Sunday, August 23, 2009

WHITE BLOOD CELL DONORS... THANK YOU!

I just wanted to take a second and thank everyone for donating AND everyone that tried or offered to donate their white blood cells for me. I have been in and out of the hospital for the last 18 months and the countless blood draws and biopsies and central lines and other procedures have made me pretty acclimated to this type of crap, so i'm sorry that i have lost a bit of my empathy towards something like a white cell transfusion. I also have basically had no sort of daily responsibility put upon me for the last few months other than "be a patient", so for you guys to actually take the time and jump through the hoops and sacrifice your free time to do this is huge.

I have kept a list of donors and the irony of the situation is that just about everyone of my relatives and close friends that came to visit for the primary purpose of donating was refused by the clinic for one reason or another. Again, thank you for time and I'm so sorry that it didn't work out. I was initially told by the clinic that only about 20% of people that end up screening are denied donor status, but for the 8 people that drove in from Arkansas and Tennessee and Mississippi, there were 8 different reasons given for why they were unable to donate! Adversely, I have had 9 white blood cell transfusions so far, and except for one of those donors, the rest are native houstonians that I had/have never even met in person.

I want to apologize for the whole manner in which this process was thrown together. This was an unforeseen step in this whole process that was basically thrust upon steph to take care of with little instruction, and until she actually went to donate, she was in the blind as much as the next person. As far as future donations are concerned, that's always a little difficult to hash out as well, as i just had the doctors come by today and instructed me to "keep things tentative" with any future donors that i might have lined up(which, if you have been involved in this process at all, you know is a practice in futility). So again, I'm so sorry that the information seems wishy washy at times, but please know that you genuinely restore my faith in the "doers" out there that care and love enough to make an effort or attempt, rather than fall in love with the notion of something or think that it would be a good idea to help out but then take no action because of time or inconvenience. I am the guiltiest of all when it comes to this. Thank you so much, and take care.