Sunday June 19, 2022
“The best laid plans o’ mice an’ men,” wrote poet Robbie Burns long ago, “gang aft agley.”
Canadian Blood Services and I laid plans for celebrating the one-year anniversary of opening the new Kelowma plasma clinic, this coming Wednesday, June 22. Alas, life had other plans. Things went agley.
I wanted to be the first plasma donor, when the clinic opened in 2021. My wife had been receiving plasma transfusions for 12 years, while she had chronic lymphatic leukemia (CLL). The plasma contained immune-globulin, antibodies distilled from about 1000 donors per transfusion, to supplement her weakened immune system.
I wanted to repay some of that debt, if I could.
So I was indeed the first potential donor through the doors. But I reckoned without the commitment of Canadian Blood Services nurses to making sure that no harm came to me -- or to any other donor.
Age was not a handicap. There is no upper age limit anymore.
And the thing that had prevented me from donating whole blood for the last 40 years or so -- having had malaria as a child -- was no longer an obstacle. Because the malaria parasite -- if I still harboured it -- lives inside red blood cells. Plasma donations do not take your blood cells at all; they return the blood cells to you and keep only the pale fluid that carries those cells through your body.
But my medical history showed a heart attack 11 years before. Too risky, the nurse in charge decided, and referred me to the Blood Services medical consultants.
Who turned me down.
It took three months of letters and phone calls and lobbying to get that decision overturned.
The nurse who called me sounded overjoyed. “I’ve just got their ruling,” she gushed. “You’re eligible!”
Another “oops”!
I’ve been donating plasma every two weeks (with occasional exceptions) ever since.
And that schedule would have had me in a chair, this coming Wednesday morning. For health and safety reasons, Canadian Blood Services does not normally allow visitors into the clinic. Just staff and donors. But for this one occasion, they would allow some media personnel to film and interview donors.
I would have been one of those donors, the clinic’s poster boy.
Fame at last!
Oops.
Apparently I spent too much time in the sun during my younger years. Hatless. Sea breeze in my hair, Boating the waters of the Salish Sea: Vancouver harbour, Howe Sound, Indian Arm… With sunlight not only hitting me directly, but reflecting up off the dancing waters…
As a result, I’ve had five surgeries, over the years, to remove patches of skin from my scalp and face that got too much sun. Actinic keratoses, technically. Pre-cancerous cells, more generally.
The last round, I had 11 bits excised, and 49 stitches. I looked like something assembled by Dr. Frankenstein.
Guess when my next round of surgery came up? Right -- exactly one week before the plasma clinic’s anniversary celebration.
Opportunity for you
So I won’t be in a chair next Wednesday.
But maybe you can be.
At this time, Canadian donors provide only about a quarter of Canada’s plasma needs. The rest must be imported, mostly from the U.S.
Canadian Blood Services now has five plasma-only clinics across Canada: Sudbury, Lethbridge, Brampton, Orleans (Ontario) and Kelowna.
We in the Okanagan are a vital link in keeping Canadians alive.
Plasma is refined into a variety of components. Albumins, which maintain the viscosity of blood. Fibrinogens, which help blood clot after surgeries or accidents. And three types of globulins -- of which the most important is immune globulin, the stuff that kept my wife alive for 12 years.
These products, says the blood.ca website, “are used to treat patients with a variety of life-threatening conditions, such as immunodeficiency disorders, autoimmune or neurological disorders, liver disease, patients being treated for shock and serious burns, and congenital bleeding disorders such as hemophilia.”
Giving blood products, especially plasma, costs you nothing, but gives you a very special kind of satisfaction -- the knowledge that you have changed someone’s life.
Even if I’m not there, don’t let things “gang agley.” Make a plasma donation.
In Canada, check out the Canadian Blood Agency’s web page, blood.ca. Or phone 1 888 2 DONATE, 1-888-236-6283. I don’t know how you donate plsma in the U.S.A.
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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn
Many of your responses to last week’s column dealt with your own memories of royal visits.
Wayne Irwin was 7 years old, in 1951. “Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip came through Dundas on the train, waving from the platform on the last carriage. We children were all in class groups on bleachers set up beside the tracks. We had all been given little Union Jacks on sticks to wave. The paper flag portion was stapled to the stick.
“I practised too much -- and my flag portion blew away. So when the train came by, I was watching and happily waving just my stick.
“Special memory.”
Fran Ota: has a closer connection to the Queen than I do: “I too remember the visits to Canada, and watching her crowned in 1954 [when Fran was eight]. Even remember the music, including Zadok the priest. It wasn’t until about ten years ago that I discovered we are ninth cousins! The resident researcher in the family has an immense family tree which goes a long way back.
“Yet I have little use for royalty at all, and have thought for a long time it should quietly sell off the holdings, invest the funds on behalf of the British people, and fade away. I’ve recently been living in Norway where the royal family is almost indistinguishable from regular folks. The former king was an Olympic medal winner and rode public transportation. The current king has been known to do the same.”
Steve Roney: “I have never seen her in person. I had to work when she visited Kingston during the Olympics. Our boat was nearly swamped by the Britannia when she opened the St. Lawrence Seaway, but from our vantage point, even had she been on the deck waving naked, we would not have seen her.”
Tom Watson: “I too remember the visit in 1951. I was 14, playing trumpet in the Wheatley Community Band, and we went to Windsor, Ontario where a number of bands played — at different points in the city — as Elizabeth and her entourage passed by. It was not in any sense as significant a moment as you had.
“I am among those who believe that one family setting itself up as permanent royalty is only about pomp and privilege, and thus largely irrelevant for our time.”
Cliff Boldt is not a monarchist either, he wrote, “but I do believe that our Parliamentary Democracy, with a Queen as head of state is far superior to the republican populism that is breaking out in the USA.
“Memories are the stuff of older age and should be treasured as a deep part of what we are as a person and as a nation. Keep the memories flowing.”
Guy Bird connected to the paper-route memories: “I too was a kid with a paper route in those days, but in Montreal. The day the Royal’s motorcade toured the city, we were in the midst of moving from the east end to the west end of the city for my dad’s new job. Our cross-town drive was halted twice to let the motorcade pass. We were the first car in line at the second stop and had an exceptional view. She waved and it felt like she was waving and looking right at me. As you said, we all treasure our memories.”
Two non-Canadians offered special viewpoints:
John Shaffer reflected on the sense of personal contact, even if only fleeting. “Your smile of the princess "’up into the tree’ brought to mind an experience I had at the theatre with Mary Poppins. As she ‘flew’ into the sky at the end of the play, I looked up at her to see the wires, and the actress winked at me! She had down the ‘beautific’ smile. Glad you have such a powerful memory.
“I was driven by Mao's home in Beijing in 1975, but he didn't invite me in for tea. I thought I saw his corpse in a more recent visit, but later I learned that it might have been fake. Hard to tell.”
Mirza Yawar Baig saw two sides of royalty: “The British royal family and the Queen in particular certainly pay for their keep in terms of the spectacle and entertainment they provide. Far better than Hollywood.
“One tends to forget (or excuse) that she elevated Tony Blair to the highest rank of knighthood, continues to tolerate her bad-hair-day-blonde PM, and protected her son from his pedophile shenanigans. That along with her dear departed husband’s open racism are the skeletons in a cupboard that remains firmly shut.”
Such, as they say, is life.
Don Gunning and I delivered papers in the same area. He remembered “the triangular fold that allowed us to fly the news to doorsteps, a la Frisbee! Subsequently forbidden because of so many broken windows!!”
Don also commented on my uncle Andy, the only reader to do so: “Sounds like your Uncle Andy was a most deserving OBE recipient! Can't imagine the pain and suffering he and his charges survived.
“Your 80-year-old memory library is astounding! Did you keep a diary?”
JT: No, journaling didn’t start until 1968 – watch for this coming week’s Soft Edges. Perhaps a psychologist could explain my memory to me; if I can remember an incident at all, I can remember it with great detail. If I can’t remember the details, it’s gone completely.
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns