Giving from the heart

Month after month, year after year, donors give blood and hope at local drives

Paige Richmond

of the Gateway

When Jim Hanson talks about the first time he gave blood at Cascade Regional Blood Services, tears well up in his eyes.

“It was worth the great feeling,” said Hanson, remembering what inspired him to begin a 35-year history of regular donations.

In 1971, one of Hanson’s close family members was suffering from diabetes and underwent leg amputation surgery at St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma.

Since Cascade supplies blood to most hospitals in the South Puget Sound — including all Franciscan Health System hospitals, like St. Joseph’s, and all MultiCare Health System facilities — Hanson decided to give blood at a local drive.

He’s given more than 17 gallons of blood to Cascade since.

Every eight weeks — the mandatory waiting period between donations — Hanson donates 1 pint of A-positive blood.

In the past three decades, he has donated 138 times.

It’s more than just a labor of love for Hanson, who owns the Great Car Care Center in Gig Harbor. The 64-year-old certified public accountant has to swallow his fears every time he walks into a donation center.

“I’m terrified of needles,” he said. “I have been going to the blood bank since 1972, and I have never looked at what’s going on there.”

Instead, he concentrates on the task at hand.

“I just focus my eyes up,” he said, laughing. “I know the ceiling pretty well.”

According to Kelley Gregory, Cascade’s marketing manager, it is regular donors like Hanson who keep blood banks in business and who make blood drives successful.

More than 80 percent of donors at Cascade’s blood drives, like the weekly event in the parking lot of Albertsons in Gig Harbor North or the multi-location drive happening in town this month, are repeat givers.

“If every donor donated two or three times each year across the country, there would be no blood shortage,” Gregory said.

But what keeps donors — and Gregory points out that Gig Harbor has plenty of regular blood donors — coming back every two months?

One reason is that, despite the needles, the process is relatively painless.

It works like this: First, potentials donors are asked a series of confidential questions about lifestyle and medical history to make sure they are eligible. Then, a donor specialist performs a mini-physical, where the pulse, blood pressure, temperature, hemoglobin and iron level of the donor is measured.

If the answers to the questions and results of the physical are satisfactory, the donor can then give 1 pint of blood.

The entire process of donating blood, from the moment a donor walks in the door until the last drop of blood is drawn, takes less than one hour.

For each donation received, three lives are saved. That means Hanson’s donations have saved more than 400 lives, for those keeping track.

Gregory notes that Gig Harbor donors are “so supportive of (Cascade) collectively,” regularly showing up for drives and coming back whenever they can.

“That weekly blood drive shows incredible dedication,” she said. “We get 35 donors every week (at Albertsons). That’s gold.”

Cascade can thank long-time harbor resident Pat Jerkovich for the drive’s high turnout.

Gregory said Jerkovich has given more than 20 gallons of blood in as many years, all while motivating other residents to become life-long donors.

“I encouraged a friend to go with me, and then three other friends,” said Jerkovich, 77. “They started calling us the Lunch Bunch, because we would go out to lunch before and then show up together.”

She’s also encouraged her children, in-laws and grandchildren to donate blood. Jerkovich and as many as 11 family members have shown up to a Cascade blood drive at the same time.

“We’re all healthy. It didn’t take very long, and why not?” she said about the reasons she has motivated her family to give blood. “It didn’t harm us. It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

Jerkovich, who has lived in the harbor for 57 years, began giving blood for the same reason Hanson did.

“My husband’s grandmother needed blood at the time, and I didn’t think much of it,” she said.

But she hasn’t been able to give blood for a while now, due to health problems. After having back surgery last year, Jerkovich came down with pneumonia, followed by blood clots in her lungs.

She is currently taking blood-thinning medication and won’t be allowed to give blood for the next six months.

“I’m healthy otherwise,” she said. “This was just a fluke.”

And Jerkovich will be eligible to donate blood again, once her health improves.

Gregory points out that many potential donors never donate because they incorrectly believe that certain health problems would make them ineligible.

“People self-select out because they think that we wouldn’t want their blood, because they are on a certain medication or led a certain lifestyle or have suffered from a certain disease,” said Gregory, adding that even some cancer survivors can be eligible to donate. “Call and ask. Don’t self-defer yourself.”

Hanson, although otherwise in great health, has a condition that most people might assume would prevent him from giving blood. He is anemic — meaning he has a low red blood cell count — but he gets a monthly iron shot to counteract it.

He even says that donating blood has improved his health, by “serving as a motivation” to make sure he gets that monthly shot.

“If I don’t get my iron shot, when I go in to give blood, my iron is too low,” he said.

But for Hanson, it’s helping others that ultimately motivates him to donate an hour of his time and a pint of his blood six times a year.

Although his family member has since recovered, Hanson said he has no plans to stop donating.

Cascade is still in need, too: Ninety-five percent of the population will need blood at some point by age 72, but only 5 percent of the eligible donors actually donate blood.

“I think that people who can do it should do it,” Hanson said. “There’s always a demand.”

Giving blood effectively

If eight weeks seems too long to wait between blood donations, try apheresis, or platelet donation. With this process, donors can give every two weeks.

Here’s how apheresis works: Blood is drawn from a donor’s arm and put into a centrifuge, a device used to separate different substances from each other.

The centrifuge then spins to separate the platelets — the sticky parts of the blood that heal wounds and stop bleeding — from the rest of the blood cells. Once the platelets are removed, blood is returned is the donor.

Why opt for apheresis instead of just a standard blood donation? For one, six times more platelets can be collected at one time through apheresis than through whole-blood donation.

Plus, different patients need different parts of blood. Someone with cancer might need a platelet donation, as will some burn victims, since these types of patients have a difficult time creating their own platelets.

Without platelets, it’s difficult to control blood loss, especially in vulnerable patients.

The process takes about two hours, instead of just one hour with standard donation, but apheresis donors can also watch free movies during the process. Call 1-877-24 BLOOD for more information.

January blood drive schedule

Below are dates, times and locations for Cascade Regional Blood Services’ January blood drive. All addresses are in Gig Harbor, unless otherwise noted.

• 12:30 to 7 p.m. on Jan. 7 at Albertsons, 11330 51st Ave. NW in Gig Harbor.

• 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Jan. 12 at St. Nicholas Catholic Church, 3510 Rosedale St.

• 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Jan. 12 at Adventure of Faith Presbyterian Church, 4705 Jackson Ave. SE in Port Orchard.

• 12:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Jan. 14 at Albertsons, 11330 51st Ave. NW.

• 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 15 at Peninsula Light Company, 13315 Goodnough Drive NW.

• 12:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Jan. 21 at Albertsons, 11330 51st Ave. NW.

• 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Jan. 25 at Olympic Village, 5500 Olympic Drive.

• 8 a.m. to noon on Jan. 26 at Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church, 7700 Skansie Ave.

• 8 a.m. to noon on Jan. 27 at Peninsula Lutheran Church, 6509 38th Ave. NW.

• 12:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Jan. 28 at Albertsons, 11330 51st Ave. NW

• 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Jan. 29 at Rush Commercial Construction, 2727 Hollycroft St., Suite 410.

Reach Lifestyles coordinator Paige Richmond at 853-9243 or by e-mail at paige.richmond@gateline.com.