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Rose Parade float honors blood, organ and tissue donors


This year when you’re watching the Tournament of Roses Parade on TV January 1, 2007, keep your eyes peeled for the Donate Life Rose Parade Float sponsored by a coalition of advocates from the tissue and organ donation community. (A rendering of the float is pictured above.) It’s the fourth year the organ donation community has participated in the parade to bring awareness to the value of blood, tissue and organ donation.

This is a subject particularly dear to the Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome community. Many, many of us (myself included) are here today because someone somewhere was willing to be a blood donor. We sometimes not only need blood transfusions, but platelet transfusions. It’s takes multiple blood donors to get enough for one bag of platelets.

I had many transfusions with my ileosotomy surgery 13 years ago, both blood and platelet transfusions. I also required platelets when I had all four of my impacted wisdom teeth removed. I owe my life to probably more than a 100 people who were willing to donate blood. (I can’t be a blood donor – I haven’t asked if HPS’ers can donate blood because I don’t meet the Red Cross criteria. I’ve traveled to too many places with Mad Cow disease and malaria.)

Organ donation is also a big issue in the HPS community. So far we’ve had two successful lung transplants that I know of, and there is always an HPS’er somewhere anxiously hoping for this gift of life. Right now I have one friend hoping to get a lung transplant, and two that have been turned down for transplants.

In all likelihood, one day I will also need a lung transplant. Hopefully, it’s a long ways off! But, I know that journey could very well be in my future.

Read more about the float at: http://www.donatelifefloat.org/.


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