She sits in a chair, arm extended, her face turned away from the needle about to pierce her skin. The plastic bag fills with the oxygen-rich liquid; the source of life is being drawn out of Rebecca Atkinson’s (‘10) arm though a tubular passageway. This is life, being passed from one person to another in need.
On May 25, the Urban School sponsored a Blood Centers of the Pacific blood drive. In St. Agnes Gym, 18 students and five teachers gathered to donate pints of blood, an amount that is enough to save 69 lives, according to the Centers.
Blood from Urban students takes quite a trip after it leaves school. Ultimately, it is destined for one of 43 hospitals in the Bay Area served by Blood Centers of the Pacific. First, however, the blood must travel up the street to the Centers’ Masonic and Turk headquarters. Then, the tubes that are used to collect the blood, along with vials of blood that are set aside for testing, travel to Arizona to be quarantined for four days and tested for various diseases.
It is vital for Bay Area residents to donate blood regularly because hospitals “still need to pull (blood) from other parts of the country,” says Chuck Stephanski, a donors collections nurse for the Centers. This is because many people travel to the Bay Area to acquire medical care, making blood that much more in demand.
Stephanski says that one of the reasons that the Centers like to conduct blood drives at high schools is because they can “get more of a volume from high school students.” Workers average about 19 to 25 students per visit to local high schools, and sometimes — as in the rare case of Archbishop Riordan High School of San Francisco —they get over 200 units of blood.
Diane Lai, the Centers’ coordinator account representative, enjoys coming to different high schools because they are “starting a culture of giving blood.” Urban English teacher Courtney Rein says she loves giving blood and has been giving blood since college, when she coordinated blood drives.
Jill Fisher (’10), one of the leaders of Urban’s Community Outreach club, wishes there was more student participation in blood drives.
This year there was more participation from students than ever before. However, of the 36 students who signed up to give blood, 13 were turned away for various reasons, including anemia and low body weight. In other years, parents also participated in the blood drive.