Donating Platelets and Plasma

 

Platelets only last for five days.  The need for donors is high.  Plasma can be collected at the same time as platelets.

These blood components are used to treat accident victims, organ and marrow transplant recipients, cancer and heart surgery patients and those with blood-related diseases like sickle cell anemia.

What can you do while you are hooked up to the machine?  I always watch a movie.  This time I watched Hugh Jackman in The Greatest Showman.  No long lines, no talking audience, no rustling treat bags, no slurping, and no big ticket price.

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And best of all a warm blanket!

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Delivered! 100 Pots for Cancer Survivors.

What an amazing event!  Each survivor got a pin describing the length of their journey, here is my pin celebrating one year!

The students from Saints Peter and Paul Catholic School helped by decorating 99 pots for cancer survivors.  Each pot was signed by the child and also adorned with a live peace lily plant.

The pots sure made for festive table decorations and treasured favors for each cancer survivor to take home to remember the celebration.

Not a pot was left at the end of the day.  But wait, for those of you who can count I said 99 pots were decorated by the students.  What is the mystery surrounding the 100th pot?

No mystery, as the organizer of getting the pots painted I actually did one pot as a sample so we would have a dry one for the kids to pass around and look at.

I went on a hunt for my pot and was going to try to take MY POT home with me.  When I found the pot this lovely gentlemen was not going to give it up, not even in trade for a different pot!

I was happy to meet the recipient of my pot and get a picture taken with him.  He was happy to meet the artist who painted his pot.  We also shared a huge hug.

100 pots for the cancer survivors celebration delivered!

 

Completed! 100 Pots for Cancer Survivors.

100 pots for the cancer survivors celebration completed!

Each pot covered with thumb print flowers, the celebration theme word Hope, and signed by the artists with hugs, kisses and hearts.

A big thank you to the artists that participated from Saints Peter and Paul School.  The third, fourth and fifth grade classes created these awesome pieces of art to show their support for cancer survivors.

What an amazing gift to receive, these pots will be treasured by the recipients.

Many of these children have a loved one who is a cancer survivor or currently going through cancer treatment. Because they shared their stories with each other, all of the children put a lot of love and hope into each pot.

Love and hope, pretty strong medicine.

100 Pots for Cancer Survivors.

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A really special celebration for cancer survivors is being arranged this year by my friend Penne, an Oncology Educator with Centura Health.  This is such an important message for those of us who are cancer survivors and I was flattered to be asked to help with hand made gifts for these warriors and heroes.

Preparing these pots to be painted.  A peace lily plant will be placed in each pot.  I cut the top of my friend Jane’s head off, sorry Jane, I’ll catch a better picture of you later!

Here is Penne, one of the kindest and most thoughtful people alive.

This year’s theme is Hope and the color purple is the color for cancer survivors.

Here is a sample of one of the pots when completed.

I have lined up some very special guest artists to help us out with these thumbprint flowers and personalizing each pot with the artist’s name and some hugs and kisses XOXO.

To receive a hand made gift that was touched by many different people is a very special message for the recipient.  To know others are wishing you good health is strong medicine indeed!

Stay tuned for more!

This Week’s Extreme Dog Treats!

Hi! Roscoe, Monty and Henry here with a guest blog post.

This weeks extreme dog treats? Turkey tails,  lamb pizzle and wild caught cod skins.  Smelly fish skin is one of our favorites but mom sometimes passes over smelly fish skins and gets something like turkey tails…

This week we got something smelly and something boring, a bit light on the snacks this week because:

Mom decided to start researching eco-friendly toys, eco-friendly doggy deodorizing products,  and a FURminator for Roscoe!

When Roscoe was young, before we figured out he had Addison’s disease, he had no fur because of his illness, so no brushing for him because he didn’t need it! Now that he’s been on his medication for Addison’s he’s got lots of fur. But hates brushing because he never had to deal with it before.   The FURminator gets more of that loose hair off of Roscoe before he gets annoyed and whimpers for mom to go away! The stupid brush was over $70  but they just changed the packaging  and the same brush in the old packaging was almost 50% off! Yay mom way to shop!   But mom just think about how many treats you could’ve bought for $35…

 

True Confessions

So, I thought it was embarrassing enough to admit I thought the Pooh emoji 💩was a Hershey kiss emoji! Here’s my latest confession:

I have a sticker on my car, a magnetic sticker, for a friend’s daughter who needs a kidney. It says “Ally Needs a Kidney”

I  was visiting a friend’ s granddaughter in the hospital and I parked my car on the street near the Children’s Hospital.

My friend happened to be there when I was visiting. When I was ready to leave she said she drive me to my car. She asked which car did you drive?  The one with the kidney sticker on it?   Yup.  We drove up and down the few streets I could’ve parked on near the hospital looking for the sticker.  We drove past a car just like mine but no sticker….  Then we drove down a few more streets that were a little farther out.  No car with a sticker.  Eventually we decided my car was stolen because there was no car with a sticker on it and called the police and my insurance company to report my car stolen.

We took one more sweep and realized the car without a sticker was my car.  I had taken the sticker off to run it through the car wash and forgot to put it back on!  Thank goodness my friend is easygoing.  She just laughed and said she was glad we found my car.  We spent several hours talking while on this search and dinner after we found my car.  At least we are all caught up on our gossip!