The life you save could be your neighbor’s

A blood drive on Friday is a powerful reminder of the impact blood and organ donations have had on the Willow Springs community. Stories about lives saved by transplant and transfusion are not hard to find. To promote the Save a Life Drive, three people from Willow Springs are telling their experiences. 

Kaleb Stolba said donated blood means life to him. Suffering from severe injuries after a safe crushed his legs in November 2015, Stolba said he received 28 units of blood in a seven-hour period as doctors operated to repair his severed femoral artery. Donor blood replaced his body’s total blood volume two times over as he fought to survive. 

“It saves lives. Period,” he said. “It brought me through those surgeries. It’s life.”

Overall, Stolba received 32 units of blood during his 28-day hospital stay. 

“I’m a walking miracle. That’s all there is to it,” Stolba said. 

More than 50,000 blood donations are needed every year to meet local needs, according to information from Community Blood Center of the Ozarks, which serves over 40 healthcare facilities in southwest MO, northwest AR, and southeast KS. One blood donation can help up to three people.

Jeff Lovan spoke about his late wife, Bree’s, hundreds of blood transfusions throughout her battle with leukemia. In addition to a blood drive, participants will also be able to register Friday for bone marrow and organ transplant registries. 

“Bree had two full-blown [bone marrow] transplants and one as a ‘booster’,” Lovan shared. “Based on Bree’s type of leukemia, her living a year or eighteen months was a stretch. She lived five years after her diagnosis. I got three, four more years of time, and so did her family and this community who celebrated with us and hurt when we hurt. Because of these organizations, she was able to have that.”

Donor registries are a worldwide database of 41 million donors. Bree’s donor, for example, was from Germany. Seventy percent of patients who need a bone marrow transplant do not have a fully matched donor in their family, according to information from Be the Match. 

Heather Duddridge is the recipient of a donated kidney, and her goal is to raise awareness about organ donation and the impact it can have.

“It’s an important issue to talk about,” said Heather Duddridge. “So many lives can be affected by organ transplants. We’re hoping to raise awareness of how these organizations do save lives. We should talk about it in normal conversation.”

Duddridge was diagnosed with cancer at the age of two and lost her left kidney as a toddler. She experienced a remission that lasted until the age of 30, when she was diagnosed with a rare soft tissue tumor in her remaining kidney. Her remaining kidney was removed on August 1, 2016, and she began a dialysis journey that lasted two years, eight months, and nineteen days. 

Like more than 100,000 other people, she was waiting for an organ transplant to save her life. Each day, seventeen people die while awaiting organ transplant.

“I knew I wasn’t going to make it without the transplant,” she said. She weighed just 72 pounds when she finally received the lifesaving call in April 2019. 

“I’m thankful for the gift of life and the chance to live life,” she said. Her donor was a nineteen-year-old girl, who passed away in a car accident. Heather had the opportunity to meet her donor’s family about a year after the surgery. 

“It was sad, but amazing to know that at such a young age, she had organ donation on her mind,” Duddridge said. 

The Save a Life Drive will take place Friday, April 14 in the fellowship hall of Crossway Fellowship Church at 220 Drew St., from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Donors will have an opportunity to join the Mid-America Transplant and Be the Match registries. Blood donation appointments are strongly encouraged. To schedule, please call 417-227-5006 or go to www.cbco.org/donate-blood.

Prospective donors should eat well and drink plenty of fluids prior to arrival and be prepared to show photo identification.