LEWISTON – Doctors told Karen LaRoche they would need about 12 hours to rebuild her fiancee’s shattered pelvis.

The surgery was scheduled for Monday morning. LaRoche went to bed Sunday night, prepared for a long day in the waiting room.

The call came early in the morning.

Gerry LaBonte’s surgery was being postponed. Doctors told LaRoche that they no longer had the six pints of blood needed for the procedure.

They had to give it to someone else – a local woman who lacerated her liver in a car accident Sunday night and needed 60 pints immediately.

In order to perform the emergency surgery, Central Maine Medical Center borrowed blood from four other hospitals in Maine and sent a helicopter to Dedham, Mass., to pick up an extra 10 pints.

LaRoche was told that it would take a couple of days to replenish the supply.

In the meantime, LaBonte, who was injured last week when the roof of his Durham house collapsed on him, would be placed in an induced coma to keep him stable during the wait.

It was the first time that CMMC was forced to postpone surgery due to the severe shortage of blood.

But the threat has existed for months, said Donna Beaulieu, the manager of the hospital’s blood bank.

“There always used to be a shortage in July and December because that is when people are on vacation or too busy with the holidays to give blood,” Beaulieu said.

But, over the past two years, the supply never picked back up, leaving CMMC and every other hospital in New England with less than a quarter of the daily blood supply considered ideal by the American Red Cross.

“We’re a car wreck away from disaster, and that is not good,” said Eric Lynes, a Red Cross donor recruiter. “The blood supply is constantly fragile.”

Lynes organizes blood drives in the Lewiston, Auburn, Brunswick and Bath areas. The dilemma, he said, is the same throughout the country: Less people are donating blood at a time when the need is constantly increasing.

The increased need comes with the simple fact that people are living longer and that new medical technologies are making more surgeries possible.

Nationwide, Lynes said, 4 to 5 percent of the eligible population donates blood. Seventy percent of the population will need it at some point in their lives.

“There is something wrong with that picture,” Lynes said.

Both Beaulieu and the manager of the blood bank at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center said their hospitals always have blood reserved for transfusions, which must be performed immediately. But it has been a long time since their supply for surgery – planned and unplanned – hasn’t been severely low.

According to Lynes, the American Red Cross ideally needs 300 pints a day to supply Maine’s 37 hospitals with a minimal supply.

“We’ve been falling way short of that,” Lynes said.

After a story about Gerry LaBonte’s accident appeared in the Sun Journal, dozens of people called Lynes and CMMC wanting to know how they could donate blood.

Lynes let them know about three blood drives already scheduled to take place in Lewiston-Auburn next week. While he is thrilled about the response, he wants people to realize the importance of not waiting for a tragedy.

“There are hundreds of medical situations that happen every day,” he said. “We just cannot act when there is a disaster.”

LaBonte is scheduled to undergo surgery Thursday morning. Doctors have ensured his family that the induced coma has not caused him any harm.

“Everything happens for a reason,” LaRoche said. “I’ve been telling everyone who calls that they can’t do anything to help Gerry, but they should go give blood for the next person who needs it.”

lchmelecki@sunjournal.com