Community Corner

Blood Drive Spurs Patch Editor to Donate

Or, how I learned to (almost) stop fearing needles and focus on the good.

You might not know this about me, but I fear needles. 

I don’t mean a casual dislike or a moderate aversion. I mean a petrifying, paralyzing, sob-invoking paranoia. I cry. I scream. If some unfortunate nurse is kind enough to offer their hand for me to squeeze, I break fingers. Only last year I made a nurse cry.

For this reason I have always avoided donating blood, despite the fact that my parents were regular blood donors in my hometown. My father is a celebrity at his local blood bank: he has the rare and coveted O-negative blood, a universal donor. About a week before the waiting period from his last donation was up they’d call to make his next appointment, and he always made time for them.  

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Even with his example, I never gave blood. Not until a street festival in Chatham earlier this year. 

Exactly 30 years before the festival day, June 8, Maryann McCabe, an auxiliary member of the Chatham Emergency Squad, went into labor with her son. During labor she had an amniotic fluid embolism. She required, and received, a blood transfusion.

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This year when I was covering the festival, the same woman stopped me to say hello in front of the squad's donation center. We chatted for a moment, then she asked if I would be participating in their blood drive.

Take it from me, it’s a lot tougher to say no to donating blood when a blood recipient asks you. For the first time in my life, I agreed.

It’s easy not to give blood. We all have things going on in our lives—jobs, families, friends, stuff to do. We’re all busy, and when we get a spare hour a lot of us would rather spend it relaxing rather than driving to the blood bank.

But here’s the thing: It’s easy to give blood, too. The paperwork takes minutes, the preliminary exam is fleeting and the actual giving is, well, not as unpleasant as you’d think.

I’ve been a registered organ donor since I turned 18, but donating blood was never something I was comfortable doing before now. I think this must have been clear to McCabe, because she came inside the bus with me and sat and talked to me. She took my mind off of the needle in my arm, something which registered nurses have failed to do. And just by her presence she reminded me that my blood will go to a real live person somewhere, a person who might not live without it.

On July 15, I received letter from the New York Blood Center. They wrote to thank me for my donation and to give me something: A card with my name and blood type. I’d never known my blood type before. Now, I do. Like my father, I have type O blood—O-positive, specifically—and like my dad, I am a universal donor. According to the American Red Cross, only people with O-negative blood can donate red blood cells to anybody, but the plasma in O-positive blood types can be donated to any other blood type.

Jared Tamasco of the New York Blood Center had some pretty scary statistics about blood donations. Of the 60 percent of the population that is eligible to donate, only about two percent actually do give blood. Of those two percent, they give blood about 1.5 times a year on average, despite the fact that you can give blood every 56 days.

The Chatham Emergency Squad’s next blood drive will be at the Chatham Farmer's Market on Sept. 14. I don’t know about you, but I plan to be there. I just have to manage not to break any fingers while I’m at it.


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