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Blood drive at Gazette aims to save lives
Published March 20, 2008
SEGUIN — Anita Hoff considers herself twice-blessed.
Twice in her life, the Seguin resident needed blood transfusions and, in both instances, her life was saved by those who donated blood.
Now, more than a decade after her last transfusion, Hoff helps organize four blood drives a year through her congregation, Faith Lutheran Church.
“Just about any question about blood donation I can answer,” she said. “There’s no age limit anymore and a lot of people who are on blood pressure medication or other medications can still donate. Every 56 days a person is eligible to donate blood again, and every three seconds someone in the US needs blood.”
Hoff became that person in 1974. When she was getting ready to enter college, a mandatory tuberculosis test found that Hoff was infected with a form of the disease caused by ingesting unpasteurized cow’s milk.
Though she was taking medications to control the disease, Hoff had to take time off school to have surgery for TB-related hemorrhaging on her right lung.
“It was supposed to be a simple surgery to remove a portion of my lung, but there were complications,” she said. “I had two surgeries and got a transfusion of a few units of blood.”
She said she recovered and was able to finish college, eventually working as a distribution sales manager for Dress Barn in Dallas, Houston and Austin.
She moved to New Braunfels in search of an area central to the company’s regional locations, and then married and moved to Seguin. On Memorial Day in 1997 — exactly seven months after her wedding — Hoff found herself back on the operating table.
Hoff was bringing lunch to her husband when her car and body were crushed against a light pole in a serious accident.
“I was driving up Highway 123 when a lady ran a red light on Kingsbury and caused my car to slide into one of the poles that supports the traffic lights,” she said. “They airlifted me to Brackenridge Hospital in Austin. For two days they pumped blood into me, I don’t even know how much.”
Hoff was hospitalized with severe head trauma and brain trauma, her back, pelvis and ribs were broken in several places and her “good” lung was punctured and had three blood clots.
“I lost two and a half months of my life,” she said. “I remember kidding my husband later that I was just testing him on the ‘for better or worse’ part of our vows.”
Gayle Prettyman, a spokeswoman for the Texas Blood and Tissue Center, said that the group only provides blood to patients in true need — accident victims, those undergoing serious surgical procedures, or ongoing treatments like chemotherapy. Even within those parameters, however, hundreds of South Texas patients need blood every day.
Prettyman said the bank is struggling to maintain a two-day supply.
“I wish I could say that this situation is unusual, but it’s not,” she said. “We supply over 100 hospitals and clinics in the area and we need to collect 600 units a day to stay well-supplied. Blood is also a living substance so it cannot be stored indefinitely.”
The South Texas Blood and Tissue Center’s mobile unit will be at the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today. The entire donation process takes less than an hour, Prettyman said, and most of that time is paperwork.
“Donors must be at least 17 years old, weigh at least 110 pounds and be in good general health,” Prettyman said. “They take roughly one pint of blood and the actual donation takes only a few minutes.”
Even those who are unsure if they can donate should stop by if they are interested, Prettyman said. It is important to bring a driver’s license or photo identification as well as a list of medications and any travels to foreign countries. Prettyman said feelings of faintness can be warded off by eating a meal before donation and drinking plenty of fluids throughout the day.
“We do have to use a needle, there’s no way around that,” Prettyman said. “But it is just a pinch and the person getting the blood probably has tubes and needles in them everywhere. It’s such a simple way to give an opportunity of life to another person.”
Hoff said she will be forever thankful to the unknown people who helped supply her with life-saving blood.
Unfortunately, though she advocates donating, a medication Hoff takes as a result of the brain trauma she sustained has made her ineligible to donate blood.
“Blood donation has saved my life twice,” she said. “If I could, I would be the first one out there finding some place to give blood.”
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