If you’re in the spirit of giving this holiday season the gift of donating blood can help save someone’s life. Every two seconds someone is in need of a blood donation, and donors tend to dwindled during the holiday season.
Give The Gift of Blood
“We’re at a urgent level of needing blood actually,” said Holly Seese, a communication lead at Vitalant. “The holiday season is traditionally a very difficult time for us for blood donations. [That’s due to] many reasons. People are in vacation, sometimes they’re not feeling well, they’re sick, so, people have lots of reasons we need them another reason to come in.”
Ugly Sweatshirts If You Donate
One way Vitalant, formerly know as life source, is doing that is offering ugly christmas shirts to people who donate. Seese said since 2010, there are 26% fewer donors. She mentioned you could donate more than just blood.
More Options Than Just Blood Donations
“There’s also what a number of what these folks are giving today, which is platelet donations,” said Seese. “We actually take out a portion of your blood called platelet. Those help with clotting factors, so with bleeding disorders or with chemo patients.”
Donating blood takes an hour or less and platelets should take about two hours.
If you’re planning on donating be sure that you’re hydrated and eat something salty the night before as that will help out with the recovery process.
Naperville News 17’s Christian Canizal reports.
