"Shortly before Thanksgiving in 2023, Amber Kirkpatrick, a mother of three, nearly bled out in her driveway. A few months into her third pregnancy, Kirkpatrick had started taking a blood thinner to treat a clot in her lung. Her delivery went well. But two weeks postpartum, driving home from her mother's house, she began to bleed. She pulled into a gas station, suddenly hemorrhaging. "I got out, and it was completely covering everything in the parking lot, all in the car," she remembers."
"Despite the bleeding, she continued home and made it as far as her driveway before she couldn't get any farther. She sat in the garage, dizzy and almost unconscious. Blood was everywhere. Her husband called 911. Sitting there, hemorrhaging on the garage floor, she ate some leftover rotisserie chicken and managed to stay awake until a team of paramedics arrived."
Shortly before Thanksgiving 2023, Amber Kirkpatrick, a mother of three, nearly bled to death in her driveway two weeks postpartum while taking a blood thinner for a pulmonary clot. She hemorrhaged after driving home from her mother's house, pulled into a gas station, and managed to reach her driveway before collapsing in the garage. She sat dizzy and almost unconscious while blood covered the area, ate leftover rotisserie chicken to stay awake, and awaited paramedics. County EMS had implemented a prehospital blood-transfusion program and began transfusing her at the scene, stabilizing her for emergency surgery and recovery. A year later, Hurricane Helene disrupted the regional blood-supply chain.
Read at Slate Magazine
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