Nova 100’s Clint Stanaway discovers firsthand how donating blood saves lives

When Metallica were in town a couple of weeks ago, they offered up the most wonderful campaign, where fans who went in to donate blood, platelets or plasma, could get a limited-edition band t-shirt. Near 10,000 Australians took up the offer.

Donating blood is routine for Nova 100‘s Clint Stanaway who has the rare blood type, O negative.

Clint Stanaway and Jess Taylor

This morning with Jase & Lauren, Clint Stanaway spoke with Jess Taylor, a fellow O negative, who told him why such donations are so important, after losing four litres of blood while giving birth earlier this year.

Jess: While I was giving birth to my third child, I ended up having an emergency cesarean… I had a significant postpartum hemorrhage, so they took me back to theater, and as a result, they weren’t able to stop the bleed, so they had to do an emergency hysterectomy at the same time. So during that process, I received 13 units of whole blood because I’d lost four and a half liters of my own blood volume, which is almost your entire blood volume.

Clint: So in that very moment your life changed. What was that like emotionally for you?

Jess: It was a lot. I didn’t anticipate waking up in the ICU and still having tubes and everything everywhere… The part for me that really hit home was when I was having a conversation with the obstetrician a couple of days later, after I got out of the ICU and was back on the ward recovering, and I asked the question, how bad did it really get? Because I really sort of wanted to understand how unwell was I in the end. And I never thought anyone would say this to me in my life, but he said to me, I tried really hard to die that night, so that will stay with me forever. And I can’t help but think that my partner could have been a single dad.

Clint: As somebody who was donating blood so regularly, O- blood, which is universal, suddenly you need O- blood back. What was that like to comprehend, to comprehend what’s what’s happening?

Jess: It was really humbling. It really sort of made me think that, wow, like this is why I donated for these previous years was so that I could give somebody else this opportunity that now I’ve been able to have. I’m here today because of blood donors, and that is a very powerful statement.

 Jase & Lauren can be heard from 6am to 9am on Nova 100 in Melbourne. You can listen live or catch up with the daily podcast by downloading the Nova Player.