News - Local/State - Andrew Dys

Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2008

Even Dys can donate blood

Everybody has to answer dozens of questions before giving blood. Not one question asks: "Are you a wimp?"

Nobody asked me at the American Red Cross if I would scream like a girl or cry like a mama's boy when giving a pint. So I made jokes about my mother-in-law, saying for years I had no heart, thus no blood; that my wife took all my blood at the wedding; that my three daughters took all my blood when they bled me dry for new shoes and clothes.

"I pay my taxes," I whined. "Late, but I pay 'em. I already gave."

"You sure do talk a lot," said Floral Griffin, one of the seasoned intake workers. "Must be nervous. I know the type."

Nervous?

If two older lady volunteers weren't manning the door ready to tell on me, or yank me back inside, I would have fled.

But the Red Cross needs blood.

The goal for York County's blood giving from July through next June is 6,800 pints. So far, 2,178 pints have come in. Not enough.

"Most people can give blood," said Rebecca Melton, the Red Cross executive director in Rock Hill. "Even you can do it."

I know a challenge when I hear one. Yet I thought about skulking away with my pride gone.

Cringing, whining, I pressed on.

I had to. Shame will do that. A young lady named Rachel Shaw walked in the same time as I did, to give blood because her grandfather is in the hospital across Heckle Boulevard. She had no fear to help save somebody. Here I was, poster boy for craven coward.

An immigrant from Iraq, Horam Alhussainy, checked all my information. No, I had no transfusion or any other crisis over the past years.

"Does bleeding from a punch in the nose count?" I asked, hoping for a last-minute disqualification.

Alhussainy, from a country that knows need, who has lived through a war that shed so much blood, just smiled and waved me on.

So I sat down in one of those lounge chairs. A technician prepped my arm. I made more cheap banter about my brood of daughters who make fun of me. A lady trying to give blood in peace said aloud, "No wonder!"

I plotted my escape, but a technician got the vein in the crook of my left elbow ready and I had no way out. In the chair to my left sat Robert Jones, 81, World War II combat veteran. His late brother, Clyde, was wounded in the D-Day invasion.

I am a pansy, terrified to give blood, and a genuine war hero sat next to me pumping his blood out for strangers like a tanker unloading at the Charleston port.

A technician said to me, "You might feel a little stick."

She gets the blood flowing out of me and I have not shed even one tear.

"Are you even a little dizzy?"

"How can he be dizzy, he hasn't shut up," said the older lady two chairs down.

In the chair Shaw left now sat William Woods, who has given blood regularly since high school. His son waited a few feet away, to give blood on his 21st birthday, just a few days before he leaves for Marine Corps boot camp. Now I really felt like a wimp. I hadn't given blood in years, for no good reason other than I was too lazy.

A few minutes later, as Jones said he jumps out of airplanes for fun at age 81 -- I complain about jumping out of bed on a cold morning -- the technician comes back.

"You are done," she said.

I had not cried, or died.

And maybe, somewhere, somebody will live a little longer because even a loudmouth wimp found out there is something he can do for somebody else. And it didn't even hurt a little bit.

Want to help?

The American Red Cross has bloodmobile dates set up between now and the end of the year. Demand for blood is up and donations are down. For information, call 329-6575.

Today, 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. York Technical College, 452 S. Anderson Road, Rock Hill.

Today, 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Applied Technology Center, 2399 W. Main St., Rock Hill.

Tuesday, 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., AbitibiBowater, Catawba.

Nov. 30, 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Divine Saviour Catholic Church, 232 Herndon Ave., York.

Dec. 1, 2:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., Oakland Avenue Presbyterian Church, 421 W. Oakland Ave., Rock Hill.

Dec. 4, 2 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., YMCA Camp Thunderbird, 1 Thunderbird Lane, Lake Wylie.

Dec. 10, 1:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., Fort Mill Ford, 801 Gold Hill Road, Fort Mill.

Dec. 15, 2:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., American Red Cross, 200 Piedmont Boulevard, Rock Hill.

Dec. 20, 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Fort Mill Fire department, 121 Tom Hall St., Fort Mill.

Dec. 21, 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., First Assembly of God, 1070 Edward St., Rock Hill.

Dec. 27, 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., Starbucks, Baxter Village, 926 Market St., Fort Mill.