Drive this Sunday but not primarily for that reason (btw, you can sign up to give blood this Sunday here). The notion of carrying whole blood makes me wonder what it would look like if we carried whole love instead of component parts to people in traumatic distress? A third of the population reports loneliness and depression, so the need for whole love is acute. We can become quite reserved in what kind and how much love we will parse to people we encounter when what they desperately need is the full-on attention of our time, a listening ear, and maybe even a hug. It could be a family member, a friend, or even a stranger. 

There is a great deal of emotional trauma going on all around us. My hope during this Lenten season is that, like Jesus, we will keep our hearts attuned to those around us, and when we witness a severe, or even less than severe wound, we will respond with the full attention of an EMT or Paramedic and bring our whole love with us to the scene.

Connecting God and Grace to Self and Community,