Charity - giving, giving and giving . . .

Couple of days back, one of my colleagues questioned me about our policy to going overboard to help patients get their lives back. The specific instance arose when I requested one of my staff to donate blood for SD about whom you can read here. Dinesh, the engineer here, readily donated blood – but I was taken aback when one of my closest confidantes chided me about the decision.

To recap things, SD was brought to our emergency in a quite bad state on 5^th September morning. She had delivered a dead baby at around midnight and her placenta was stuck. She had been bleeding all through the night and into the day. Her hemoglobin was 1 gm% and she was sinking. With a AB positive blood group, the chances of her surviving were remote.

 

 

The fact is that SD is still alive. She has stopped bleeding. Her vitals are all normal. During my attempts of removing the placenta and from the history it was very obvious that the baby had been dead for days and the whole of the uterus was terribly infected. She has received two pints of blood so far of which the first pint was given by my engineer, Mr. Dinesh.

 

 

I clearly understand that volunteering to give blood in such situations is a very personal decision. I’ve known colleagues who weigh in the possibilities of a patient surviving before they donate the blood.

 

 

However, when I look it from the perspective of how Jesus looked at problems and their solutions – I am very much encouraged by the incident of the ‘Feeding of Five Thousand’ – which we read in all the 4 gospels in the Holy Bible (Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:5-15). The most absorbing spectacle in the incident is the readiness of the disciples to tell Jesus on how little they had. And Jesus was looking at their readiness to share the little they had.

 

 

I’m glad that the Lord led us as a team to decide on giving this patient the one pint of blood which was the only thing other than our prayers which we could offer her to sustain her life. She has pulled through so far. We still do not know how things will progress – but we are encouraged by the unseen but the very much felt hand of the Holy Spirit that leads us each day.