Christmas Day is next Sunday, and if you aren’t already done with your shopping, you’re likely filling out your list with stocking stuffers.
Or, maybe you’re still looking for that elusive “I’ll know it when I see it” offering for underneath the tree.
During this season of giving, Jason Keeling has an idea for the ultimate gift everyone can enjoy, as it truly is life-affirming, he said.
Life-saving, even.
A gift that benefits your friends and neighbors and people you don’t even know.
All you have to do is roll up your sleeve and map out 20 minutes.
That’s how long it takes to give blood.
Keeling is executive director of the Allegheny Highlands Chapter of the American Red Cross, which is based in Morgantown on Pineview Drive.
He’s putting together two big drives this week: Tuesday’s is from 11 a.m.-6 p.m. at the Robinson Grand Performing Arts Center in Clarksburg.
Morgantown is the site of Wednesday’s drive, which will be from 11 a.m.-6 p.m. at the Hotel Morgan on High Street.
Visit www.redcrossblood.org/giftoflife to make an appointment for either one.
Donating, by any measure
Just one pint of blood from you can help up to three people.
There’s the transfusion for someone seriously injured in a car crash.
And the red cells and platelets needed from someone undergoing treatment for cancer or battling chronic blood disorders such as Sickle Cell Anemia.
Maybe there’s a medical emergency during a difficult pregnancy, Keeling said.
What it all means, he added, is that anything can happen — and probably will.
The American Red Cross is in the emergency response business, the Allegheny Chapter director said, meaning there’s always a need for blood donations for its banks.
It’s just that the holidays make things, well, tricky, he said.
The shelves in those blood banks get bare, he explained, because individual donors are busy with their families and festivities.
Colleges, traditionally big participants in blood drives, are closed for seasonal breaks.
Besides the ongoing medical needs of patients in treatment for illnesses or accidents — which is all year long — the holidays, as a rule, bring the potential for more accidents and calamities to occur.
Holidays or no, for every seven patients being admitted to a hospital, one will need a transfusion.
Every two seconds, in fact, someone in the U.S. needs blood or platelets, according to the American Red Cross.
That comes out 29,000 units of red blood cells a day — to go with the 5,000 units of platelets and 6,500 units of plasma also needed daily, in order to save lives and to keep the people in treatment alive.
Of serving (and saving)
It took the tragedy of gun violence to get Katie Luckini reacquainted with the Red Cross.
“I had been donating blood since high school, but I got away from it,” the Morgantown woman said.
The Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida six years ago got her back into it.
A gunman opened on the crowd there, killing 49 people, while wounding 53 more. A desperate call for blood donations went out.
That’s when Luckini reached out — and rolled up her sleeve.
“It was easy to do, and I needed to do it,” she said.
Today, she helps line up blood drive sites for the Allegheny chapter and was recently named to its board of directors.
“We’re hoping we see lots of people in Morgantown and Clarksburg,” she said.
Giving blood, Keeling said, means engaging in acts of volunteerism and service for the community — two acts, he added, that couldn’t be more special and meaningful for the Christmas season.
“And you’re saving lives.”
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