MURFREESBORO,
Tenn. — Why should you give a
pint of your blood and an hour of your time from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Nov.
13-15 to help MTSU “Bleed Blue and Beat WKU’’?
MTSU alumni Shane Blissard and Danielle Boyd-Garrett will
answer that question in a flash: to save lives.
They're encouraging all Blue Raider students, staffers, graduates,
neighbors and supporters to make an appointment today at http://redcrossblood.org, keyword “MTSUChallenge,” to donate next Monday,
Tuesday or Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the Campus Recreation Center.
Blissard, a Blue Raider football standout and concrete industry grad
(B.S. '12), was accidentally hurt in a spring training camp before his senior
season. He initially tried to shrug it off, but a trainer knew something was
wrong.
“Long story short was that I had ruptured my spleen and didn't know it
and lost a lot of blood internally,” Blissard says. “The Red Cross stepped in,
and they saved my life by giving me blood transfusions.”
Over the course of two emergency surgeries, Blissard received 14 pints of
blood. The average adult human body holds 10 pints.
“There's always a need for it,” Biissard says. “You never know what might
happen, and other people will need it eventually. So donating blood is
something we all need to do. We all need to participate just to fill the banks
so there's never a shortage.”
Boyd-Garrett, a 2014 Bachelor of University Studies grad with a double major
in Leisure, Sports and Tourism Studies and in organismal biology and ecology, has
lived for nearly nine years with blood-clotting disorders.
She was a 17-year-old freshman at the University of Tennessee-Martin when
she first needed someone else’s blood.
“I got really weak, and all of a sudden I couldn’t stop bleeding,” she
recalls. “My friends and roommates rushed me to the emergency room, and I got a
blood transfusion. The next spring it happened again.”
Boyd-Garrett finally got a diagnosis five years later: a gene mutation
that requires her to take blood thinners to stay healthy and prohibits her
from donating blood to help others. She volunteers at blood drives and
encourages loved ones, co-workers, neighbors and friends to donate regularly to
replenish blood supplies.
“The Red Cross means saving lives,” she says, “and ‘True Blue’ means we
stand with each other and for each other. This university taught me that before
I went here, and because of blood drives like the one here every year, I was
saved. Blood means life.”
Donors who want to “Bleed Blue” Nov. 13-15 can also use the “American Red
Cross Blood” app, available at http://ow.ly/S39Ke,
to make an appointment. They can save even more time on donation day by
completing the “Rapid Pass” online health questionnaire at http://www.redcrossblood.org/rapidpass just before their
appointments.
Walk-in donors will be welcome, but those with appointments will be
processed first and finish their donations faster.
Ray Wiley, assistant director of MTSU Campus
Recreation, a longtime Red Cross volunteer and one of the "Bleed
Blue" drive coordinators, has more information on the upcoming event in a
brief video at https://youtu.be/g4-9xZ7nURY.
MTSU supporters are four-time champs in the “Bleed Blue, Beat WKU”
challenge, helping to collect more than 6,800 total pints of blood with WKU
since 2010. Because each unit of blood can aid three different patients, the six-year
competition has helped more than 20,500 people across Tennessee and parts of
Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri.
MTSU donors will have free reserved parking at the Rec Center Nov. 13-15,
and each will receive a T-shirt and two free tickets to MTSU’s last home
football game of the season while supplies last. For directions to the Rec
Center, visit http://www.mtsu.edu/camprec/directions.php.
For updates and more information about the blood drive, follow @MTSUNews on Twitter with the hashtags #BleedBlueMTSU and #BleedBlueBeatWKU.
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