Blood drives scheduled for Sunray, Dumas in December; young boy with rare anemia one of many people needing blood to stay alive

The holiday season is always a difficult time for the blood supply — on top of continuing challenges brought about by the COVID pandemic.  Demand increases and blood centers struggle to keep up as donations drop off with people distracted by holiday activities.  To help ensure that there is enough available blood this season, Coffee Memorial Blood Center, the organization that supplies blood and blood products to the hospitals and medical facilities of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, has scheduled drives to take place in Dumas and Sunray during the month of December.

The need for blood never ends.  Blood and blood products save the lives every day of trauma victims, surgery patients, people with cancer, women giving birth, and others.  One young boy in Arkansas is just one of the many people who are alive today only because there has been blood of the right type available when they needed it.  According to the Coffee Memorial website, one-year-old Declan de Gruy of Little Rock, Arkansas was diagnosed with a rare disorder called Diamond-Blackfan anemia (DBA) at three months.  To survive he needs a transfusion of O negative blood every three weeks until he can receive a bone marrow transplant.  (Coffee Memorial is part of the Oklahoma Blood Institute (OBI), which serves people in Arkansas as well.)  Declan has already had 18 transfusions.  O negative blood is also the universal type that is frequently given to trauma victims and others until their own blood can be typed.  But Declan, because O negative is his type, can only receive O negative blood.  His life depends on a consistent supply, something that his mother, Ann, said “is terrifying.”