Hello everyone. The letter below went out to all members of the Westfield Moms Club. There's a little boy who needs surgery, and needs blood donors who are B+. I know this post is a little long, but it's so important that I hope you will take a few minutes to read it, and help if you can. Thanks!
Hi All
Our son Luke has recently been diagnosed with increased intra cranial pressure due to premature closing of the sutures in his skull. What that means is that the sutures in his skull that should have closed around the time he turned 3, actually closed shortly after birth. 99% of the time this is diagnosed before the age of 1 and the surgery to correct the problem is pretty simple. Since Luke is now 2 1/2, the surgery is very long and will involve breaking up his skull into several pieces, reshaping those pieces and putting them back together in a different format which will allow the brain to grow and expand normally.
The biggest risk with this surgery is blood loss. Luke will lose the better part of his blood supply during the lengthy operation. For that reason, we are looking for people to donate blood for Luke for his surgery. Luke has B positive blood which is one of the rarer types. The blood bank has already informed us that they rarely have B positive on their shelves and they will definitely not have the 6 units available that we will need on the day of surgery.
We will need 6 units of blood on the day of Luke's surgery. Since each B positive person only has a 34% chance of matching the antibodies in Luke's blood, we are looking for about 18 people to donate in order to have enough blood on hand for his operation.
If you are B positive and are interested in being a donor for Luke, you just need to call the Indiana Blood Bank (they have offices throughout the state of Indiana) at 1-800-632-4722 and press option #2. Then inform the person that you speak with that you are interested in being a designated donor for Lukas Michalak who is having surgery at Riley Hospital on April 29th. They will arrange for you to go to the blood bank collection center that is closest to you for the blood donation. If you do not know your blood type, you can still call and set up a time to donate. If it turns out that you are not B positive, you will still be helping some other patient in need. The donation can be made at any time prior to April 14th. Any blood received after April 14th would not be processed in time for Luke's surgery.
Please feel free to forward this message on to anyone you know who may be willing to help. We need such a large number of donors that we are looking everywhere for help. Thanks in advance to all of you. We are so grateful for your friendship and for your support.
The Michalak's;
Mike, Suzy, Madi and Luke
