The MIX 105.1 - FOX 35 Media Showdown Blood Drive
This weekend we received an email from Mix 105.1 listener Malissa Ehmcke concerning our upcoming blood drive. We hope everyone will consider donating! The blood drive for Florida's Blood Centers is coming up this Friday.
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Dana and all of the Mix Team,
Good morning. I woke up to your Community Connection show this morning regarding Blood Donations. Thank you for choosing this topic. I have a current story to tell you about how blood donations saved a life close to me. It is even more appropriate since today is Father's Day. My father is currently under treatment for esophageal cancer. Thankfully at this time I can report his treatment is showing great signs of success in winning the war. It has been a long battle for Dad and one that has thrown in many complications.
One complication that has arrisen is he developed a condition called TTP - or Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura, but that is a mouthful. It is a rare condition in which your platelets drop alarmingly low and blood transfusion or red cell transfusions do not help the process, it tends to make it worse. It becomes a medical emergency and it was somewhat hard to diagnose in my father since he previously was diagnosed and treated for a condition called ITP - Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura, another mouthful - The two diseases have only one thing in common, low platelet counts... The doctors started treating Dad initially for ITP since he had a history of it, however; Dad did not respond to the ITP treatments. This caused his doctors to conclude it must be the TTP. With TTP the treatment that has to be done is a process called plasmpheresis or plasma exchange. They inserted a port, for easy access, into Dad's neck. This was the riskiest part of the procedure, since his platelet count was at 1,000 at the time. When you drop below 20,000 platelets you loose clotting abilty - the normal plasma count should be hundres of thousands of platelets -hence the extreme medical emergency. He could have bled out at this simple procedure, but thanfully his angels were watching over him.
The plasmaphersis treatments began. They hooked him up daily to a machine that pulled his blood out of his body and spun it in a centrfuge to separate the blood cells from the plasma. The plasma is then removed and replaced with "new" plasma that has been donated. One treatment for Dad took roughly 4 hours from start to finish. It varries by person. His platelets rose slowly over the course of the treatments and by the third treatment he was in a safer spot since his platelets had rissen over 20,000. Dad's treatments happend daily and lasted for about two weeks at an average of 10 +/- bags of plasma a day. So approximatly 140 bags of plasma went into saving his life.
Dad has other problems that complicated the condition, but the most important part of the story is that the donations made at blood drives, or to the blood centers directly are simply what saved him. Durring that very stressful time for our family many people asked my family what they could do to help. I had a standard reply. Donate, if it does not go to Dad it will go to help replace what he used from the supply to save someone else.
I attempted to donate plasma myself while I was home (in Louisiana) during this time. Unfortunately I was unable to donate plasma or red cells due to poor veins - the attempt was a bust, literally! The one vein they were able to find blew out so I was not able to make any type of donation that day. They instructed me to wait about a month before I tried to donate again and that in the future to donate whole blood only. I will plan to make time this Friday to donate for the Mix drive.
I issue a challenge to all your wonderful listeners to do the same, DONATE - even if you are afraid of needles, or don't think you can donate, just TRY. When you donate you may never know what a gift your donation turned out to be. If you know nothing else from making a donation know this - for one family it means we get to celebrate Father's Day with my Dad this year when earlier this year we didn't know if he would make it to his 61st birthday.
Thank you for the work you do informing and helping to make Central Florida a better community.
Sincerely,
Malissa Ehmcke
Good morning. I woke up to your Community Connection show this morning regarding Blood Donations. Thank you for choosing this topic. I have a current story to tell you about how blood donations saved a life close to me. It is even more appropriate since today is Father's Day. My father is currently under treatment for esophageal cancer. Thankfully at this time I can report his treatment is showing great signs of success in winning the war. It has been a long battle for Dad and one that has thrown in many complications.
One complication that has arrisen is he developed a condition called TTP - or Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura, but that is a mouthful. It is a rare condition in which your platelets drop alarmingly low and blood transfusion or red cell transfusions do not help the process, it tends to make it worse. It becomes a medical emergency and it was somewhat hard to diagnose in my father since he previously was diagnosed and treated for a condition called ITP - Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura, another mouthful - The two diseases have only one thing in common, low platelet counts... The doctors started treating Dad initially for ITP since he had a history of it, however; Dad did not respond to the ITP treatments. This caused his doctors to conclude it must be the TTP. With TTP the treatment that has to be done is a process called plasmpheresis or plasma exchange. They inserted a port, for easy access, into Dad's neck. This was the riskiest part of the procedure, since his platelet count was at 1,000 at the time. When you drop below 20,000 platelets you loose clotting abilty - the normal plasma count should be hundres of thousands of platelets -hence the extreme medical emergency. He could have bled out at this simple procedure, but thanfully his angels were watching over him.
The plasmaphersis treatments began. They hooked him up daily to a machine that pulled his blood out of his body and spun it in a centrfuge to separate the blood cells from the plasma. The plasma is then removed and replaced with "new" plasma that has been donated. One treatment for Dad took roughly 4 hours from start to finish. It varries by person. His platelets rose slowly over the course of the treatments and by the third treatment he was in a safer spot since his platelets had rissen over 20,000. Dad's treatments happend daily and lasted for about two weeks at an average of 10 +/- bags of plasma a day. So approximatly 140 bags of plasma went into saving his life.
Dad has other problems that complicated the condition, but the most important part of the story is that the donations made at blood drives, or to the blood centers directly are simply what saved him. Durring that very stressful time for our family many people asked my family what they could do to help. I had a standard reply. Donate, if it does not go to Dad it will go to help replace what he used from the supply to save someone else.
I attempted to donate plasma myself while I was home (in Louisiana) during this time. Unfortunately I was unable to donate plasma or red cells due to poor veins - the attempt was a bust, literally! The one vein they were able to find blew out so I was not able to make any type of donation that day. They instructed me to wait about a month before I tried to donate again and that in the future to donate whole blood only. I will plan to make time this Friday to donate for the Mix drive.
I issue a challenge to all your wonderful listeners to do the same, DONATE - even if you are afraid of needles, or don't think you can donate, just TRY. When you donate you may never know what a gift your donation turned out to be. If you know nothing else from making a donation know this - for one family it means we get to celebrate Father's Day with my Dad this year when earlier this year we didn't know if he would make it to his 61st birthday.
Thank you for the work you do informing and helping to make Central Florida a better community.
Sincerely,
Malissa Ehmcke
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Thanks Malissa! Click HERE for more information about the Media Showdown Blood Drive.
