Ten donors kept Gary alive

WARWICK SMITH/Manawatu Standard

ALIVE AND KICKING: Gary Leader is coaching his Newbury School kids' team after a soccer field injury this season took him near to death. ``If nobody had given blood, that would have been it,`` he says.

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Palmerston North father of three Gary Leader has ten blood donors to thank for making sure he showed up for photos with his daughter's soccer team this week.

The coach of Jaimee's Red Sox Newbury team of ten-year-olds was within minutes of bleeding to death three months ago after he was injured in his own soccer match.

Playing for Red Sox Plumbtech, he'd jumped for a header, was knocked backwards and fell heavily. He got up, not feeling too flash, and carried on until half time.

"I thought I'd broken a rib, it was quite painful."

But when he started fainting, his team mates scooped him up and took him for medical help.

He'd ruptured his spleen, was bleeding internally and running out of blood pressure.

Mr Leader said there were no emergency department delays for him as medics set about saving his life.

"They were shoving pipes in me, and they were running out of time to get a scan done before they had to cut me open and stop me bleeding to death."

The spleen, a reservoir for red blood cells, bleeds excessively when damaged. It often has to be removed after an injury to stop the blood loss.

"It's a bit like a tomato. You can't stitch it because it keeps tearing."

Mr Leader thought he'd lose his.

"They said the spleen would be coming out, but then decided it was too good to throw away."

Instead, the organ was tightly wrapped in mesh to stop the bleeding, and the mesh will dissolve as the spleen heals.

People can live well without a spleen, but their natural immunity is affected. A menu of immunisations and antibiotics is needed to protect against infection.

From the time he got to hospital until two days later Mr Leader needed six units of whole blood containing red blood cells, and four of straw-coloured fluid plasma to replace what he lost. Ten people would have been involved in donating that much blood product.

"If no-one had given blood, that would have been it for me."

Mr Leader lost 8kg as well as a lot of blood, and after two days in intensive care he was a week in hospital before going home - to return the next day with pneumonia.

He was home to stay after two and a half weeks, and says he's now back to health with just the scar as evidence of his scrape with death.

It's not entirely approved, but he did make a tentative return to soccer for the Fathers' Day "blood match" at Memorial Park, when he played with the little kids.

He says he gave wife Lisa and the girls, Jaimee, 10, Abby, 8, and Emma, 4, a real fright. "But I'm alive, I've got to be cheerful about that."

He says he's told his story to support the blood service, and hopes it will encourage others to be donors. His days as a donor ended with restrictions on people living more than six months in England before 1996.

- © Fairfax NZ News