(Memphis) Just in time for Thanksgiving, a Memphis man says he is grateful for Baptist East, the MED, and everybody who gives blood.
Drew Brooks found himself in a freak accident this month and needed all of the above to save his life.
“I just got a new knife and I always test my knives,” said Drew Brooks, a real estate analyst with Loeb Properties.
Drew admits it wasn’t his brightest move: testing the sharpness of a knife by cutting through some old blanket.
“I was holding it this way and cutting down and the knife went through it like butter, basically, and into me right here.”
The hunting knife with a four-inch blade went all the way into Drew’s abdomen, slicing through a major artery.
“My normal reaction would be the rip it out, so I did, and that and that’s when I felt the warmth, the blood.”
Holding a towel on his wounds, Drew woke up his roommate.
“I remember this part, I said ‘I think I’m dying.’”
You can still see the blood in Drew’s car from when his roommate tried to get him to the hospital in record time.
“Right when John Michael got me to Baptist East, I went into shock and lost consciousness.”
From there, Drew was loaded into a helicopter and arrived at the MED four minutes later.
He immediately went into surgery after losing an immense amount of blood.
“It was two or three liters of blood, and you have five or six in your body. They opened me up, Dr. Minard and Dr. Sharpe at the MED, and said I had bled one liter just in my stomach.”
Drew’s scar shows what it took to save his life, to be here, the day before Thanksgiving.
He wanted to thank the doctors, “the chopper team, and everyone who gives blood.”
He’s grateful the freak accident may be something he can look back on and one day laugh about.
“I might not play with knives anymore.”
Drew says he’s learned how important it is to give blood.
Drew’s employer, Loeb Properties, is holding a blood drive December 18 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at 825 Valleybrook Drive.
