Monday, June 8, 2020

Donating Blood has Benefits for Patients With Cancer

Cancer patients sometimes require blood due to anemia, blood loss during surgery, or as a result of negative side effects radiation or chemotherapy have on platelet or red blood cell counts.
PUBLISHED JUNE 08, 2020
Tamera Anderson-Hanna is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Certified Addiction Professional, Certified Rehabilitation Counselor and became a Registered Yoga Teacher while coping with breast cancer in 2015. She owns Wellness, Therapy, & Yoga in Florida where she provides personal wellness services and coaching and she is a public speaker on wellness-related topics. You can connect with her at www.wellnesstherapyyoga.com.
Blood donations have been down since the impact of COVID-19 and now that surgeries are resuming and individuals with cancer seek treatment some of us can do our part to pay it forward and donate blood. While undergoing surgeries and procedures as a breast cancer survivor, I was not allowed to give blood, but being 5 years out from my diagnosis, I gave blood for the first time in 5 years at the end of May. I was taught early on to donate blood. My mother is a universal blood donor, as are other members of my family, and donating blood was a regular part of my life from age 18 up until my breast cancer diagnosis. There are many benefits beyond just helping to potentially save a life. From a personal perspective, you have your own personal portal to evaluate and compare cholesterol levels from any date you have donated to also keeping track of blood pressure. This year when I resumed donating to help individuals following a blood shortage associated with our lockdown, I also benefitted from an antibody test for COVID-19.

The topic of measuring for antibodies has mixed reviews regarding what it will mean if you have antibodies and if you do it is not a definite and may not indicate you can't later again contract COVID-19, but if you have antibodies it is possible you can donate plasma as a treatment option to help others should a family member contract COVID-19 and be in need of treatment. Some individuals have found benefit from plasma donations given by individuals who have COVID-19 antibodies



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