Larry L. Lewis

Milestone Donation: 200
Milestone Date: 4/12/2006
Milestone Place: Lynnwood Center
City Where Donor Lives: Lake Forest Park

Why I Donate: Recently I made my 200th donation of whole blood or platelets, all through the Puget Sound Blood Center. The Center asked me, why or what has prompted me to be such a regular donor. It took almost 50 years. I believe it started as a sense of duty to pay back to the health system of the day. At age 13, I required a unit or two of whole blood during an emergency operation at Children’s Hospital. Later, as a Freshman at the UofW, a mobile unit was conducting one of its regular drives on campus in the HUB, and I made my first blood donation. The second donation was made at a later campus drive. Then it was down to the Terry Avenue Center to make a credit donation or two or more for one of my relatives or a neighbor. Somehow the bug bit me. And, I was encouraged by the situation. It was the Teamster’s Union, which asked it’s members to donate, there was the local school or church blood drive, and it was Bob, a fellow worker who together for many years we made a regular event of it. One day I noticed a set of beds off to the side at Terry that looked as if they were part of the program, but I didn’t recognize the connection. I was introduced to the apheresis program. There is a little bit of setting and reaching goals in all of us. I thought reaching 100 units was doable, if I stayed with it long enough. 100 is such a nice round number and so far away at a maximum of 4 units per year. I still find it hard to believe that today, I have reached 200 units. I have heard that donating blood is the gift of life. It was for me. It has cost me a little time and a few small scars to repay for the gift that gave me life. And, as a blood unit that was donated for me, my donations remain anonymous. It feeds the imagination and wonder of it all.