TYLER, Texas — Carter BloodCare in Tyler usually likes to keep a 2-3 day supply of blood.
Clinton McCoy, Regional Operations Director, says these days they’re lucky if they can keep one.
McCoy says, “It can mean lots of things. It can mean that hospitals have to postpone surgeries. It can mean that they have to triage which patients receive blood.”
This problem didn’t happen overnight. McCoy says it took months upon months of interrupted blood donation clinics and surging COVID caseloads.
“As those cases surge, employers, schools, businesses, churches all have to draw back. Their employees go out on quarantine, they're having staff shortages. We have staff shortages. We're all kind of walking through this weird situation where we don't know who's going to be at work tomorrow, because we all got to think about each other's safety.”
Around 140 East Texans gave blood across the region Tuesday, but the goal was 250.
Giving blood saves lives. It saved now 18-year-old Collin Boyd. He depended on blood transfusions as a kid battling cancer.
“We were eating dinner and I went to the restroom," Boyd said. "I noticed I was swollen. And so I came out and told my mom, ‘I need to drink more water, I’m swollen,’ because I had heard my grandma saying that about like her ankles and whatnot.”
He was 8 years old. The next several months for him after being diagnosed with an undifferentiated soft tissue sarcoma were a whirlwind of chemo treatments, surgeries and blood transfusions that may not have been as accessible today.
“A lot of people when they donate blood, they don't think that like, you know, they think, Oh, I'll get free food and a water right. And they don't realize they're saving lives," Boyd says.
To the regular donors, the sometimes donors and the never before donors especially, McCoy says, “We need people who have always said, ‘Oh, I'll do it next time.’ Or ‘I'll do it when it's convenient.’ Now, now's a convenient time.”
To give blood, McCoy says requirements remain the same: you have to be at least 16 with parental consent or 17 with a photo ID. You also need to be feeling well and weigh at least 110 pounds.
