Give Blood, Save Lives

First thing, a little update on Reece - he's doing so great for everything that he's been through! This round he had 5 days of high dosage chemotherapy. What does that mean? Well, the past two times he's received 10 mg of one of the types of chemo, this time he received 30 mg!

This one drug in particular usually causes rashes, pink eye (so much that as a precaution we had to give Reece eyedrops during this round), fevers... so we knew going into this round that it might be a little tough. But guess what... Reece truly is a super hero! The only thing he got this time around was a rash all over his body - which SUCKS (see picture below) - but still if that's all that happens I'm A.O.K. with that! With that said, his counts are now really low, and we are still only on day 14 of our 28 day stay in the hospital, so please please please keep praying/sending good thoughts that he doesn't get a fever, infection, or disease in these crucial days.

As for the title of the post, Give Blood, Save Lives. I really wanted to encourage everyone to give blood. Before going through all of this, I knew that giving blood was a good thing, but I always thought that only trauma patients required blood. Since Reece got diagnosed in July he has had 4 platelet transfusions and 4 blood transfusions! And he is just one of the MANY cancer patients that require transfusions.

My sister and I went to give blood about a month ago and found out some useful information in case you're thinking of giving blood. We went in to just "donate blood" (AKA whole blood), but after talking to some of the people that work there I found out that you can only donate blood every 56 days. They were worried that, God forbid, if Reece needed something directly from Rodney or I, I wouldn't be able to donate it because I gave blood, so they gave me another option. I could donate platelets are red blood cells, because you can donate those every 7 days!

The whole process was so eye-opening and fascinating to me! We sat down just like you would do if you were giving blood... they put the IV in and blood starts coming out. BUT this time you are hooked up to a machine and literally as you are sitting there the machine takes your blood and separates the platelets, red blood cells, and white blood cells. They keep the platelets and red blood cells but then put the white blood cells back in you. I'm not going to lie, this does take longer than just giving whole blood, and it is slightly more painful - but hi, my son has gone through multiple transfusions, chemotherapy, surgeries... I think I can take a little pain from giving blood to him.

With all of this being said, no Reece can't take direct blood (long story short, blood has to go through different processes to check and make sure it's clean), BUT that shouldn't stop anyone from giving blood! There are SO many people who need blood everyday and the blood banks are always running on the low side.

Also, we are talking to the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center about setting up a blood drive in honor of Reece - so be on the look out for when we will be doing that (Hopefully late November, early December). We will keep everyone updated!

As always, thank you so much for keeping Reece in your thoughts and prayers, it means more to us than we will ever be able to express!