Earlier I had put a copy of the Awake! magazine of November 22, 1991, in my case record. Dr. Larson found it and noticed the heading, “Preventing and Controlling Hemorrhage Without Blood Transfusion.” She eagerly scrutinized it to see if there was something she could use to help me survive. Her eyes fell on the word “erythropoietin,” which is a medication that stimulates the body to produce red blood cells. She now administered it. But the medication takes time to produce results. So the question was, Would the erythropoietin work in time?

As Dr. Larson promised, a report about my case, called “Erythropoietin Replaces Blood Transfusion,” was later published in the Swedish medical journal Läkartidningen. It said: “A 35-​year-​old woman, one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, suffered an acute massive obstetric bleeding. She refused blood transfusion but accepted erythropoietin therapy. After nine days of postoperative treatment with high doses of erythropoietin, the hemoglobin increased from 2.9 to 8.2 grams per deciliter without any side effects.”

The article concluded: “Initially the patient was very weak, but she recovered surprisingly fast. Moreover, the postoperative course was totally without complications. The patient could be discharged from the hospital after two weeks.”