Charlotte's Blood Transfusion Investigation

Blood Situation

I've been wanting to get this down on the blog for ages but there's been so much going on like hospital stays I've just not had chance. Firstly I apologise of you're from the medical profession or highly knowledgeable about blood and this entry isn't 100% medically correct, but I'm explaining this situation from how I understand it from what I've been told by Consultants & Haematologists. Back in late February Charlotte's Consultant at Poole had to discuss with me something they had found in Charlotte's blood. Whilst I was waiting for him to explain my heart stopped, I wondered what he was going to say, I was thinking some complication of Leukaemia that I didn't know about. He then went on to explain that when Charlotte was first diagnosed her blood was typed as Rhesus Negative, but when they typed it again in January in case she needed a transfusion it was now Rhesus Negative - D with red cell antibodies. At first the only thing this meant to me was I know from my Mum that you have to be careful in childbirth. Now things have progressed, I have had a meeting with Charlotte's Oncology Consultant at Southampton and learnt a lot more.

It transpires that realistically the only way Charlotte's blood could have developed antibodies were if her negative blood was exposed to positive blood. Unknown to me, for a couple of weeks before I was told the news, Poole Hospital & the transfusion service have been in a mad panic checking their records of the transfusions Charlotte had at Poole & Southampton in May & June last year following her diagnosis & the start of her intensive chemo. They assure me she was given negative blood and advised that if their records said it was negative blood she was given the systems in place would not allow the 'wrong' bag of blood to be picked up & given to Charlotte.

However, its unheard of for these antibodies to have occurred naturally so their only thought is that somewhere something has gone wrong. The Haematologist explained that when someone is negative for example, there are degrees of negative, so if someone went to register as a donor and they were typed as a 'weak' negative they wouldn't be accepted. So the only assumption they can make at this point is that something was wrong with one of the four transfusions Charlotte had. Apparently Charlotte is the talk of transfusion services & there is a full investigation underway to find the cause, because not only is there implications for Charlotte, there could be for other people in the South West who've received that blood. I am told that the donors are being recalled and blood taken, and this is now going through rigorous testing to check the type again but also, checking that one of their blood doesn't contain a tiny amount of antibodies that were missed the first time round.

The other strange aspect is that her blood was typed in October 2011 as well and at that point didn't have the antibodies. So now they're more puzzled, and apparently in medical terms makes the case more interesting that if an error was made it took Charlotte's blood that long to develop the antibodies after the exposure took place. This delay in antibodies incurring has started them also thinking about whether they've found something as rare as 'hens teeth' (their words) and this is a natural occurrence, in which case I've been told her 'case' will be become known and used globally in haematology.

Me, I'd much rather we could have just had plain & straightforward and not another 'aspect to deal with. With regards to the implications for Charlotte, initially it means that should she need any further transfusions it will take longer to arrange as it will not be as easy to get supply of an exact match. Hopefully with the stage of treatment she's at this won't be a situation we have to deal with. I was however, concerned that for example if she had a serious accident what would happen, and I was assured her life would be saved by giving her any blood, but then she would need to be transfused correctly as soon as possible? I shocked my Consultant by asking him about the implications should she be in the position of needing a bone marrow transplant, he said he didn't expect me to ask that as he doesn't believe we'll ever get to that point. But I explained as much as I don't think about the 'what ifs' the facts are that they don't cure 100% of children, so there's a tiny chance she could, he explained that it would be a factor in the matching but not a problem, and in fact sometimes transplants take place where there isn't a match? Apart from that, the other implication for Charlotte is if she has children in later life. If the father of the child she was carrying has positive blood her child could be also, and they have to be careful as her blood crossing to the baby can be lethal, so they use injections and other precautions, but we're years off of that yet, so we'll deal with that later when Charlotte is old enough to need to know about havng a baby! lol