Blood is thicker than water
Before I was born, my cousin contracted both hepatitis B and C by way of a blood transfusion gone badly. It was the late 1960s, and my cousin was involved in a horrible car accident. He was about 16 and was bleeding quite profusely; my cousin’s blood doesn’t clot because he is a hemophiliac. Being a hemophiliac means that the blood in your veins is not being able to clot when it breaks through the epidermis. According to my aunt, the doctors in the hospital were unable to get a hold of her to give consent to operate on her son, who at this point is lying in a hospital bed just bleeding, and who is also a minor. My aunt flew into action and immediately gave her verbal consent to operate on him and do whatever they needed to save his life and rushed to the hospital to see her son just lying there with his own blood surrounding him.
While the story of just getting the bleeding to stop wasn’t horrific enough, the doctors informed my aunt that he needed to undergo a blood transfusion as he had lost a considerable amount of blood and his body would need help to replenish what he had lost in order for his body to properly heal itself. During the transfusion there were complications and my cousin ended up contracting both hepatitis B and C. Hepatitis B is an infection of the liver that can cause a person to become fatigued and weak, nauseous, lose their appetite and my cousin caught it by way of being exposed to infected blood. Hepatitis C is also an infection of the liver and can be contracted by way of infected blood as well. I did a bit more research and discovered that if you received a blood transfusion before 1992 there was a high chance that one would contract hepatitis C because the screening process for blood donors did not screen out hepatitis C, and infected blood was being donated and used.
While the story of just getting the bleeding to stop wasn’t horrific enough, the doctors informed my aunt that he needed to undergo a blood transfusion as he had lost a considerable amount of blood and his body would need help to replenish what he had lost in order for his body to properly heal itself. During the transfusion there were complications and my cousin ended up contracting both hepatitis B and C. Hepatitis B is an infection of the liver that can cause a person to become fatigued and weak, nauseous, lose their appetite and my cousin caught it by way of being exposed to infected blood. Hepatitis C is also an infection of the liver and can be contracted by way of infected blood as well. I did a bit more research and discovered that if you received a blood transfusion before 1992 there was a high chance that one would contract hepatitis C because the screening process for blood donors did not screen out hepatitis C, and infected blood was being donated and used.
Looking into my future...
My aunt on my mother’s side is a carrier of the hemophilia gene and while I may have a 50-50 chance of being a carrier of that gene, I would not actually obtain knowledge of such unless one of two things happen: (1), I undergo genotyping or (2), I give birth to a son and he ends up being a hemophiliac. The hemophiliac gene is something that is carried on the X chromosome, and if I am indeed a carrier and I end up having a boy, he would obtain his X chromosome from me and his Y chromosome from his father, giving him a 50/50 chance that he would be a hemophiliac -- if I am, in fact, a carrier. When I was really young and learned about this family fact, I was horrified at the story of my cousin and had sworn off having children because I thought that my genetic predisposition would be destructive to their lives especially in case of emergency; I know now that I can have therapy for this gene and can be tested to see if I am a carrier because this is a recessive gene due to the fact that it is type A hemophilia and I can have this gene modified so it doesn’t affect my unborn children.
