SAN ANTONIO — Two weeks after giving birth to her baby boy, Ashley Byrnes says postpartum hemorrhaging sent her back to the hospital.
“You always think that hospitals have that blood, but they don’t necessarily always have that,” Byrnes said. “I had a blood clot the size of a basketball come out of me.”
A postpartum hemorrhage is when a woman begins to bleed heavily after giving birth. It can happen anywhere from one day to two weeks after having a baby.
“It just kept coming out. The biggest problem that happened is that they were running out of blood. They weren’t able to get enough blood of my type,” Byrnes said.
Blood has been in dangerously short supply for just about the entire coronavirus pandemic at the South Texas Blood and Tissue Center. It's that shortage, Byrnes said, which led to doctors driving to other hospitals looking for the blood they desperately needed to keep her alive.
“I was asking God to keep me alive and help me be able to live and see my son,” Byrnes said.
By the end of the night, she says she received 19 bags of blood, four bags of platelets and four bags of plasma. She says if it weren’t for all of those donors, she might not be alive today to share her story.
“There are a lot of times where they are desperate for bags of plasma, platelets or blood. It takes just a little bit of time to save a life and give blood to others,” Byrnes said.
Officials at the STBTC say they're down to about one-third of a day's supply. To donate and potentially save a life, click here.