Organizing a blood drive – thoughts and volunteers wanted

This is Day 39 of my baby, Serenity, being diagnosed with and treated for Leukemia.  Day 37 is here. 

Serenity’s life was saved because people donated blood.  I have a lot of guilt about that – I have MAJOR needle-phobia and have always avoided blood donation.  But as I watched Serenity bravely face getting poked by needles over and over and over again (at one point, before she got her port, she had bandages on both her hands and arms and they were going to access her through her foot) I knew that was going to change forever.  As the next week went by and she received several life-saving bags of blood and platelets, I knew that I was going to become a blood donor for life – and that I would advocate and encourage others to do so as well.

And so it begins – the quarterly Serenity Foundation Blood Drive.  My good friend, Rachel Strate, is one of my heroes – she is an avid platelet and blood donor – and I’m counting on her and others to help put all this together.  I’ve talked to ARUP (our local blood center) and there are some rules to doing a blood drive, one of them is that I have to get 35 people to commit to donating blood at the drive.  Another is getting a location, but I can take care of that one.  I’m thinking somewhere around Draper or Thanksgiving Point.  We’ll do it towards the end of July and I’ll be announcing a date in the next couple days.  I’d like to make this a Geek Dinner/Tweetup type of event with blood donating, blogging, tweeting and eating going on.

I’d also really like to make this more than a local thing.  If you’re reading this and you would like to help out and organize a local blood drive to coincide with ours, PLEASE DO!  Let me know and I’ll try to help publicize it.  I think it would be a LOT of fun to have multiple blood drives going on all over the country at the same time and for us to all be blogging and tweeting pictures and updates at the same time! 

This post is really a notification and call for volunteers.  If you are willing to donate blood with us, please let me know.  If you’re willing to organize a local drive, please let me know.  We’ll get customized banners like the one above made for your drive and have ones that everyone can put on their blog if they want. 

Blood is absolutely critical to saving little lives like that of my daughter and so many others.  Every one of you have blood and thus the capacity to help save those lives.  Please, Please join us in providing the elixir of life!

As a side note, I know that blood drives are nothing new and that many of you may already give blood regularly.  I also know that according to ARUP, only 4% of those who are able to actually donate blood.  This is a call to action for the other 96% – join me in becoming a willing donor!

The story of Serenity’s battle with Leukemia begins here.