The last thing Jenapher Blair asked her doctor July 21 was if she was going to die. She was experiencing excessive bleeding due to birthing complications, and her Hutchinson, Minnesota, doctors didn’t have enough blood on hand.
“Everything was going smoothly until it wasn’t,” Blair said during a Tuesday, Aug. 17, news conference in Hutchinson that was also livestreamed.
So doctors made the call to get Blair the blood she needed, putting into motion a Minnesota State Patrol relay that brought Blair blood from 80 miles away. The efforts put forth that day ensured newborn Adalyn would be able to meet her mother.
Starting in St. Paul, a trooper picked up the blood from the American Red Cross blood bank in the Twin Cities and brought it to the St. Paul Downtown Airport, where a helicopter then brought it to Hutchinson.
Trooper Brett Stricker, speaking for the other troopers involved that day, said the original plan was to land at Hutchinson Health Hospital but an ambulance chopper was already on the pad, ready to whisk Blair away to a higher level of care once she received her transfusion.
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