Become a hero: Donate blood products

Become a hero,

donate blood, blood products

Dear Editor,

This is an Open Forum our son wrote in 2002 to encourage people to volunteer platelet donations. It is being reprinted in memory of Russ, who passed away Aug. 23, 2023, from cancer.

Lucile Banzhaf,

McCook, Neb.

Dear Editor,

In President Bush's State of the Union address, he called for us to step up for volunteering.

I would like to challenge the area residents to consider donating platelets and plasma through the Red Cross. I have been traveling with my family and friends to North Platte to donate platelets now for about three years.

Why, you might ask, would you go to North Platte when the Red Cross comes to the area? Platelets and plasma are needed every day for organ transplants and cancer patients It may be for a little boy with leukemia who needs platelets twice a day, three times a week for someone needing a liver transplant.

The reason I and my family began giving was because of a sister and daughter with cancer, and a father and mother-in-law who also had cancer. You feel so unable to help when you watch them fight the good fight and finally succumb to the disease. We felt that the most we could do was to volunteer to donate platelets and plasma.

The process is much like giving blood, but maybe a little more comfortable. They have you fil out the standard questions, then they take you to a nice padded chaise lounge chair.

[For more information about donating platelets contact the North Platte American Red Cross Blood and Platelet Donation Center at (800) 733-2767, or for blood donations call (800)-Red Cross 1-800-733-2767 or visit www.redcrossblood.org. ]

Even you can be someone's unsung hero by giving life-sustaining platelets, plasma or blood

Russ Banzhaf,

McCook, Neb.