During that time, she developed anemia and pale grayish-yellow skin, signs of internal bleeding, which ended up requiring another three units of red cells.Īmber was finally released from the hospital on Thanksgiving Day (a true reason to give thanks!), and her newest addition to the family, sweet Daniel, was released the day after Christmas.įlash forward two months later: Amber and family are all now happy and healthy at home, and glad for the chance to be together. She had to stay in the hospital for another week for recovery. Once I had it, I could finally relax, and I knew everything was going to be okay.”Īfter receiving the blood needed to help her stabilize - and successfully delivering her baby boy - Amber was given general anesthesia and woke up in the ICU with a breathing tube. “One of the greatest moments of relief I’ve ever felt in my life was when the blood bag was hooked up to the IV. Thankfully, because of blood donors just like her, Amber was able to get the four pints of blood she so desperately needed. “I just remember hearing the doctor repeating, ‘Where’s that O-neg? We need blood now!’ It felt totally unreal, almost as if I were in some kind of movie,” she said. She recalls the medical team getting increasingly worried. Preeclampsia already causes a higher risk for hemorrhage and, with the trauma of the extra cuts, I ended up with catastrophic blood loss.” The doctor performed an emergency hysterectomy to save Amber’s life, but even so, she lost almost half the blood in her body.īecause the surgery was supposed to be quick and uneventful, Amber had only been given local anesthesia and was awake during the procedure. “They had to take additional time and make more extensive cuts to get the baby out. “Then, the operation took an unexpected bad turn,” Amber recalls. Once Amber was in surgery, however, the doctor found that the baby was especially difficult to deliver due to his transverse (sideways) position. Her care team assured Amber and her husband that C-sections, even for premature babies, are routine procedures and that complications such as blood loss are very rare. In order to protect both Amber and her baby, doctors decided she would need to deliver her baby by Cesarean section at 32 weeks. The cause for preeclampsia is unknown and, since there is no effective treatment, Amber had to stay under observation at Stanford Hospital following her diagnosis.ĭespite hopes that the condition might stabilize, Amber’s blood pressure continued to rise during the observation period. After developing high blood pressure during her third trimester, Amber was diagnosed with preeclampsia, a serious condition in which an expectant mother develops high blood pressure that can lead to seizures, strokes and organ failure. ![]() But, though this was her third pregnancy, it didn’t go nearly as smoothly as the first two. Despite a few brief deferral periods over the course of her decades-long donation journey due to pregnancies, international travel, and athletic competitions, she always felt a warm reception, a return home, when she came back.įor most of 2021, Amber was deferred from donation for a very exciting reason: She was pregnant with her third child, a son. “By that point, I was really motivated to donate because being a blood donor had become part of my identity,” she said. Despite running into a few barriers due to her iron levels, she did everything she could to continue donating and to recruit other donors as well. Once she transferred to Stanford University for further schooling, she began donating regularly at Stanford Blood Center. “After my first donation, I was hooked,” Amber said. ![]() She found out from her first donation that the process really wasn’t too scary after all, and that her blood was especially needed because she was type O-, a “rare breed” of universal donor. I knew a lot of people were scared by donation but told myself, ‘I bet I can handle it!’” she said. “I often prided myself on being brave and willing to try new things. Rather, she asked how soon after her own experience as a patient she would be able to jump back into donating!Īmber began donating blood as a university student in Australia when she was 18. When Amber first wrote to SBC about her story, it wasn’t in the context of sharing it on our blog. ![]() A scholar, a university lecturer, a world traveler, a mother of three, an avid blood donor - and, as of late last year, a blood recipient. “I’ve been a regular blood donor my whole adult life, and I’ve been humbled to be on the receiving end for a change.”Īmber Kerr is many things. Newsletter Archive 2002-2019 (LifeLink).
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