When we evaluated results from the last major alumni survey, staff identified recurring themes of “informal opportunities to connect in the community” and “co-branded events with other organizations”, as well as “opportunities to engage across programs and program years”. We have taken that feedback and implemented events like Walk & Talks and Coffee Connection.
Adding to this menu of options for alumni, the staff at Leadership Austin will begin hosting volunteer opportunities for organizations and issues that are important to them. Alumni are invited to join us in supporting these great missions in our region. As always, alumni are also invited to share their own volunteer and community engagement opportunities in the Alumni Community Calendar.
Blood Donation Drive
Thursday, Dec 8 from 8:30 – 11:00 am
Leadership Austin Office, 1609 Shoal Creek Blvd
“When I was 12 years old, my dad collapsed on the floor of his job as a machinist at the Owens Corning Fiberglass manufacturing plant in my hometown of Amarillo. After weeks of testing, he was diagnosed with chronic interstitial pneumonitis – irreversible scarring of his lungs, most likely caused by asbestos in the Navy ship he served on during Vietnam. Over the next two years I watched him navigate the public welfare system, the healthcare system, the Veterans Administration, and the legal system. I have opinions…
When I was 14, my dad was awarded a place on the brand-new
lung transplant waiting list at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He relocated to Denver and, after a few false alarms and an almost fatal case of tuberculosis, he received a double lung transplant on Easter Sunday 1996. The eight-hour procedure required the transfusion of seven units of blood.
And everyone lived happily ever after. Just kidding. Life wasn’t perfect after that. Organ transplantation, despite what we might want to believe, is not a magic bullet. My dad didn’t become an Olympic hurdle jumper or climb Mt. Everest. His sternum, which was split in half to open his chest cavity for the surgery, had been weakened by years of steroids and never fully healed. When he hugged you hard you could feel it pop a little. He caught a lot of colds and sometimes just felt crummy.
But sometimes he felt great. We took road trips together. He saw me graduate high school and college. We cooked and talked politics and went to concerts. He learned how to paint with watercolors. When he was originally diagnosed in Amarillo, he was given six months to live. Because of the transplant he lived 17 more years. I can never repay that gift of time but I try – every 12 weeks – when I roll up my sleeve and donate a pint of blood. 40 pints and counting!” — Erin Osenbaugh
It seems like for my whole life, my family has given blood. My father has given so much blood he has earned a slew gallon badges over the course of his lifetime. When my siblings and I were younger, and we would all come home for the holidays it was one of our family outings. We even got our spouses involved. We would take over an entire facility with each of us giving blood and seeing who was faster, who didn’t squirm when we got stuck. Yes, I know, weird. But as the saying goes, weird doesn’t begin to cover it when it comes to competition with my siblings. If you know, you know. As an adult I continued to give blood. Everyone in my family reminding each other, especially when the holidays came around, to donate. Never in a million years, did I think my family would need blood ourselves.
In January of this year, my mother fell gravely ill. My sister and I were on the phone with each other everyday for a week trying to figure out what was wrong. Was it COVID, was it the flu, was it a stomach bug, back to was it COVID, until we decided it was something else and we needed to take my mom to the doctor. The next morning my sister showed up to take my mother to the doctor and my mother was covered head to toe in bruises. It was scary and unnerving and gave us a sense of panic. My mom had been in a wheelchair at this time for four years and has had mobility issues for over a decade. For the first time my sister could not get my mom in the car. My mom was too weak, and Ally couldn’t dead lift her into the car. There on the porch of her apartment, my sister called 911.
Not knowing what was happening she told the ambulance it was a stroke, since my mom had one a decade earlier and we were at a loss. My sister waited outside the hospital for what seemed like an eternity. She couldn’t go in due to COVID protocol. The nurse was calling asking all sorts of questions, and that is when the first round of platelets and blood started. The next day my mom got admitted and I got on a plane. The first of 7 round trips in the next five weeks. In the next five weeks, my mother received enough blood to replace her entire supply – approx. 10 pints and five platelet transfusions. She had stopped producing blood and it took them 2 weeks and a bone marrow biopsy to figure out why. Aplastic Anemia brought on by a case of mononucleosis was their best guess. In the end new blood couldn’t save her, but it did give us some time. Time for her children and grandchildren to tell her we loved her and goodbye. Time to pick ourselves up off the floor and try to bring her some peace in the end. The end is not really peaceful as it is in the movies, but it was attended by people who loved her and in her own place and on her own terms.
I give blood and now platelets in honor of my mom. I do it to keep my family tradition alive and to ensure that, if possible, I can provide extra time for someone to be surrounded by the ones that love them. Join me in giving to all those who need it! — Missy Strittmatter