As one of the first donors at UCLA’s new Blood and Platelet Center, Sam Wilson, a fourth-year mathematics and atmospheric, oceanic and environmental sciences student, showed up early to get strapped into the chair for his platelet donation.
As the center’s staff prepared the equipment that would allow for the platelets to be extracted, Wilson was getting settled in by securing his earphones to watch a DVD he selected for the next two hours of the procedure.
Wilson has been an active donor since high school and began to donate platelets as well during his second year at UCLA.
“I was a little hesitant about platelets at first, but now I donate once every couple of months,” Wilson said. “It is just something I can do that makes a difference.”
Located on the A-level of Ackerman Union, the new center opened on Monday and will now be very hard to miss for UCLA students and staff, said Linda Goss, donor recruitment supervisor for the Blood and Platelet Center.
“There has already been a huge amount of interest of people who simply have been walking by the center,” Goss added.
With such a centralized location on campus, the center is expected to attract those staff and student populations who want to donate but do not because of the distance to the older location on Gayley Avenue, Goss said.
Also, for those who have simply never thought about donating, seeing the center in action may provide that necessary push, she added.
A number of donors trickled in on Monday only because the new center just happened to catch their eye, prompting them to walk in and donate.
Jay Dominguez, fourth-year political science student, said the last time he had donated blood was in high school.
“I just walked by randomly and decided to go in since it was so convenient,” Dominguez said. “Just a little pain is worth it, and it only took about half an hour.”
As Dominguez got strapped into the new state-of-the-art recliner chair, he decided he would come in next time to donate platelets as well.
Platelets are more difficult to attain and to store since they can only be used for four days after they are donated, said Qun Lu, assistant medical director at UCLA’s division of transfusion medicine. It is for these purposes that platelet donations are so precious and have a big impact for those in need and are in high demand by leukemia patients for blood-clotting purposes.
However, many more people are hesitant to donate since the procedures are more time consuming then simply donating whole blood, Lu said.
Fourth-year business economics student Kevin Potter saw the important role that platelet donations can play in saving a life when his brother, Tim Potter, 19, was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia about December.
“My brother was able to survive his struggle because blood was available when his body was not producing it,” he said.
Potter was already donating blood every month or two before his brother’s illness, but after, he reports going almost every two weeks to donate platelets.
Potter even created a Facebook event to let people now about his brother’s need for blood.
“I found what impacted most people was reading my brother’s blog, which catalogues his three-month ordeal of being yanked out of school, finding out he had cancer.” Potter said. “Everyone that saw that link felt like they really wanted to help.”
In Tim Potter’s blog,
unidude.blogspot.com, he posts almost every day about what it is like to be suffering from leukemia.
Julia Potter, mother of Tim Potter, reported that often when Tim was in the hospital, he would often wake up and be in need of two bags of platelets.
The need for donations is very high, with 100,000 units of blood needed at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center each year. Still, only 65 percent of it comes from donations, with the need for blood growing every day, according to a UCLA Today article.
“Some people just do not realize that giving blood literally saves people’s lives,” Goss said.
Currently, the new center is scheduled and hoping to have six platelet donors and 42 whole blood donors each day, said Fernando Gironas, the center’s platelet coordinator.
The new center will also be hosting a grand opening for staff on Thursday and one on Friday for students. The main purpose of these events will be to educate potential donors and expose them to the environment.
Donors are also rewarded for coming in with movie tickets and for those employed by UCLA, donating blood gets you four hours of paid work, Gironas said.
Though everyone is encouraged to donate, not everyone is eligible and details can be attained at the center’s Web site.