Don Mulvey at Canada Blood Services' Toronto clinic on March 20.Cole Burston/The Globe and Mail
The organizer: Don Mulvey
The pitch: Close to 500 donations of platelets and climbing
When Don Mulvey was a teenager growing up in Montreal he accompanied his father to a blood donation centre just to see what it was like.
“I didn’t know a lot about it but I knew that he went on a semi-regular basis,” Mr. Mulvey, 70, recalled from his home in Toronto. “It just kind of intellectually intrigued me that you could sit there for a few minutes and donate and help save somebody’s life.”
Mr. Mulvey soon became a regular donor and several years later he was told that because of his rare blood type – AB negative – he was considered a “universal donor of platelets” which meant that anyone could receive his platelets without fear of rejection from the body. Platelets are cells that form clots and stop bleeding. They are essential for patients who have cancer, chronic diseases, hemophilia or traumatic injuries.
Once doctors told him about his rare blood type, Mr. Mulvey said he made a commitment to donate platelets roughly twice a month. “I would head down and just work my schedule around spending a morning donating,” he said. “I’ve always felt a bit of an obligation to continue to do it.”
It takes around 90 minutes to make a platelet donation which involves special machines that withdraw blood, separate the platelets and plasma, and then return the rest of the blood to the body.
Mr. Mulvey is closing in on his 500th donation which he expects to make in May (donations are only allowed every two weeks or so to give the body time to replenish). “It’s been a goal of mine for a while,” he said.
His platelets have been used to help countless people and occasionally he’s told about someone whose life he saved, such as an infant at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, or a woman undergoing cancer treatment at Women’s College Hospital. “You know that’s the sort of thing that really makes me feel good.”
And once he hits his 500th donation, he’ll set another goal. “As long as my health holds, I’ll keep donating.”