The story of the Green Bay Packers fan who sold his blood to buy tickets to games reminded me of a friend of mine.
In case you haven’t heard about Jim Becker, he was selected to be in the Packer’s Fan Hall of Fame for attending home games for 56 years.
Becker said being such a loyal fan literally helped save his life.
Because Becker and his wife had 11 children, he said after the honor was announced, he didn’t want to take away from the family when he bought season tickets each year.
So he found a way to make money to pay for his seat at Lambeau Field – he sold his blood for $15 a pint.
It wasn’t until he’d given 145 pints of blood that Becker learned that the reason his father died at age 43 was that he had an inherited disease in which the body retains too much iron. The only known way to reduce the body’s iron is to give blood.
Lo and behold, Becker had been doing just that for years, thus preventing a possible early death as well as providing him with season tickets to Packers games.
What the AP story doesn’t mention is the name of the disease – hemochromatosis.
That’s where my old friend comes in.
A number of years ago, I was working part-time at a metal fabrication shop just outside Liberty. Robert, one of the workers there, was a topnotch, self-taught engineer as well as welder.
Father of several grown children, Robert had lots of experiences at home and on the job, giving him plenty of fodder for stories during breaks.
He was always bragging on his children, who seemed to have inherited his proclivity for invention and problem-solving.
Once he was having health problems, the symptoms of which I don’t recall. Whatever the ailment, the doctors finally diagnosed the disease – hemochromatosis.
“That’s when the body builds up too much iron in the blood,” he told me. “The doctor says the way to treat it is to give blood regularly.”
If the iron if allowed to continue to build up in the body, he told me, then the body has to store the extra iron in body tissues such as the liver, heart and pancreas. Eventually, those organs can fail.
So Robert began a routine of giving blood at the medical center where he was diagnosed and soon he was feeling normal again.
But that’s not the end of the story, not by a long shot.
Since the way to reduce the iron is giving blood, it became something Robert had to do for life.
He’d go in for his scheduled bloodletting every few weeks. Then he’d get a bill from the medical center for services performed and they’d keep his blood.
If Robert was anything, he was nobody’s fool.
“I began thinking, they’re taking my blood and charging me for the service,” he told me one day. “They should be paying me. It’s good, iron-rich blood.”
I can’t recall if Robert worked out a deal with the medical center or peddled his blood to other blood collection agencies.
What I do know is that Robert wasn’t going to let somebody take advantage of him.
If there’s a blood donation hall of fame, Robert has my vote.
Larry Penkava, who has written Now and Then since 1994, thinks Robert has given new meaning to blood money.
Larry Penkava
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