{"id":176,"date":"2008-07-04T12:41:30","date_gmt":"2008-07-04T18:41:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.phil801.com\/wpblog\/2008\/07\/04\/organizing-a-blood-drive-thoughts-and-volunteers-wanted\/"},"modified":"2008-07-04T12:41:30","modified_gmt":"2008-07-04T18:41:30","slug":"organizing-a-blood-drive-thoughts-and-volunteers-wanted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/2008\/07\/04\/organizing-a-blood-drive-thoughts-and-volunteers-wanted\/","title":{"rendered":"Organizing a blood drive &#8211; thoughts and volunteers wanted"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is Day 39 of my baby, Serenity, being diagnosed with and treated for Leukemia.\u00a0 Day 37 is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.phil801.com\/wpblog\/2008\/07\/02\/leukemia-so-cute-it-just-might-kill-you\/\">here.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Serenity&#8217;s life was saved because people donated blood.\u00a0 I have a lot of guilt about that &#8211; I have MAJOR needle-phobia and have always avoided blood donation.\u00a0 But as I watched Serenity bravely face getting poked by needles over and over and over again (at one point, before she\u00a0got her port, she had bandages on both her hands and arms and they were going to access her through her foot) I knew that was going to change forever.\u00a0 As the next week went by and she received several life-saving bags of blood and platelets, I knew that I was going to become a blood donor for life &#8211; and that I would advocate and encourage others to do so as well.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/28171328@N07\/2637219846\/sizes\/o\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" src=\"http:\/\/www.phil801.com\/wpblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/serenitygiveblood.jpg\" alt=\"serenitygiveblood.jpg\" height=\"266\" class=\"imageframe imgaligncenter\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And so it begins &#8211; the quarterly Serenity Foundation\u00a0Blood Drive.\u00a0 My good friend, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wasatchgirl.com\/\">Rachel Strate<\/a>, is one of my heroes &#8211; she is an avid platelet and blood donor &#8211; and I&#8217;m counting on her and others to help put all this together.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve talked to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.utahblood.org\/\">ARUP <\/a>(our local blood center) and there are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.utahblood.org\/blood-drive.html\">some rules to doing a blood drive<\/a>, one of them is that I have to get 35 people to commit to donating blood at the drive.\u00a0 Another is getting a location, but I can take care of that one.\u00a0 I&#8217;m thinking somewhere around Draper or Thanksgiving Point.\u00a0 We&#8217;ll do it towards the end of July and I&#8217;ll be announcing a date in the next couple days.\u00a0 I&#8217;d like to make this a Geek Dinner\/Tweetup type of event with blood donating, blogging, tweeting\u00a0and eating going on.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d also really like to make this more than a local thing.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re reading this and you would like to help out and organize a local blood drive to coincide with ours, PLEASE DO!\u00a0 Let me know and I&#8217;ll try to help publicize it.\u00a0 I think it would be\u00a0a LOT of fun to have multiple blood drives going on all over the country at the same time and for us to all be blogging and tweeting pictures and updates at the same time!\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This post is really a notification and call for volunteers.\u00a0 If you are willing to donate blood with us, please let me know.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re willing to organize a local drive, please let me know.\u00a0 We&#8217;ll get customized banners like the one above made for your drive and have ones that everyone can put on their blog if they want.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Blood is absolutely critical to saving little lives like that of my daughter and so many others.\u00a0 Every one of you have blood and thus the capacity to help save those lives.\u00a0 Please, Please join us in providing the elixir of life!<\/p>\n<p>As a side note, I know that blood drives are nothing new and that many of you may already give blood regularly.\u00a0 I also know that according to ARUP, only 4% of those who are able to actually donate blood.\u00a0 This is a call to action for the other 96% &#8211; join me in becoming a willing donor!<\/p>\n<p>The story of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.phil801.com\/wpblog\/2008\/05\/24\/my-baby-might-have-leukemia\/\"><font color=\"#105cb6\">Serenity\u2019s battle with Leukemia<\/font><\/a> begins here.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"akst_link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.phil801.com\/wpblog\/?p=466&amp;akst_action=share-this\" title=\"E-mail this, post to del.icio.us, etc.\" id=\"akst_link_466\" class=\"akst_share_link\">Share This (AJAX Form)<\/a><br \/>\n<\/span><span>Gregarious FeedFlare<\/span><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/home\/?status=Retweet:&nbsp;Organizing a blood drive - thoughts and volunteers wanted&nbsp;-&nbsp;http:\/\/www.phil801.com\/wpblog\/?p=466\">Retweet This Post<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~f\/Phil801-Serenity?a=LSielJ\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~f\/Phil801-Serenity?i=LSielJ\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~f\/Phil801-Serenity?a=tSZShj\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~f\/Phil801-Serenity?i=tSZShj\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~f\/Phil801-Serenity?a=vTE2bj\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~f\/Phil801-Serenity?i=vTE2bj\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~f\/Phil801-Serenity?a=3KByLj\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~f\/Phil801-Serenity?i=3KByLj\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~f\/Phil801-Serenity?a=E0jaVJ\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~f\/Phil801-Serenity?i=E0jaVJ\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~f\/Phil801-Serenity?a=jqZidj\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~f\/Phil801-Serenity?i=jqZidj\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is Day 39 of my baby, Serenity, being diagnosed with and treated for Leukemia.\u00a0 Day 37 is here.\u00a0<br \/>\nSerenity&#8217;s life was saved because people donated blood.\u00a0 I have a lot of guilt about that &#8211; I have MAJOR needle-phobia and have always avoided blood donation.\u00a0 But as I watched Serenity bravely face getting poked by [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}