Blood, jokes and snacks
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By Dave Taylor
The big white bus parked outside the old courthouse in Hawesville Tuesday was a laid back scene with snacks and jokes, where the Western Kentucky Regional Blood Center workers have fun meeting new people and seeing new places while helping save lives with the blood they collect.
Audrey Winters drove over from Southern Indiana and settled back into a lounge chair on the bus and waited for the nurse while the bus driver, Robert Gardner, regaled her with stories and jokes.
“What do you call a 21-year-old Kentuckian in the first grade?” he asked. “Gifted.”
Winters fits right in, joking along and saying she’s a transplanted Kentuckian who married into Indiana. She’d wanted to donate before but hadn’t been able to.
“I hadn’t done it in a very long time,” she said, “because every time I see you all I’ve always got a slew of kids with me so I never get to stop.”
The WKRBC bus was in Hancock County for one day, collecting blood on behalf of the sheriff’s office, and they’d be moving on to Owensboro the rest of the week collecting more in other police agencies’ names.
Winters squeezed a toy to bring up her veins as Jennifer Masterson sticks in the needle for the donation.
“I don’t even know what my blood type is,” Winters said.
“Your blood type is 0+, which is pretty common,” Masterson said, “but with that being said more people use that type of blood because it is so common.”
A few minutes later the procedure is over. One pint donated.
“She’ll be a pound lighter,” said Masterson.
“Heck yeah! That means I’ve only got nine more to go after holiday eating,” Winters said.
Life on the bus is good for the workers, but they have a big job to do.
“It’s a good place to work,” said Janie Fenwick, a phlebotomist who’s worked for WKRBC for 30 years.
“We supply to six hospitals, 10 counties, so we need to be busy all the time,” she said.
They’re the only blood center in all of western Kentucky, and supplying that many locations means big numbers.
“They want us to see at least 14,000 (pints) a year or more,” she said. “That’s a lot… We need to be busy.”
Like Gardner, she enjoys meeting the people along the way.
“I’ve met so many people in my life, which is interesting,” she said. “I remember the sheriff, I remember him from years ago. I hadn’t seen him for maybe over 10 years. I still remembered his face.”
“You meet new people all the time… You meet friends, you meet people that you can pray for, you meet people that’s going through so much,” she said.
Upcoming blood drive locations and dates are available on the website, wkrbc.org.
