Some of the Best People are Blood Donors

Image by bartmaguire via Flickr

This month I am blogging on the theme of "best" and there is no better way to get started than to talk about some of my heroes, blood donors. The multitudes of blood transfusions I received 22 years ago when I underwent treatment for leukemia made it possible for me to be blogging today. I unfortunately cannot donate blood due to my HCV+ status, but I can support the cause by encourage others to become blood donors.

I just so happens that January is National Blood Donor Month. So please consider donating blood, as blood supplies this time of year become critically low. Here is a press release from AABB, formerly the American Association of Blood Banks, regarding National Blood Donor Month:

"Too many Americans wait until they need blood before they truly realize the importance of volunteer blood donation. Donating blood saves lives. It may not be your neighbor or co-worker or best friend who needs your blood today. But someone does. Every two seconds, someone needs blood in the United States. Make lifesaving a habit starting this January – National Blood Donor Month. Call the Red Cross at 1-800-GIVE-LIFE or visit www.givelife.org to find your local blood donation center.


Many people know that when you donate blood it goes to people in need, but what you may not know is how great that need is. Every two seconds, someone in this country needs blood. That need continues to grow, but with just one blood donation, you can help save up to three lives. To learn more about donating blood during National Blood Donor Month, call the Red Cross at 1-800-GIVE-LIFE or visit www.givelife.org.


Sometimes it’s scary to try something new – like donating blood. But wouldn’t it be worth it if you knew you could be helping to save up to three lives? There are millions of blood donors in America and each of them had to start some time. Isn’t it time for you? During National Blood Donor Month, come see how easy and safe it is to become a lifesaver. For more information, call the Red Cross at 1-800-GIVE-LIFE or visit www.givelife.org.


You don’t have to leap from tall buildings to be a hero. Donating blood saves lives. Your blood donation could help save as many as three patients who need you to be a hero. Celebrate National Blood Donor Month this January by donating blood. Please call Call the Red Cross at 1-800-GIVE-LIFE or visit www.givelife.org to find your local blood donation center.. It doesn’t take superhuman powers to perform a superhuman act. Donate blood. Call today."

Related articles by Zemanta

• Donated the First Bag of Blood! Painless! (adriansjournal.blogspot.com)
• Layoffs lead to fewer corporate blood donors (msnbc.msn.com)
• Mother thanks 30 blood donors for saving her life (telegraph.co.uk)
• Man Has Donated 40 Gallons of Blood (neatorama.com)

My Heroes: HealEmru.com, Bone Marrow Donor Advocates

The health care heroes continue on for one more day. It seems my tweets on Twitter about my blog posts have attracted some attention! I want to let you know about the website HealEmru. Glenn Grant, the artist who created the flyer featured at the end my post, My Heroes: Bone Marrow Donors, is part of the HealEmru website. He read my tweet about my bone marrow donors blog post, contacted me on Twitter and sent me this message: Imagine my surprise when I read your empassioned blog post and seeing a poster I designed at the end. Thank you so much. <3

Emru Townsend was a bone marrow transplant recipient and fellow leukemia patient like me. Unfortunately, after an 11 month fight, he died peacefully on November 11, 2008. Before his death, he focused on getting the word out about the need for bone marrow donors of color: person of African, Asian, Pacific Islander, Indian, Native American/First Nations and mixed heritage. His friends and family continue the website in his memory and work to get the word out about registering to become a bone marrow donor.

Please check out the website, www.healemru.com, for more information. This website is also on Twitter as @healemru.

My Heroes: Health Care Heroes *Honorable Mentions*

It's been a great two weeks of sharing with you my health care heroes. Since I only have one more full week of June to write about heroes, I'm afraid it is time to move on and highlight some of my heroes in other fields. But before I go, I want to share with you some of my health care heroes "honorable mentions."

In the category of Health Care Websites and Health Care Advocate Heroes:


DiabetesMine by Amy Tenderich




Invisible Illness Week, Rest Ministries and the Chronic Illness and Pain Support blog by Lisa Copen



And in the category of Health Care Discoveries and Pioneering Heroes:

The Discovery of the Hepatitis C Virus

Drs. Michael Houghton, Qui-Lim Choo, and George Kuo at the Chiron Corporation and Dr. D.W. Bradley at the Center for Disease Control worked together to identified the Hepatitis C virus for the first time in 1987. Dr. Harvey J. Alter, Chief of the Infectious Disease Section in the Department of Transfusion Medicine at the National Institutes of Health confirmed the discovery in 1988. Dr. Alter and Dr. Houghton went on to develop the Hepatitis C antibody test, which today has reduced the risk of becoming infected with Hepatitis C from a blood transfusion to virtually zero. Dr. Alter and Dr. Houghton were honored for their work in 2000 with the Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research.

The Invention of the Blood Glucose Meter

Many diabetics test their blood sugar multiple times per day. What many diabetics don't know is that Anton H. (Tom) Clemens developed the first blood glucose meter, known as the Ames Reflectance Meter, in 1969. Furthermore, it was Richard Bernstein, an engineer back in 1970 who was losing his battle with Type 1 diabetes, that bought this hospital meter for his own personal home use. With the help of the Ames meter, he was able to get his blood sugar under control and reverse the damage high blood sugar was doing to his body. He then wanted to share his success with the medical community, who were less than interested. Undeterred, he pushed the Ames Company and the diabetes treatment community in general to develop the personal blood glucose meter. Dick Bernstein's fight with the medical community is what spurred him to enter medical school at age 45 and become one of the first diabetologists.

I hope you have enjoyed learning about my health care heroes and the ways that you can be a health care hero too by being a clinical trial research participant, blood donor, bone marrow donor and/or organ donor.

Thanks again to all my health care heroes!

My Heroes: UCLA Livestrong Survivor Specialists, Drs. Casillas and Ganz

Today I highlight two doctors who are part of my long-term cancer survivorship medical team, Dr. Jackie Casillas and Dr. Patricia Ganz. Together, they make up the UCLA Livestrong Survivorship Center of Excellence at UCLA Medical Center. Since the Fall of 2006, they have bought this new service to cancer survivors in Los Angeles and all of Southern California with the help of a grant from the Lance Armstrong Foundation. This is an invaluable service that before 2006 did not exist at UCLA.

What makes these doctors' efforts unique, pioneering and heroic are:

1. their acknowledgment and validation that cancer treatments cause late effects in cancer survivors. I have often said that, back in 1988, my oncologists forgot to give me the owner's manual to this new and strange behaving cancer-free body that they returned to me. For over 18 years, most doctors just scratched their heads and thought I was a hypochondriac (or worse!) It wasn't until I was seen by Dr. Casillas for the first time in October 2006 that I really felt like a doctor got it (and me) about being a long-term cancer survivor.
   
2. their interest and drive to further both patient care and research in this long overlooked area. Dr. Ganz was a member of the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council Committee that wrote the book From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in Transition and Implementing Cancer Survivorship Care Planning. Dr. Casillas is part of the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study and a member of the Children's Oncology Group's Long-Term Follow-Up Guidelines Task Force.
3. the time and attention these doctors take with each cancer survivor that comes to see them. In my experience, it is rare to find a doctor that has more than 20 minutes to spend with you. Each time I go for follow-up with the Vital Information and Tailored Assessment (VITA) program, I spend at least (and often more than) one hour with Dr. Casillas and up to an additional hour with the nurse practitioner and social worker. I received a comprehensive multi-page survivorship care plan after each visit and referrals to other medical specialists for follow-up of the late effect issues identified in my visit.
   

Dr. Patricia Ganz is an adult oncologist who is best know for her work in the area of breast cancer. She has also lead the way in research on the assessment of quality of life for cancer patients. She has been a doctor and member of the medical school faculty at UCLA since completing her training in Hematology and Oncology at UCLA in 1978 and she has been the director of the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control Research at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center since 1993. The recipient of numerous accolades and honors, she was awarded an American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professorship for Enhancing Patient Outcomes in 1999.


Dr. Jackie Casillas is a pediatric oncologist who has been on staff at UCLA since 2001, after completing a fellowship in pediatric Hematology and Oncology at Mattel Children's Hospital at UCLA. Her research interests include access to care, quality of life and quality of care for long-term survivors of childhood cancer. She is an active member of several organizations and committees, including the American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology.

Words can not express how validated, understood and relieved I feel each time I leave my yearly appointment with Dr. Casillas. These doctors and this program is a godsend to long-term cancer survivors like me. Thank you, long-term cancer survivor health care advocates, and my personal health care HEROES, Drs. Casillas and Ganz!

My Heroes: Diabetologist Dr. Anne Peters

Today I am going to introduce you to one of my own personal health care heroes. She is my endocrinologist, Dr. Anne Peters. She is nationally and internationally known for her expertise in the area of diabetes care, but to me she is my really caring and understanding doctor who listens to my concerns about having Type 2 diabetes and helps me get my blood sugar under control. She also helps my husband manage his symptoms of metabolic syndrome (characterized by high blood pressure, high cholesterol and insulin resistance) which seems to be a hereditary condition in his family.

Dr. Peters leads something of a double life: I see her at the Westside Center for Diabetes in Beverly Hills, but she also sees some of the poorest and most disadvantaged persons living with diabetes at the Edward R. Roybal Comprehensive Health Center in East Los Angeles. Her work at the Roybal Diabetes Management Program was featured in Remaking American Medicine: Healthcare for the 21st Century on PBS in October 2006. Her innovative approach includes plenty of face-to-face time with newly diagnosed persons with diabetes, teaching them about all the aspects of living with diabetes, including:

• blood sugar monitoring
• taking medications correctly
• managing and preventing low and high blood sugar
• the importance of proper foot care and regular eye exams
  
• eating smarter and managing weight
  
• counting carbohydrates that effect blood sugar
• dealing with the psychosocial impact of living with diabetes
  

Her team includes nurses, diabetes educators, nutritionists and peer educators This approaches shows patients that they are not alone in dealing with their diabetes; there is a team behind them to support them. In this way, Dr. Peters and her team strive to reduce the number of hospitalizations related to diabetes into the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, which in turn helps to stretch dwindling County funds for health care.

Dr. Peters shares her knowledge with other in many ways, including the publication of her book Conquering Diabetes: A Cutting Edge Program for Prevention and Treatment. You can also find her advice for both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetics free online at knol. She actively lectures, writes and conducts diabetes-related research. In addition to other numerous awards, she became the recipient of the American Diabetes Association's Distinguished Clinician Award in June of 2008.

I wish you could meet Dr. Peters in person so you could understand just how special a doctor she really is. Since this is neither practical or possible, I thought I'd share this quote from a 2006 interview with Kelly Close of Close Concerns Consultancy. I think it really captures Dr. Peters' true spirit:

Ever since I was a little girl, I've always been interested in helping the underserved. It's a long story, but I went to PS 40 in New York City when I was little and they had twin desks where they would sit a good student with one who wasn't doing as well in school. I sat next to a little African-American boy, and my goal in school was to teach him how to read. Unfortunately, he was sick so much that he could never come to school, so I could never teach him to read and that is when I began to realize the effect illness had on education and poverty. At that point, I first decided that I wanted to work in underserved communities. I have always done volunteer work, and I try to give back to people who have less than I do.

I am proud to say Dr. Peters is my partner in managing my Type 2 diabetes. Her unique approach to patient care is what makes her my HERO.


Diabetes: Diabetes Prevention

My Heroes: Organ Donors

Now that you have learned in my last post about Dr. Joe Murray and his pioneering work in organ transplants, it's time for YOU to become a hero by being an organ donor. First, here are the facts about organ donation, courtesy of the website DonateLife.net:

"Learn the Facts
Despite continuing efforts at public education, misconceptions and inaccuracies about donation persist. Learn these facts to help you better understand organ, eye and tissue donation:

• Fact: Anyone can be a potential donor regardless of age, race, or medical history.
• Fact: All major religions in the United States support organ, eye and tissue donation and see it as the final act of love and generosity toward others.
• Fact: If you are sick or injured and admitted to the hospital, the number one priority is to save your life. Organ, eye and tissue donation can only be considered after you are deceased.
• Fact: When you are on the waiting list for an organ, what really counts is the severity of your illness, time spent waiting, blood type, and other important medical information, not your financial status or celebrity status.
• Fact: An open casket funeral is possible for organ, eye and tissue donors. Through the entire donation process the body is treated with care, respect and dignity.
• Fact: There is no cost to the donor or their family for organ or tissue donation.
• Fact: Signing a donor card and a driver's license with an "organ donor" designation may not satisfy your state's requirements to become a donor. Be certain to take the necessary steps to be a donor and ensure that your family understands your wishes."

Second, you need to know the steps to take to become a organ donor and the website OrganDonor.gov has it all broken down for you, including a PDF download of a printable organ donor card AND a link to request one by mail. The steps are:

1. Register with your state's donor registry (just follow this link to get started.)
2. Make your decision known on your driver's license or ID.
3. Sign and carry an organ donor card NOW (just follow this link to the PDF and donor card by mail request links.)
4. Share your decision with family and friends so they can advocate on your behalf when the time comes.
   

Lastly, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) website, RIGHT NOW there are 101,945 people waiting for an organ transplant. From January to March 2009, 6,998 transplants have already taken place from 3,566 donors. These organ donors and their families are HEROES in my book.


Be a hero too. Be an organ donor!

My Heroes: Dr. Joe Murray

While researching my blog post about bone marrow transplant pioneers Dr. Don and Dottie Thomas, I experienced the unexpected; learning about the doctor who pioneered organ transplants, Dr. Joe Murray. He shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology with Dr. Thomas and is a hero in his own right. Not only is Dr. Murray a surgeon and a medical scientist, he is also an author. His autobiography, published in 2001, is called Surgery of the Soul: Reflections on a Curious Career.

Dr. Murray's interest in transplantation grew out of his experiences during World War II. He worked as an Army surgeon on the plastic surgery service at Valley Forge General Hospital in Pennsylvania, attending to burn victims. He utilized skin grafts as part of patient care, and became fascinated by how the body could tell when the surgeons had to use temporary donor skin grafts. He observed how the body eventually rejected the graft and hypothesized that the time it took for the body to reject the graft had something to do with how genetically dissimilar the patient and donor were. (These were the days before post transplant anti-rejection medications.) His mentor, Colonel James Barrett Brown, performed a skin transplant between twins in 1937 which had not been rejected; Dr. Murray credits this knowledge as the impetus for his research into organ transplantation.

By 1954, Dr. Murray was at Brigham Hospital in Boston and performing the first kidney transplant, giving Richard Herrick, a 23 year old with kidney disease, a kidney from his healthy twin brother Ronald. In an interview in 2001 with the New York Times, Dr. Murray recalls practicing in the lab on dogs and even performing the surgery on cadavers prior to the actual procedure, just to make sure that everything would go as planned. He went on to perform the first allograft in 1959 and the first kidney transplant from an unrelated donor in 1962.

In his autobiography for the website Nobelprize.org, Dr. Murray says:

"My only wish would be to have ten more lives to live on this planet. If that were possible, I'd spend one lifetime each in embryology, genetics, physics, astronomy and geology. The other lifetimes would be as a pianist, backwoodsman, tennis player, or writer for the National Geographic. If anyone has bothered to read this far, you would note that I still have one future lifetime unaccounted for. That is because I'd like to keep open the option for another lifetime as a surgeon-scientist."

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, 456,857 organ transplants have been performed since January 1, 1988. This is what makes Dr. Murray a true health care hero.

My Heroes: Bone Marrow Donors

Following my post on Saturday about bone marrow transplant pioneers Dr. Don and Dottie Thomas, I now pay tribute to all those volunteers of the Be the Match/National Marrow Donor Program registry.

And for those of you interested in joining the registry and becoming a bone marrow donor, listen up: during the Be The Match Marrowthon, you can join online for FREE between June 8th through 22nd, while funding lasts. Their Marrowthon goal is to add 46,000 new members to the registry and I encourage you to consider being one of them. Hurry, you only have 7 days left!

When I was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia back in January, 1988, one of the first things my doctors did was tissue test my three siblings to determine if they were a bone marrow match. No one was and my treatment plan changed from bone marrow transplant to four courses of chemotherapy. Fortunately, for me, the chemotherapy worked and my cancer went into remission. But for many others in this similar situation, a bone marrow transplant IS the treatment that they absolutely need.

It is easy to become a bone marrow donor, especially now during the Marrowthon. Just go online and sign up. Usually there is a $52 donation required for the tissue typing test, which is a simple swab on the inside of your cheek to collect DNA, but during the Marrowthon the cost is waived while funds last. (If you do pay the fee, rest assured it is a donation to a non-profit charity and may be tax-deductible---ask your tax preparer for more information.) Once the tissue typing is completed, your name and results are placed into the registry where they wait for someone who needs you and is your match...

If you are a match, stem cells are now collected one of two ways:

1. most commonly is a peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) collection which is an outpatient process similar to an apherisis blood donation
   
2. the second donation method is a bone marrow harvest, which is usually an outpatient surgical procedure
   

The cost for all donation procedures are paid for by the patient and/or the patient's medical insurance.

I had a bone marrow harvest back in 1989; it was done as a precautionary measure during my first year of remission to give me a treatment option if I relasped and my leukemia came back. I don't remember the actual procedure because it was done under general anesthesia. I did have some "pain in the butt" afterwards---it kind of felt like I had been kicked by a horse. But the peace of mind I obtained knowing that my healthly marrow was stored "in case of emergency" was worth the pain and overnight hospitalization.

As a bone marrow donor, any pain or inconvenience you experience will be worth it when you remember that your bone marrow is giving someone a fighting chance to stay alive.

Thank you, bone marrow donors! Your kindness and generosity has the heroic power to save lives.

6/20/09: ADDENDUM

I want to let you know about the website HealEmru. Glenn Grant, the artist who created the flyer featured at the end of this post, is part of the HealEmru website. He read my tweet about my bone marrow donors blog post, contacted me on Twitter and sent me this message: Imagine my surprise when I read your empassioned blog post and seeing a poster I designed at the end. Thank you so much. <3

Emru Townsend was a bone marrow transplant recipient and fellow leukemia patient like me. Unfortunately, after an 11 month fight, he died peacefully on November 11, 2008. Before his death, he focused on getting the word out about the need for bone marrow donors of color: person of African, Asian, Pacific Islander, Indian, Native American/First Nations and mixed heritage. His friends and family continue the website in his memory and work to get the word out about registering to become a bone marrow donor.

Please check out the website, www.healemru.com, for more information. This website is also on Twitter as @healemru.

My Heroes: Dr. Don and Dottie Thomas

I travel interesting places on the Internet in my search for heroes in this month of June 2009. These next featured medical researchers, a husband and wife pair, attained such heroic heights that Dr. Thomas became a Nobel Prize winner in 1990 in the Physiology and Medicine category, which is the pinnacle in recognition of achievement. Their prize winning endeavor was the discovery of bone marrow transplants.

Since 1963, Dr. Don Thomas and his wife and research assistant Dottie spent countless hours in the lab working on the puzzle of bone marrow transplants. It began with transplants between identical twins. The twin diagnosed with leukemia received enough radiation and chemotherapy to destroy their own diseased bone marrow. Then they received a bone marrow donation from their healthy twin to regrow their bone marrow and relaunch production of their own blood and blood cells. While the process was relatively straightforward between identical twins, transplants between non-twin siblings and unrelated donors proved to be much more complicated. The Thomases and their team that came together at Seattle Washington's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center by 1975 learned the key to successful transplantation: matching tissue type---called histocompatibility---between donor and recipient.

Using this discovery, the first successful non-twin sibling bone marrow transplant took place in 1968. Dr. Robert Good at the University of Minnesota Medical School performed the transplant on a 5 month old boy with a genetic immune deficiency syndrome that had contributed to the death of 11 of his male relatives. The donor was his healthy 8 year old sister. The first successful unrelated donor bone marrow transplant took place at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in 1977. The recipient was Laura Graves. Her father Robert went on the establish the Laura Graves Foundation in 1981, which is known today as the National Marrow Donor Program.

Now bone marrow tranplants treat 40 different diseases beyond leukemia and aplastic anemia. Don and Dottie donated the $350,000 Nobel Prize award money to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and continue to work there til this day despite being "retired". "We love what we do," Dottie Thomas says. "I can't imagine working or living any other way."

My Heroes: Blood Donors

I'm following up my post yesterday about Dr. Charles R. Drew, the father of blood banking, with a post in appreciation of all the everyday heroes who donate blood.

As you may well be aware, the blood supply at any given time is often low, sometimes critically, and donations are always needed and welcomed. According to the American Red Cross, every two seconds someone needs blood, yet only 5% of the U.S. population donates blood during the year. On their website, www.givelife.org, they include a "Top Ten Reasons To Give Blood" list which is both informative and amusing (and I hope they don't mind if I reprint it here):

	You will get free juice and cookies.
	You will weigh less — one pint less when you leave than when you came in.
	It's easy and convenient — it only takes about an hour and you can make the donation at a donor center, or at one of the many Red Cross mobile blood drives.
	It's something you can spare — most people have blood to spare... yet, there is still not enough to go around.
	Nobody can ask you to do any heavy lifting as long as you have the bandage on. You can wear it for as long as you like. It's your badge of honor.
	You will walk a little taller afterwards — you will feel good about yourself.
	You will be helping to ensure that blood is there when you or someone close to you may need it. Most people don't think they'll ever need blood, but many do.
	It's something you can do on equal footing with the rich and famous — blood is something money can't buy. Only something one person can give to another.
	You will be someone's hero — you may give a newborn, a child, a mother or a father, a brother, or a sister another chance at life. In fact, you may help save up to three lives with just one donation.
	It's the right thing to do.

You can read more about the donation process and ways you can help (which also include becoming a Red Cross volunteer and sponsoring a blood drive).

I so appreciated the people who donated blood for me when I needed it, especially my Dad who made apheresis donations of platelets to me when I started having transfusion reactions late in my cancer treatment. I regret that I can not return the favor, since I am not allowed to donate my blood due to my Hepatitis C positive status. I did, however, volunteer with the Red Cross for a time and worked several blood donation drives.

I hope to encourage you to consider becoming a hero by donating blood today. Thanks to all of you who donate blood already---you are my heroes!

My Heroes: Charles R. Drew, M.D.

I was introduced to my next hero when I worked at the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in their Early Intervention Program for people living with HIV and AIDS in the mid-1990's. As a new employee, during orientation I learned about Dr. Charles R. Drew and his lifesaving work in the field of blood transfusions.

Charles R. Drew was born in Washington DC in 1904. He excelled at school and athletics. He attended Amherst College in Massachusetts, graduating in 1926. He spend two years after graduation teaching biology and serving as Athletics Director at Morgan State University in Baltimore. He then turned his attention to medical school, enrolling in McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He graduated in 1933 second in his class, a member of the Medical Honorary Society, with Master of Surgery and Doctor of Medicine degrees.

While at McGill, he studied under an anatomy professor by the name of Dr. John Beattie whose interest was in blood transfusions. In 1938, Dr. Drew received a Rockefeller Foundation Research Fellowship to attend Columbia University, where he rekindled his interest in the study of blood transfusions. While at Columbia, he developed a technique that increased the time blood could be stored by separating the plasma from the whole blood. By 1940, he published his dissertation entitled "Banked Blood: A Study in Blood Preservation" and became the first African-American to receive a Doctorate of Medicine degree from Columbia University.

At this time, World War II had begun and Dr. Drew's discovery of how to bank blood for future use caught the attention of medical personnel in Britain. In addition to establishing the first blood bank in New York, in 1940 Dr. Drew also supervised the "Plasma for Britain" project which helped stockpile dried plasma for transfusion to assist the British war effort. Later, in 1941, when it became clear that the United States would also be drawn into the war, Dr. Drew was tapped to supervise a similar project to stockpile blood reserves for American soldiers. During WWII, Dr. Drew established himself as the expert in the field of blood banking and transfusion medicine and his efforts here in the United States saved the lives of thousands of injured U.S. servicemen in Europe and the South Pacific.

Dr. Drew went on to more honors, including the first African-American appointed an examiner to the American Board of Surgery in 1942, elected Fellow to the International College of Surgeons in 1946, awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP in 1948 and appointed Surgical Consultant for the U.S. Army in 1949.

Unfortunately, he died at age 45 in 1950 in a car accident in North Carolina while on the way to a medical conference with three other doctors. The driver of the car, he sustained massive life-threatening injuries that did not respond to emergency medical care. Contrary to popular belief, he did not die because he was denied a blood transfusion at Alamance County Hospital, the segregated hospital he was taken to by ambulance after the accident.

Dr. Drew leaves behind an extraordinary legacy worthy of a hero. According to the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science website, his work has saved 2,000,000,000 lives so far. I am proud to say that I am one of those lives; I am the recipient of multiple blood transfusions given to me over the course of 7 months during my cancer treatment in 1988.

My Heroes: Clinical Trial Research Participants

When it comes to health care heroes, these are some of the unsung heroes of medicine. Every year, thousands of people, young and old, healthy and sick, volunteer to try new medications through the clinical research process.

Clinical trials are an important step in the FDA approval process that a medication must complete to go from test tube to pharmacy shelf. In a clinical trial, recruited volunteers take a trial medication in one of three phases:

1. In Phase One, a medication is given to humans for the first time and is evaluated for safety, side effects and safe dosage range.
   
2. In Phase Two, a medications is evaluated for its effectiveness in treating the targeted symptoms, condition or illness.
   
3. In Phase Three, a medication is studied against existing treatments to confirm its effectiveness, and final safety and side effect profiles are compiled.

While there are risks to taking a new medication for which the benefits are unproven and the side effects unknown, there are also benefits. Most volunteers sign up for clinical trials to gain access to research medications that might prove to make a difference in their health and quality of life. The clinical trials are often conducted by the top health care experts and facilities in the country. A clinical trial may offer hope when no other conventional options exist.

The one benefit of participating in a clinical trial that makes these volunteers heroes in my eyes is the fact that clinical trial research participants help others by contributing to the advancement of medical science. Without these volunteers, new medications would never make it to the pharmacy, period.

Participating in a clinical trial is a BIG decision; I know because I have done it twice (and I am quite humble about my hero status!) Thankfully there are resources available to help you make an informed decision and determine if being in a clinical trial is right for you. For example: The Center for Information & Study on Clinical Research Participation (http://www.ciscrp.org//) helps you with information about all aspects of clinical trial participation. They were formed in 2003 as a non-profit public service organization with the mission of educating and empowering patients and their families about medical research participation. One of the tools on their website is the innovative SearchClinicalTrials.org, where you can search multiple websites at one time for clinical trials information.

So consider being a hero. Talk to your doctor and ask if participating in a clinical trial for medications to treat your health condition is right for you. And remember, even if you are healthy, you can participate in a clinical research study.