True blood.
The older I get, the more and more I care about helping others. As simplistic as that sounds, the desire to think outside serving myself has become palpable. The evolution has gone from caring about my self-fulfilling prophecy to get a college education and climb the corporate ladder, to focusing on friends & family – taking time to let them each know through words and actions how important they are to me on a regular basis, to eventually wanting to help strangers.
Last week while reading a women’s magazine on the treadmill, something I’ve done countless times in an attempt to keep my mind occupied instead of focusing on the muscle pains, one particular story resonated with me. So much so, I was not only wiping my sweat, but wiping my tears. Over the years through various magazine articles, TV news specials, documentaries, based-on-a-true-story movies etc., I’ve had my fair share of heartstring jerking reactions to these tragic stories and ultimately tuck them away inside my “I’m so blessed” box.
But not this time. This time I ripped out the page with a call-to-action scrolled across the bottom.
The story in a nut shell: A young girl named Katie in college attempted to donate blood while walking through campus, but her iron count was too low so didn’t qualify. The neighboring booth waved her over…to become a bone marrow donor. Not knowing what it really entailed or the ramifications, she signed the dotted line. Six months later she was called — another young lady, 22-year-old Anna, 2,000 miles away was fighting Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). Chemotherapy wouldn’t be enough to save her. Katie was a perfect match for Anna.
By the end of the article, I learned that the actual donation process isn’t quite as bad as I originally thought (painful drilling of the bone). Turns out donating marrow for adults is best done through extracting blood cells intravenously from the arm, like giving plasma. If the transplant takes, with the help of some meds, the recipient’s blood-making stem cells are replaced with the donor’s, which become new, healthy blood cells for the rest of the patient’s life. By the time it hit newsstands, Anna was cancer-free 18 months and she even got to meet the selfless, sweet, complete stranger that changed her life.
Every five minutes, someone is diagnosed with blood cancer, such as leukemia and lymphoma. Every ten minutes, blood cancer takes a life. Currently only 3 in 10 patients will find a matching donor that could save their lives.
I thought, “Why can’t I do that too? I’m healthy. I don’t have any diseases. I’ve got good blood.” So I registered online under the Be a Match list, which will remain active until I’m 61-years-old. Now I wait for my cheek-swabbing kit to come in the mail, and see if somehow, someway, someday, I can help save a life.
Ironically enough, I don’t know what my blood type is, nor have I ever donated blood. Until yesterday. I had just finished a grueling Spin class and as I was walking out of the gym, anxious to get home and watch the train wreck of a show The Bachelor, I spotted a Virginia Blood Services poster by the exit. What do you know…donations were right outside in the parking lot, thanks to their mobile unit. I knew what I had to do. One hour later, I walked away with an engraved VBS silver keychain, an awesome pink florescent arm bandage, and one less pint of blood in me. My official donator’s card will come in the mail soon…I can’t help but wonder if my cell type will match my personality type: A.
What I learned from literature while trying to ignore the clear bag filling up (I admire everyone in the medical field for their tolerance of broken flesh & excreting liquids): One pint of blood can save up to three lives! Someone needs blood every two seconds. About 1 in 7 people entering a hospital need blood. There is no substitute for human blood.
I’m thrilled to now be a lifeline, literally, for others in need. What I find delicious is that it all comes full circle: Just one more incentive to take care of me, inside and out, so that I may be of service to others through healthy, true blood.
Speaking of, to humor myself in search of a silver lining, I humbly stepped on the scale this morning, thinking for sure I would see a subtle shift. In addition to busting my ass these last few weeks trying to dissolve dozens of Christmas cookies super glued to my thighs, I discovered that blood makes up about 7 percent of our body’s weight.
However, apparently not even siphoning bodily fluid directly out of my system will budge the unreasonably selfish pounds. *Hopefully* in time, the Law of Karma will play in my favor and lose the excessive mass while purposefully shedding a few pints.
