You Pay Love Forward - The Blood Challenge Results

Acute Leukemia, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Bone marrow transplant, Self improvement, Personal Growth, Daily Inspiration, ph all, philadelphia chromosome,Acute Leukemia, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Bone marrow transplant, Self improvement, Personal Growth, Daily Inspiration, ph all, philadelphia chromosome

 "You don't pay love back, you pay it forward" - Lily Hardy Hammond

  

Getting a blood transfusion



During my first time around in the hospital I had to receive a fair bit of blood products in order to be kept alive.  My experience through the treatments brought a new found respect to the love that people pay forward every time they go out and give blood.  Before I got this illness I was so naive to just how important blood products are to our medical system.

Every time a transfusion bag of either red blood cells or platelets were hung on my IV, a complete feeling of gratitude came over my body.  This gratitude came from the fact that a stranger would take the time out of their busy day to do something so simple, yet so powerful and life saving. I wondered if they truly knew how much a gift they were giving, and how powerful of an impact it was having on someone else's life.

In addition to gratitude, it also made me guilty to my own ignorance truly needed it was, and how such a simple deed can be truly life saving. One of my biggest regrets was that I didn't donate any blood in the years before I was sick, and now I was being a drain on the system that I didn't contribute to.  I knew I needed to do something to pay forward the good deeds I had received. It was at about 6:00am on Monday March 8th that I came up with the idea that would act as my main purpose for 2010.  Although I could no longer personally give my own blood, to pay it forward I could inspire others to act, and so I created the blood drive challenge.  My main goal of this challenge was to drive awareness in those around me about how important blood is to the medical system, especially in the treatment of blood cancers.  The tertiary benefit was that it would pay the blood banks back for the blood I had used. 

What happened in the blood challenge I would have never imagined in my wildest dreams. A small group of 20 people embraced this challenge with the passion that would make Aphrodite jealous.  Not only did they embrace the challenge personally, but they also inspired many others to give as well.  They were the true ambassadors of this challenge!  

The final results absolutely blew my mind.  I think everyone that embraced this challenge deserves a huge thank you from me personally and any other person that has received your blood.  You are saving lives in the purest form. 

You are probably wondering about the picture but it is to represent the amount of donations that I am aware of from this past year.  That is right 80!  And these are just the ones I know about from those participating in the contest.  I know for a fact that many participants influenced other donations that I don't have accounted for in my final tally. 

For only trying to repay the blood bank for resources I used this result is simply an amazing result!!





So what does 80 donations actually mean?  Well it means that as a group these donors have saved 240 lives!  Let me say that again, 240 lives have been saved as a direct result of your generosity.  If that doesn't deserve a congratulations I don't know what does. 

Everyone of you that gave blood is simply amazing, but this was developed as a contest to see who could give the most blood over the whole year and so I have the final results.

THE RESULTS ARE IN.........

 

We ended up having a tie for first place between Jason Martin and Trevor Offord.  They both managed to donate the maximum amount of times possible for one year.  Unfortunately I can't take them out to dinner due to my new restrictions from the transplant, but I will be slaving in the kitchen for each of them to show my thanks.

Thanks to everyone that donated and even though the contest is over please keep donating!!!  You are saving lives.  Just think without donations like yours, the picture at the top of this post wouldn't have been possible, and therefore this post wouldn't have been possible.  Like thousands of others, I am still alive because of your generosity.  So thank you!

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Optimism...a Nice Thought but Can we Actually Achieve it?

Last week we had a very interesting discussion around optimism and pessism inspired by the Hellen Keller quote ,"No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit." 

I think she is saying that no human has ever been able to achieve greatness without a positive attitude.  The general consensus is that positive thinking is essential for us.

Our society has morphed into one that worries about everything.  Most people spend more time worrying about all the potential negative things that they lose sight of what of is actually going on.  So I ask how can we remain positive if we are always worried about negative outcomes.  I would pose the conclusion that as long as we let our worries dominate our thoughts, we have allowed a pessimist attitude to take hold.  This attititude won't ever let us shift to a positive and optimist outlook.  Norman Vincent Peale seems to agree with me too :)

"A positive thinker does not refuse to recognise the negative, he refuses to dwell on it.  Positive thinking is a form of thought which habitually looks for the best results from the worst conditions."[Norman Vincent Peale, 1898-19993

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

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Week In Review - Day +38

Site Changes - I have been working on the design of my blog the past few days.  You will notice that I have changed the design of it slightly.  In addition, I have added two pages to my blog in the past few days.  First I have added a page called Educating the Masses.  This will be a central location for any disease specific posts where I try to explain specific issues in layman's terms.  The second page I created was Most Popular Posts.  This is based on some feedback I have received.  But I would love to hear from all of you.  Please email me or comment and let me know what your favorite posts have been.  It can be the ones that inspired you the most or made you laugh.  I want this page to be based on you the reader's views so please let me know :)

Tuesday Check Up - My gvhd really flared up on the weekend.  So they increased my dose of steroid.  Part of the reason why is I was on a really large dose of immunosuppressant that ended on friday so that probably helped with the flare up.  They put me on a smaller dose of that and are going to slowly ween me off it.  It has gone down a bit now so it is nice to see it working finally. :)  When it flares up it feels like I have a bad sunburn.   THe platelets didn't go up but they explained it to us really well so we aren't worried.  First the drug that suppresses them that they took me off can take up to 3 weeks to get out of the system.  Also it is really normal for transplant patients to come out of the hospital with normal counts and then as gvhd sets in the platelet count drops.  It plateaus for a bit which it looks like it is now and then they eventually come back up.  In normal people platelets stay alive for 8-10 days.  For transplant patients as early in the process as me they only survive for 1-2 days.  So they are super tempermental.  Nothing to worry about though.
FRIDAY CHECK UP - Needless to say we were quite anxious to get to the Friday appointment to see if the increase in immunosuppressants would reduce my GVHD.  Thankfully it seems to be working.  All my liver enzymes have lowered back down.  My skin GVHD has slowly started to subside and I am not as red or sore as I used to be.  It looks like it could be developing a little in my mouth so I will start up so biocarb mouthwashes to keep it clean and the immunosuppressants should take care of the rest.  Finally some other great news, my platelets made a climb upwards today :)  So all in all it was a great appointment.

BLOOD DONATIONS - The contest for the blood donation is wrapping up, Monday Jan 31st is the last day of the contest so please if you haven't either update the facebook group, the blood donation page, comment on this post or just send me an email with your donation dates and donation dates of friends and family you have influenced to give.  We have had an amazing year of donations and I just want to relay the accurate number to everyone.  The race for the winner is really tight but I want to make sure I have all the information before I release the results.  Look for the results in a post next Tuesday Feb 1.

Ads on my Site - I just wanted to do a quick disclaimer that the ads that show up on my site are chosen by a third party.  Lately i have noticed ads that I find offensive and don't belong on my site.  As soon as I see them or know about them I take action and reject and remove them being able to advertise on the site.  So if you see an ad that is offensive please don't be offended, just send me a quick message about it and I will take care of it :)

New Contest Coming - The past two weeks I have been planning a fun new contest for the website.  This one should be fun because everyone can participate (no restrictions like the blood donations had).  The contest will have 2 prizes, one for first place and one for second.  Just so you know all those ads I have been asking you to click is actually paying for one of these prizes, so if you want bigger prizes in the future click more ads :)  I will continue to use the ad revenue to invest back into this blog for fun contests.  I will make the official contest announcement on FEB 2 so make sure you read the blog that day for full details.  It will go until April 1 (my official day =100 post transplant).

Sunday Dialogue -  We had our first sunday dialogue this past sunday and was a success for the first time out.  I would love to see more of you participating though so if you read the topic take a second to leave a comment.  Also if you like check back throughout the day and you may find that someone else has responded to your comment and you can comment back.  It is a fun way to have a dialogue.  This past sunday we started discussing about optimism versus pessimism and it morphed into a dialogue about whether people who are constantly worried about negative things happening are capable of being optimistic.  Hope to see more of you on sunday in our discussion :)

Camera - Well by now you all know that I one of my major passions is photography and I have finally gotten my camera gear  I am back using my old trusty Nikon d90.  I decided this offered me everything I needed in a body for now and I could invest better in lens.  I am carrying two lens a 70-300mm telephoto.  This is a super fast lens that is longer than anything I had before so I can't wait for the spring to get out there and shoot some ducks, geese and other port credit wild life.   They won't know what hit em :)  ALso got this amazing 35mm super fast prime lens for my everyday shooting and walking around.  It makes my camera super light and will be a lot of fun because I can do a lot of things like completely blur the background with it.  It should render some really artistic shots.  Plus it can take in a ridiculous amount of light so my sunrise photos should be something else.  I can also use it for night photography so as I get stronger and the weather warmer I intend to do some night walks with the camera.  As you can tell I am very excited, just waiting for the time when I have the strength to get back into full fledged.  Only one lens left to complete the setup but that is for later this summer :)  As I get back into photography I will go back to doing Friday Foto posts where I post my favorite photos for you all to see. :)  Until then you will have to put up with my rambling  :)

HOpe you have a good weekend and looking forward to seeing you all in our Sunday discussion ;)

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