Happy Summer...and bone marrow or blood donataion

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Hello everyone.  Dillon is chugging along, slowly but surely climbing this, what seemed like, insurmountable mountain.  He is nearing the top with only occasional rain storms and tripping over rocks (climbing a mountain is like that, right.....two steps up, rest, one step back). :))

Folks are still fully engaged with us in our journey and continue to ask..."What can we do to help?"

I am writing today with an answer to that question......

#1:  Sign up to be a bone marrow donor.  There are two ways that people can do this....as an adult from age 18 to 61 you can sign up to donate.  The other way is for expectant parents to donate the umbilical cord blood from their newborn baby.  It is really easy to sign up and on the website below they give all the information you need regarding the process of donating.  I know it sounds scary and huge....but you can literally save a life!!  Someone made the choice to do this and we have our boy standing before us as a result.  Without the donation and the resulting transplant, Dillon would not be with us.  He would have died last summer at UNM as his airway was being compromised and his kidneys were shutting down.  Thank the Lord and all the spirits and positive energy in this universe that someone made the choice to sign up for umbilical cord donation and he was saved!!  You have it within your power to be that person for another family.  So I urge you to carefully consider this as an option and to "pay it forward" in honor of Sir Dill Pickle.  
http://bethematch.org

#2:  Another way to help that is more immediate is to donate blood and/or platelets.  Dillon received over 80 transfusions during his stays at UNM and Children's Colorado both in the form of red blood cells and platelets.  These transfusions were as much a part of saving his life as the transplant....without them he would not have recovered and would not be here today.  Platelets are especially important because it is a longer donation process (several hours) and the platelets are only good for 5 days....so the hospitals need a steady supply coming in all the time.  There were a couple of times in Denver where the hospital ran out of platelets.  They had to delay transfusions for lots of people including Dillon and then they ended up having to buy platelets from an outside source and they cost the hospital $600 per unit!!!  So contact your local hospital, Red Cross, or United Blood Services to find out how, where, and what you can donate (not all locations are set up to take platelets). 


So there it is....my plea for help!!!   Lets all take this experience that has been (and continues to be) scary and heart-wrenching and unbearable and amazing to save another life!!

THANKS IN ADVANCE!!!!

Can anyone and everyone who reads this consider posting the information on their own blogs or on facebook or any other form of communication that I might be overlooking.

Here are a couple of photos to make you smile....

Big D enjoying some hot wings....he ate 5 plus some coleslaw (a large meal for him :)

Dillon riding a "banana bike"

Happy Happy Luca cruising on his banana bike.

Luca on top of Sandia Mountain (he and Grampy rode the tram)