There is a little girl in our ward who was diagnosed with leukemia about 3 months ago. She is only 3 years old. She's been down at Primary Children's a lot to do her chemotherapy. Only 3 days after they diagnosed her, they started chemo. She has put on a lot of weight from the steroids she's been on and she's already had to have 4 blood transfusions.Our stake put on a blood drive for them on behalf of the little girl, McCall. It's kind of like a paying it forward, her parents said. They announced it in church, they advertised all over the Internet and the newspapers, trying to bring in anyone they could in the area.
Josh has never given blood. He has a horrible fear of needles, IVs, blood. He gets lightheaded when they do anything like that. He's never given blood because of this problem. When they announced the blood drive for McCall, he said to me, "I'm going to do it. I don't care how sick it makes me." I couldn't believe it. I was so proud of him.
His appointment was for 8:40 pm and he didn't get home until 11 pm. He said there were so many people when he got there and the drive was supposed to shut down at 9 pm. They had 120 people give blood. Mountain Star was doing the blood drive and one of the workers said that it was the biggest drive they've had all year.
Josh did just fine, he didn't even get pale. Wahooooo!!! I'm so proud of him. For those of you who don't have a problem with needles, you don't understand what a big feat this was for him. Everyone has something that they struggle with and this was a huge step toward him overcoming his fear. It just proved to me what a sacrifice it was for him.
Oh and I couldn't donate due to some health issues or I would have. Just don't want you thinking that I'm a total slacker. Slacker, yes... total slacker, no!
3 comments:
I can't donate either, but after the girls and I received all those transfusions at delivery, my dad went in and donated to "replace" every pint we had received. To him, it was the idea of giving back something that someone had given to us. I always think it's great when we sacrifice for other people. I know I am very grateful for all our donors.
So proud of you Josh! What a noble cause to give blood. Hope everything goes well for this little girl. She is a trooper.
I think that is so neat he was able to put aside his fear for this little girl. I have never given blood (like from blood drives, only for testing purposes), but it is definitely not on my list of things I'm good at. I should go though and see what I can give. Way to go Josh!!
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