[Ansteorra] Blood Drive Testimony

[Alice morrow Harris]

Greeting From Alina Unto Candlemas Visitors: 
 
Personal Testimony: 

I do want everyone to consider signing up to donate blood.  While I've pretty much been told they will not try to take my blood because my veins pop like balloons, I wanted to take a moment to share a story.

In 1988, 5 days shy of my 13 birthday, my father was working as normal hauling containers to and from the LA Harbor shipyard to various parts of the LA area.  As my birthday was coming, my father stopped to phone my mother from a pay phone (also why cell phones are good now) to update her and use a rest room.  Perhaps my dad said the wrong thing on the phone, perhaps my dad was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but as he finished and turned to leave the bathroom, a man pointed a gun at him and demanded his wallet.  

My dad is about 5'9 and at the time maybe 165... I have no idea though.  He doesn't give up easily, so he said No.  The man shot him.  But as my dad recalls, the gun wasn't black, it was purplish, and he didn't feel anything but wind on his face.  He thought it was a fake.  He fought with the man who was by far taller and heavier.  He maintained the fight until the man threw his head against the urinal.  He gave up his wallet for the sake of the head injury.

The man ran off and my dad walked to a nearby office.  He told the people to call the police, he's been robbed.  He said we are calling an ambulance because you've been robbed.  He looked down and noticed the blood on the left side of his chest.

The bullet entered his chest, missing his heart by one inch.  It grazed an artery into this left arm, ricocheted off his back ribs, put a hole in his abdomen, put a hole into the artery to his leg, before embedding into his back between the skin and the ribs.

He had two surgeries because they couldn't find where the bleeding was happening.  He had his blood replaced at least twice over.  He should have died, but he lived.  Receiving that blood saved him to let me have my thirteen birthday in the waiting room of the hospital and every one since then. You can save someone too.  

Sign up to give blood at Candlemas.  Blood donations are ever on a short list and millions of people are benefited each day, for emergencies and for general treatments of some diseases.  

Francisca Sastre de Arellano 

Sent from my iPhone