The Holiday Season has appeared again!
We are all busy making cookies, putting up decorations, shopping for our loved ones and taking part in all the other normal holiday traditions. It feels like the holidays are the busiest time of the year, but they can also be one of the happiest!
One thing that you can’t forget to cross off your list is donating blood. There is always a need for your lifesaving gift, but with everyone’s busy schedule during the holidays, your gift is needed now more than ever. So you may be getting a phone call soon from a blood donor recruiter. Do everyone a favor: answer the call and schedule an appointment! Or just stop by your local Blood Donor Center and make a donation today!
This is truly the greatest gift you can give someone, as it is a lifesaving gift. Your donation can make someone’s holiday even brighter!
“Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.” – Dale Carnegie
Stacey stormed down her apartment stairs in a frantic, frenzied matter full of commotion. Reaching into her pocket and quickly pulling out her cell phone, the quick gasp and bewildered look on her face were enough to convey an urgent sense of tardiness. Rushing down the rugged sidewalk towards her car, she started to feel a sense of apprehension about what lay ahead in the next hour or so. But, hastily, she climbed into her hatchback and pressed onwards.
How do you overcome your fear?
Stacey suffers from a phobia but not just any phobia. She has been dealing with Trypanophobia (the fear of pins/needles) for a while now, but was inching closer and closer to fully embracing and conquering her fear. Shots as a kid were always horrible. She even seemed to stare at her own grandmother with cautious perception while she knitted. Whatever the root cause, Stacey was absolutely horrified of needles.
It wasn’t until she saw that her college campus was holding a local blood drive that she decided she had to donate. She ultimately couldn’t keep living in fear of something so small… well, not small to her anyways. You see, Stacey’s mother was recuperating and in remission after an enduring battle with breast cancer. She reminisced about the times where she thought her mother wouldn’t make it and remembered hearing about how many platelet and red cell transfusions her mother constantly had to undergo in dealing with the effects of chemotherapy. So after her photography class one day when she saw a flyer promoting a blood drive in the nearby student union. Something inside her just clicked, and she knew it was the right way to not only conquer her fear but give back to someone who might be in the same situation her and her family once were.
As she pulled up to the student union, the caterpillars that were churning in her stomach earlier had gone through their metamorphosis and were now over-sized butterflies flapping up a good amount of anxiety within Stacey. “What if I pass out? What if I get scared and nervous and throw up? What if it is more painful than I expected?” she thought, frightened and aloud. She was so close though now, she just couldn’t give in to the fear of a tiny needle poke.
The last time Stacey felt this nervous she couldn’t remember. After making her way inside, filling out a detailed health questionnaire and having her vital signs checked she was on deck to donate blood for the first time. A smiling woman in medical scrubs came over. “Are you ready, dear?” she politely asked. Stacey just nodded her head and was lead to an open chair. Her pulse was pounding so loud at this point. She even heard one of the English professors in attendance start to quote The Tell-Tale Heart. The nurse who had led her back approached once again, this time with the dreaded needle in hand ready to extract Stacey’s blood. “You can look away dear. This won’t take long at all. I’ll count to three,” she said. Stacey instantly grimaced and covered her eyes, looking in the opposite direction. She was so scared she didn’t even hear the nurse count. “Is it in yet? I’m ready,” Stacey said, her hoodie’s sleeve still covering her eyes.
As she looked down and saw her left arm with the needle in it, she came to terms with things. “I thought you said you were going to count to three?” she asked the nurse. “I did! You didn’t hear me?” the nurse laughed. It was nothing like what Stacey expected – just a poke for about a second, not a huge gaping wound or a bout of excruciating trauma. It was nothing but a little, tiny, almost pain-free pinch. Stacey thought it was even crazier how fast the process was! She donated whole blood and was done with her donation in about ten minutes.
As she walked out of the makeshift donation area, she started smiling and almost blushed, as she thought herself quite silly and yet proud for overcoming her fear head-on. The best part wasn’t even the free Chipotle gift card she got from donating but the fact that she was going to help another girl’s mom going through breast cancer to beat it. To her, that was awesome.
It goes to show you that sometimes the fears and misconceptions we carry about things are really nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
We are having a blood drive here at Incept today! However, aside from just donating blood, tell me about a time when you had to overcome your fear and face it head-on? Did you resolve your fear? What did you learn?
Image Credit: http://bekahstorey.files.wordpress.com
What is a lifetime?
I don’t mean to get all philosophical on you right off the bat. But really think about it. What is a lifetime? It is hard to say. I was inspired recently by a quote from the Dalai Lama, after he was asked what surprises him the most in life…
He said, “Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices his money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present. The result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then he dies having never really lived.”
I remember reading this quote and simply feeling awestruck about how true those words are. Everyday life in a proverbial “daily grind” – going to work, studying for school, paying the bills and so on. I think some people forget to take a second and just look up at the sun, and give grace for being alive. This world isn’t perfect, but when you take a closer look at the simple details in everyday life it sure is beautiful, isn’t it?
What is stopping you?
When it comes to showing appreciation for life, what better way than to donate blood? If you have donated blood before reading this, then take a second to think about where your blood might have gone and who it might have helped. It is almost crazy to think that, in a way, part of you is flowing through someone else. That little pint of blood that you gave could be flowing through the veins of a child going through cancer treatment (and on the road to recovery), all because you decided to take the time out of your busy life to simply give back. It goes beyond the time where the child receives that transfusion for treatment, though. That one blood donation can ultimately be what keeps a person alive. The neat thing is as they grow, and life moves on, there is a little part of you with them.
At Incept, when I’ve talked to first-time blood donors, I really want to convey the following message to them: even if they donate just this one time, they are still producing a lasting, positive impact on someone (or maybe even multiple people) by putting life on pause for a little less than an hour. It makes you think. A regular blood donor is a very rare type of person who is willing to put the rat race on hold or find some extra time to willingly give part of themselves. To me, that is what living is. Living in this life is not just being able to recognize the beauty that surrounds us, but also to recognize when a fellow human being needs help, and answer a noble cause, such as donating blood. Sometimes all that is needed to be asked is, “What is stopping you?”
If you haven’t yet donated blood, what’s stopping you?
Photo Credit: http://www.irishhealth.com
What is stopping you from donating?
What do you think constitutes something to have its own reserved (and celebrated) day each year?
Perhaps it is the billions of multicolored lights, or a bearded intruder sneaking down chimneys with gifts, that comes to mind when Christmas arrives. It might be possible that giant, mutant rabbits suspiciously hiding painted eggs for children is a thought associated with Easter. Or, just maybe, it is the dread you start to get around Valentine’s Day when you hear the special lad or lady in your life drop hints about that pricey gift they’ve been eyeing to prove your absolute devotion.
For me, I can never really understand some of the customs we have for celebrating holidays. Nonetheless, I enjoy celebrating most, whether it be with explosions, marathons of stop-motion animated classics or seemingly endless amounts of honey-glazed ham and turkey.
Today, though, we are not going to talk about jolly, fat men in red suits. Rather than take you on another trip down memory lane, pining and combing through thoughts of the glorious, sugary sieges of many past Halloweens, I want to talk about World Blood Donor Day, a day we recognize at Incept.
World Blood Donor Day is quite the dark horse when it comes to special days on the calendar. There were no glowing neon balls dramatically making their descent, back when World Blood Donor Day started on June 14, 2004. The date was chosen due to it being the birthday of Karl Landsteiner, an American biologist and physician noted for having first distinguished the main blood groups. Rather than being just another day on the calendar, it is a day to say thank you to blood donors for giving the gift of life and also (if you’re eligible) a day to donate blood.
As you might know, blood cannot be made, so it has to be given. What better day to donate than on World Blood Donor Day? It’s right at the start of the summer season, when the need for blood tends to increase, and it only takes an hour or less (in most cases) to complete a visit to a donor center or blood drive to donate blood. As a blood donor, you are literally giving part of yourself to help out someone in need.
How many lives can Santa Claus claim to have saved? What about the Easter bunny? About how many times do you think that rascal has given blood donation a thought?
That is the beautiful thing about this day. It is not celebrated with television specials or over-the-top, non-existent holiday figureheads. It is about the donor. It is about the businessman that finds time between lunch and meetings to donate blood at the office. It is about a high school kid that donated even though his school is on summer break. It is about the typical soccer mom who finds not only the time, but also compassion, between taking the kids to practice to help others. There are no lavish parades on this day. No holiday feast. No holiday medley to be sung. There is something bigger: good people doing a great thing – giving the gift of life.
If you haven’t donated blood yet this summer, what is stopping you?
Photo Credit: http://www.whatsonxiamen.com
June 14th is World Blood Donor Day, which is a particularly important day for us here at Incept.
It’s the day we celebrate and honor blood donors
from around the world who give up a little of their time (and blood) to help someone in need. Most blood donors will never know who their blood eventually helps, but they donate anyway – sometimes several times a year – for no other reason than because they want to do something altruistic to benefit someone else. World Blood Donor Day is for them.
World Blood Donor Day was started on June 14th, 2004, in Johannesburg, South Africa by the World Health Organization (also known as WHO), as a way to encourage voluntary blood donation throughout the world. This holiday really demonstrates the need for donors to regularly give blood to prevent shortages in hospitals and clinics within their community. The need for donors is especially dire in developing countries where the amount of blood donated is scarce. According to the WHO, out of the 80 countries with low blood donation rates (ie: countries where fewer than 10 people out of every thousand donate), 79 are developing nations. By celebrating World Blood Donor Day, we’re able to raise the awareness of just how important being a volunteer blood donor really is.
Some might ask why hospitals and blood centers don’t simply offer to pay individuals for their blood if the need is so great. Admittedly, this is an idea that makes sense, but it’s not without risks. By offering to pay for blood, it raises the likelihood that the blood you received wouldn’t be safe to give to someone else. Studies have shown that blood donated for profit is more likely to come from individuals who have medical conditions that could make it dangerous for another person to receive their blood, or that the “donors” themselves might donate too frequently, putting themselves in harm’s way. By only taking volunteers, blood centers are more likely to have donors who are healthy, making the blood in our hospitals that much safer.
This year, the theme for World Blood Donor Day is “More blood. More life.” This theme really drives home the need for more people to become regular donors. Even here in the U.S., we sometimes have blood shortages. Out of the 38% of people eligible to donate blood, fewer than 10% actually donate on a regular basis. When you consider that about 4.5 million Americans alone will a need blood transfusion every year, the need for blood donations becomes staggeringly obvious.
Donating blood is very important. By spending just one hour to donate a pint of blood, you could be helping up to three people who desperately need it.
From all of us here at Incept, we want to wish you a happy World Blood Donor Day this June 14th!
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There are a lot of unsung heroes in the medical field.
Doctors, nurses and researchers all work tirelessly to help make our lives (and our health) a little 
better. Dr. Charles Drew was one such individual. His work is one of the cornerstones of modern blood transfusions, and he is the father of blood banks as we know them today.
Charles Richard Drew was born June 3, 1904. He was passionate about both education and medicine, and after his graduation from Amherst College in Massachusetts, he spent two years as a biology teacher at Morgan State University in Baltimore. In 1928, Dr. Drew went back to school at McGill University to pursue his interest in medicine. Five years later, he graduated once again, this time with Master of Surgery and Doctor of Medicine degrees. After his internships at both Montreal General Hospital and at the Royal Victoria Hospital, he returned to the U.S. to begin working as a professor of pathology at Howard University.
Dr. Drew’s greatest achievements, though, were those that helped the blood banking industry.
It began as a dissertation on what he called “banked blood.” In his paper, Dr. Drew wrote about a technique he had devised to help store and ship plasma and other blood products. Up until then, blood could only be stored for about two days before the red blood cells decomposed too badly to be used. By putting the collected blood into a centrifuge and separating the plasma from the rest, the blood could be refrigerated and shipped separately to whichever hospital needed it. By storing the blood this way, it could be recombined up to a week later and safely given to the patient.
Dr. Drew was also the first person to realize that while even though blood typing was a must for whole blood transfusions, with plasma, a donor could have a different blood type than that of the plasma they were receiving and still be able to accept it without any negative side effects. Because of his dedication and expertise, He was asked to travel to England to help set up the country’s first blood bank. This couldn’t have happened at a better time.
As World War II began sweeping across Europe, Charles Drew worked tirelessly to help ensure that the soldiers fighting abroad had blood for transfusions. He became the supervisor of the Blood Transfusion Association in New York and was later named a project director for the American Red Cross. His achievements were finally recognized in 1948 when he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) because of his discoveries of how to better store and ship plasma and whole blood.
Because of Dr. Drew’s dedication and compassion, countless lives have been saved. I believe that it’s safe to say that it’s because of Dr. Drew’s work that we have blood centers and hospitals that are able to collect, store and provide the blood many patients need to recover. He really is one of the unsung heroes of medicine.
Who are some other great medical heroes?
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Blood transfusions have come a long way since the early days when a serious loss of blood was almost certain to cost you your life. We take for granted this seemingly simple medical procedure, but if you take a second to stop and look at its history, blood transfusions are really a medical marvel.
The first successful human blood transfusion didn’t take place until 1667 when a lamb’s blood was successfully transfused into a human being. Up until that point, doctors had tried just about everything to help patients
An early blood transfusion from a lamb to a human being.
who had lost severe amounts of blood. Attempts to transfuse milk, beer and other concoctions were made and were nearly always fatal. Even after the first successful human blood transfusion, many patients still died from unknown complications.
It wasn’t until 1901 when the four blood types were discovered by Austrian scientist Dr. Karl Landsteiner these mysterious deaths following transfusions became clear. Six years later, Ludvig Hektoen made the suggestion that patients might be less likely to die during blood transfusions if they attempted to cross-match blood types between donors and patients. Later that same year, Reuben Ottenberg took that suggestion and made the first blood transfusion using blood typing and cross-matching between donors and blood recipients.
Not long after, there was another huge advancement in blood donations: blood centers.
Cook County Hospital: Home of the first blood center!
On March 15th, 1937, Chicago’s Cook County Hospital set up the first official blood bank, and it wasn’t long before others were following Cook County Hospital’s example. The Irwin Memorial Blood Bank was the first community-based blood center and opened its doors in San Francisco in 1941. In 1947, the AABB (American Association of Blood Banks) was established as an international organization dedicated to the advancement of science and the practice of blood transfusion. By 1950, there were 1,500 hospital blood banks, 46 community blood centers and 31 American Red Cross regional blood centers in the U.S. alone!
Nowadays, donating and receiving blood is safer than ever before. Each unit of blood undergoes about 13 different tests for infectious diseases before transfusion, ensuring that its recipient will be getting healthy, safe blood. We’re also not limited to just whole blood collections either! Plasma, platelet and double red blood cell (or ALYX) donations are collected at most hospitals and donor centers all over the country. Each different type of donation has its benefits to those who need it most.
Considering that 1 in every 7 people going into a hospital needs blood, we’re fortunate to have the technology available to ensure that our blood supply is safe and there when we need it. But we couldn’t do it without donors. So the next time you’re out and about and see a blood drive, stop on in! The need is constant and can really help someone in need!
What do you think is the most interesting part about blood transfusions?
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Nearly everyone knows about the blood types: A+, A-, B+, B-, O+, O-, AB+ and AB-.
But did you know there’s another factor that could make your blood donation even more important to those who need it? You may be a cytomegalovirus-negative (CMV-, for short) donor and not even know it. What exactly does it mean to have CMV- blood though?
Cytomegalovirus
Cytomegalovirus, is a common, flu-like virus that most people encounter at some point during their lifetime. Although CMV comes from the same virus family as chickenpox, mononucleosis and herpes, it is usually harmless, and most people don’t even realize they’ve been exposed to it. In the U.S., between 50-85% of adults will contract CMV by the time they reach the age of 40.
However, CMV can be dangerous to individuals with weakened immune systems, newborns and people undergoing organ transplants. For these individuals, having a blood donor who is CMV- (someone who has never been exposed to cytomegalovirus) is very important!
How do you know if you’re a CMV- donor or not?
Blood centers run a whole battery of tests on the blood they’ve collected before it goes to the hospitals. Cytomegalovirus exposure is one of the many things for which they test. Someone who has been exposed to CMV, no matter how long ago it happened, will develop antibodies that remain in their body for the rest of their life. If a donor doesn’t have the CMV antibodies, then they are a great candidate to donate blood for babies!
The next time you come down to donate, talk to your phlebotomist. If you’ve donated before, they should be able to look at your health history to see if you’re CMV- or CMV+. A lot of donor centers have great recognition programs for their CMV- donors. And who doesn’t want to know that their blood donation was able to help a newborn who needed it!?
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The average adult human has about ten pints of blood in their body.
For having such a large amount of blood, we rarely stop to think about it. We know that our blood carries oxygen and nutrients to our cells, cleans and clots wounds and helps us fight diseases (through the white blood cells), but how much do we really know about it?
Firstly, we need to think about what composes our blood, and where it comes from. Blood is made up of four parts: red blood cells, white blood cells, plasma and platelets.
Red blood cells are the part of the blood that carries oxygen to and away from our cells. These round cells are biconcave-shaped, having a bowl-like depression on each side. Red blood cells are produced by the body’s red bone marrow and usually have a lifespan of about 120 days. Fun fact for blood donors: the red blood cells are fully replaced within 56 days following a blood donation. When they become too old and need replaced, the cells are removed from the blood by the macrophages in the liver and spleen.
The disease-fighting part of our blood – white blood cells, also referred to as leukocytes – are made in the white bone marrow of the body. Usually, there are about 7,000 white blood cells in a microliter of blood. When fighting an illness, however, that number increases. Believe it or not, there are actually six main types of white blood cells (neutrophils, eosinophils,
basophils, bands, monocytes and lymphocytes), with each fighting different kinds of bacterial or parasitic infections. The white blood cells usually only have a lifespan of 13 to 20 days before they are destroyed by our lymphatic system.
Plasma is the fluid part of the blood (made by the liver) in which the other parts are suspended. It’s made up of about 92% water and normally appears yellowish – though it can sometimes be milky after a meal high in fat. The remaining 8% of plasma is comprised of dissolved proteins, salts, glucose and other chemicals necessary to the body. Plasma also carries hormones and electrolytes throughout the body, making up the largest portion of the blood.
The last part of the blood, platelets, are also made by white bone marrow and are responsible for clotting wounds. Humans have between 150,000 to 400,000 platelets in each microliter of blood. These spiky-looking cells usually only last about ten days before they become too old and worn (and are destroyed by the lymphatic system).
As you can see, blood is more complicated than we tend to think.
Studies show that 1 in 7 people who go to the hospital will need blood. That may not seem like a huge amount, but when you consider that only 38% of the U.S. population are actually able to donate, and less than 10% of these eligible individuals actually do donate, the need becomes more apparent.
If we could all take the time once a year to donate blood, this simple deed would have a huge impact on the blood shortages hospitals face every day. Donating blood only takes about an hour, but it could have a lasting impact on the life of another.
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This month, it’ll have been one full year since we kicked off our blog here at Incept. In honor of this first anniversary, “Happy Birthday to the Incept Blog!”
On that note, I’ve decided to pick my top-10 Incept Saves blog posts and run them down. Here they are:
- “Blood Donors! Everyday Heroes Saving Lives” ~ January 2010, by Kathie Manchester
- “Why I Think Blood Donors Are Hip 2 Give” ~ September 2010, by Rebecca Crosen
- “Above & Beyond | One Blood Donors Story” ~ July 2010, guest authored by Dawn Lunsford (published under Stephen Smith)
- “So… What is the Power of a Thank You?” ~ November 2010, by Billie Johnson
- “A Sometimes Thankless Job” ~ August 2010, by Billie Johnson
- “A Day In The Life of a Bloodmobile” ~ November 2010, by Stephen Smith
- “The Price Of Life” ~ October 2010, by Rebecca Crosen
- “Blood Donor Recruiters: Talk the Talk & Walk the Walk” ~ June 2010, by Stephen Smith
- “The 40-Gallon Hero” ~ July 2010, guest authored by Dawn Lunsford (published under Stephen Smith)
- “How Sweet It Is! The Sweet Side Of Giving Blood” ~ August 2010, by Brian Dodson
So there they are, folks – my picks for the top-10 Incept Saves posts from our first year of blogging!
Did I miss a post that you liked? Which post(s) would you have picked?
The Holiday Season has appeared again!
