There's a person with red cell antibodies anti-C,-D,-E,-K,-Lu^b,-S, auto-anti-I scheduled to have a 3x redo sternotomy tomorrow. To most people that doesn't sound too exciting, but it's got the whole lab worked up about it. The theoretical percentage of blood that's compatible is less than 0.004% of the population (about 1 in 27000 people). And procuring a unit is only possible when somebody in that thin sliver of the population is a blood donor; only about 5% of people actually donate... which is a pretty pathetic rate. The doctors have already postponed his surgery by weeks to give us time to round up some blood. We've spent the last few weeks trying to arrange enough units of blood for his procedure and making sure he uses his products in the right order. We were only able to scour up 4 units: 2 freshly donated (from Minnesota and Nebraska) and 2 frozen stored somewhere for safekeeping. I'm really anxious to see how his surgery goes tomorrow--I might even stop by in the morning. Here I am, on the eve of heading off to France and I'm still thinking about work. There's something wrong with this picture.