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Community Blood Center
Clark beats cancer,
returns to make 609th donation
DAYTON, Ohio - If you clock it to the exact minute, Wendell Clark may
have cut the line a bit when he returned to the donor bed on March 26,
the Saturday morning before Easter.
Community Blood Center’s all-time leader in blood donations was coming
off a two-year deferment mandated for certain cancer patients. He had
circled March 26 on the calendar soon after his diagnosis, and he had
waited long enough.
Wendell’s deferment was for two years after final prostate cancer
treatment. His only treatment was surgery, and Saturday marked the
two-year anniversary.
“This is Day One,” Wendell said as he settled once again into the
familiar surroundings of the Dayton Donor Center’s apheresis section, a
needle once again in his arm collecting platelets for his 609th
lifetime blood donation. The time was shortly before 9 a.m. “I’m
probably not actually eligible yet!” he said. “My surgery was around
11:30 a.m. and ended later than that.”
The March 26 date is all that matters, and for Wendell it’s as if a
clock that measures one of his most valued purposes in life was finally
ticking again. For the first time since his 608th donation on Jan. 27,
2014 he was once again an active blood donor.
Wendell had been CBC’s top active donor since 2010. He made his
milestone 600th lifetime donation on Oct. 24, 2013 and a few weeks
later became CBC’s “Top Donor of All Time” with his 602nd lifetime
donation on Nov. 14, 2013.
His donation record became frozen in place in the winter of 2014 when
he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
As CBC’s top donor, Wendell has appeared often in newspaper and TV news
stories as an advocate for blood donations. He never hesitated to
talk publicly about how the change in his health impacted his
donating. It was his first thought when learned he had cancer.
“The prostate test came back positive, and the first thing that went
through my mind was, I can’t donate,” he said.
He battled the illness extremely well and his recovery is
complete. His routine over the years has been to donate on week
days after his day shift at Neaton Auto Products Manufacturing in
Eaton. He made a rare Saturday appointment because it was his
first chance to begin his comeback. “I figured there shouldn’t be any
problem donating today,” he said.
Instead, he got a surprise that nearly made his heart sink when he
checked-in at the CBC front desk Saturday morning. “When I got here
this morning somebody had written down that I was deferred for three
years instead of two!” he said. “I said, ‘Really? It should
be two.’ They said they’d go ahead and call someone to be sure
but don’t worry.”
After that last small hurdle, Wendell was back to donating, finally
able to fulfill a personal pledge. Before his diagnosis he commonly
donated a full schedule of 24 platelet donations per year, plus several
plasma donations. He hopes to quickly get back on the same
schedule.
“I only missed 14 days of work for the surgery,” he said with
pride. A two-year hiatus from blood donating is something he
never expected. But it’s exactly the type of life challenge that
so many patients face when they need blood. Few patients know
Wendell’s name, or that “he’s back” to donating again. But what matters
most is that Wendell has their back.
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