Every year, the Hoxworth Blood Drive comes to WHHS. Last semester, students were able to save 50 lives by donating blood. The drive is organized by the year’s current tenth-grade student council.
“It’s important for people to give back to the community, even though it’s blood,” John Caliguri, advisor for the Class of 2027 Student Council, said. “It’s so needed and so important [and] I feel really good when we do it…It’s a great event because it’s local.”
To ensure that one has a healthy amount of blood in their system, individuals are limited to donating six times per year. Eating both before and after the time of donation is critical in ensuring that an individual has the ability to replenish the blood cells lost during donation, and avoid one common phobia surrounding blood donation: passing out.
“It’s very rare that somebody passes out,” Caliguri said. “It might be somebody who didn’t eat enough that morning…. You’re supposed to eat well that morning and hydrate. That’s the biggest thing for [phlebotomists], so they can find your vein. If you don’t drink a lot, then they dig around in there for the vein.”
To increase engagement in drives, Bloody the Blood Drop– Hoxworth’s official mascot– can be seen at various drives around the city, including WHHS. He can often be seen walking around the cafeteria during blood drive season, occasionally accompanied by officers to help willing students sign up.
While Bloody was unable to make it this year due to a prior commitment at another school’s blood drive, he should be back for the next blood drive in the coming school year.
“[When setting up the blood drive, I have to] meet with the people on the bus, give them a list of birthdays so they can check your ID and make sure that you are sixteen,” Caliguri said. “If you forget your ID, we give them a yearbook and they can look the kid up in the yearbook to recognize you or look at the birthday list.”
Aspiring donors are required to answer a series of questions to ensure that no problems may arise. Additionally, blood donors who are 16 years old are required to fill out and turn in a signed permission slip from their parent or guardian.
“There are certain countries that if you’ve been to in the past six months, you’re not allowed to donate, or if you’ve been sick or if you signed up and you go in there and you’re sneezing and sniffling, they won’t take your blood,” Caliguri said.
With the transition to Yonder pouches, there were some worries about not enough people signing up. Despite these doubts, enough people signed up and the drive went well.
“I thought it [getting people to sign up] was going to be a challenge, but it wasn’t,” Caliguri said. “As far as I know, [overall] everything went smoothly.”