Saturday, July 12, 2008

Good Deed: Gift of Life

From Ali:

This morning, I donated platelets for the first time. I'll be going back in two weeks, and again, and again.

Little Warrior is the one who inspired me to get off my butt and make the jump from whole blood donations to platelets.

Ali, thank you so much for doing this. This is a tremendous gift. Apparently, from spinning whole blood donations to get out the platelets, it takes 6 adult donors to make up one pediatric unit of platelets. And platelets are what they are always low on.

This is ... literally ... giving of yourself. Little Warrior hasn't received platelets (yet), but every time we go in for in-hospital chemo (which is where we are right now), she needs a blood transfusion at the end of it. I never take it for granted. Watching the red blood drip into her, and seeing the color come back to her cheeks (and the ensuing energy boost), I always think about the fact that the blood came from people ... people who took time off of work, or time off from fun, and braved needles to give their blood.

Or platelets. Thank you.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I could follow this blog and not do something.

It's an honor to be able to do this.

Unknown said...

Oops, that was supposed to say, "I could not follow this blog and not do something."