Disclaimer: This is sponsored content. All opinions and views are of UCHealth and does not reflect the same of KOAA.
In this Your Healthy Family, we are following up on a story we shared with you a few weeks ago. Jim Anders is a self-proclaimed professional ski bum in his retirement years, but he recently spent five days in UCHealth Memorial Hospital with COVID-19.
In an effort to try to help others who are likely much sicker than he was with COVID-19, Jim went through the process that has been established for recovered patients to donate their plasma-containing antibodies to the virus.
Jim invited us along with him to the Vitalant Blood Donation Center in Colorado Springs and shared his thoughts with us while he was in the chair making his donation.
Jim says, “I'm glad to be here and able to do this. I had COVID-19 and spent five days in the hospital. I heard it was possible to donate plasma and that it can help other people with COVID-19 heal more quickly, so I decided that that's something I wanted to do.”
It all began with a phone call: “I got a call asking me asking if I was interested in donating. We did some pre-screening questions and then I answered those; then they had some more questions for me.”
Jim is lucky that he is in a group of people who don’t have a problem donating blood and plasma. “I have had a couple of surgeries so I have had needles in me before. The process itself isn't a big deal. It's important to me that I'm doing it, and to be able to help and give back.”
“I hope to help heal other people and I'd like to encourage people to donate if they have had COVID-19 and are eligible to donate plasma. They can help and the process to donate isn’t onerous or anything. Everybody's been really great about it and it's a good way to help other people.”
Jim hopes to be one part of a domino effect to help those who are suffering the most from COVID-19. “I'm doing this for other people and if you take another person and we multiply that by four and we get eight and hopefully it keeps going.”
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