JOE'S STORY

What should have been a routine surgical procedure and recovery ended up with a harrowing ambulance ride from Florence to Eugene plus multiple blood transfusions
.
On January 10, 2006, Joe Raffetto, a realtor in Florence, underwent scheduled 5-way bypass surgery at Sacred Heart Medical Center.  During this procedure his heart surgeon, Dr. Stanley Baldwin, administered four units of his A positive blood, a common occurrence during open-heart surgery.  Five days later he was released to go home.

But on February 1, while he was at Peace Harbor Hospital in the Cardio Rehabilitation lab, he started feeling extremely weak and lightheaded.  A doctor was summoned, and Joe was immediately sent to the Emergency room where he was diagnosed with a massive hemorrhage in his upper gastro-intestinal tract.  Blood transfusions were begun at once, but the doctors soon realized that they had a major problem on their hands as he needed more and more blood.  They made the decision to send him to the cardiac unit at Sacred Heart.  The ambulance left Florence at 7am on a wild and stormy day.  Heading out Highway 126, it had to ford high water at Cushman where the Siuslaw River had overflowed its banks.  It also had to navigate around trees that had fallen across the road.  During this ride, the paramedic on board continued administering blood transfusions to attempt to keep Joe alive as his hematocrit* had plummeted to such a dangerously low level that he should have been dead! 

Upon arrival at Sacred Heart, Joe was rushed into the ER and then transferred to the Intensive Care Unit where his surgeon, Dr. Peter Kay, performed a cauterization on an ulcer that had burst.  In all, he received 24 blood transfusions.   The ruptured ulcer was attributed to the stress his body underwent during the bypass surgery.

Joe kept his sense of humor throughout this whole ordeal.  A dyed-in-the-wool Italian-American, he was teased by his wife who told him that with all his blood transfusions, he no longer had any Italian blood in him.  But he was reassured by his surgeon that his body would replace all the transfused blood within 270 days with his own Italian blood!

He is now determined to replace those 24 units of blood once he is eligible to donate and encourages his family and friends to donate in his name.

*Hematocrit:   The amount of red blood cells in the blood, expressed as a percentage.  For somebody of Joe’s age and sex, his hematocrit should have been in the 42-54% range, whereas his was 4%.  If the blood hadn’t been available for the numerous transfusions, Joe would not have survived this ordeal. 
The proportion of the blood that consists of packed red blood cells. The hematocrit is expressed as a percentage by volume. The red cells are packed by centrifugation. For example, a hematocrit of 25% means that there are 25 milliliters of red blood cells in 100 milliliters of blood. The red cells make up a quarter of the blood.
The normal ranges for the hematocrit are dependant on the age and, after adolescence, the sex of the individual. The normal ranges for the hematocrit are:

• Newborns: 55-68%
• One (1) week of age: 47-65%
• One (1) month of age: 37-49%
• Three (3) months of age: 30-36%
• One (1) year of age: 29-41%
• Ten (10) years of age: 36-40%
• Adult males: 42-54%
• Adult women: 38-46%