When you have family in the military, especially overseas, no matter their job, you worry. You worry about them on deployment and you worry about their spouses living on a foreign base. For me, that’s my sister and her husband, a petty officer in the U.S. Navy. A few months ago, upon returning from a deployment, my brother-in-law fell ill. We didn’t know what it was. It was a month or so of back and forth possibilities of what it might be. Finally, he was diagnosed with a rare blood disease called Severe Aplastic Anemia. According to the Mayo Clinic, Aplastic Anemia is a condition that occurs when one’s body stops producing blood cells. As of right now, exact cause of this rare disease is unknown, which can be very frustrating, and has been very frustrating for my sister, her in-laws, and our whole family. Also, a cure isn’t fully known - there’s a possiblity that he’ll need a bone marrow transplant but we’re hoping that a clinical trial will help avoid that procedure. It’s a very scary prospect for a loved one to be ill and for the doctors who are supposed to be able to treat and hopefully cure your person to not know how to do so.

Rare diseases exist and unfortunately, because of their rarity, solutions are not always obvious. What the doctors are able to do is to give him platelets and blood transfusions. This seems like a no-brainer right? Every hospital has blood and platelet supplies so he should be in the clear to be treated in a timely fashion. Surprise, this isn’t always the case. According to the American Red Cross, in a press release from July 5, 2016, the U.S. is in a donated blood shortage. My brother-in-law experienced this first hand when he was waiting for a transfusion and they had to fly his supply in from out of state to the hospital where he is being treated. Because his hospital was out of supply, he had to wait 15 hours for his treatment. Luckily, he wasn’t in critical condition. Someone at the hospital was and they got the blood first. Everyone was treated in the end, but a hospital should never be low on blood or platelet supply. Ever. It’s the place that sick people go to be cured.

A family friend of ours set up a platelet drive in my brother-in-law’s name in our home county but we need blood and platelet donors nationwide. Even though I can’t donate directly to his drive, I set up an appointment and will give in his name. I want to take this opportunity to encourage each of you who is able to to donate blood. It’s a selfless act and it doesn’t take much time. Most blood donation centers even give out vouchers. I live in Vegas, so when I go, I’ll get vouchers for a show. At home, they give out vouchers for restaurants. You can set up donation appointments for whole blood or just platelets at United Blood Services or any local hospital. Blood donations are used for every aspect of hospital stays so please donate. You could save a life.

If you’d like to donate in my brother-in-law’s name, it’s Nick Folino and his blood type is A+. In the case of platelets, blood type doesn’t matter.