An Army of Normal Folks - John Norman: 160 Platelet Donations (Pt 1)

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

John Norman is a normal dude who made a blood platelet donation one day. When his colleague told him that donated platelets helped save her life, John decided to keep rolling with the donations. He donates every other week, which is now over 160 times! Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My project manager, Katrina, she and I, when we would run into a problem that we needed to solve, I would say, I'm going for a walk. She and I were walking this time along the Milwaukee River. I was telling her about my platelet donation. I said, you know, they called me up and I went in and I was just telling her, I thought it was really cool that they took the blood out and grabbed the platelets and put it back. And she stopped. She looked at me and she says, you know, if it wasn't for blood products and platelets,

I probably wouldn't have survived childhood leukemia and I wouldn't be here. So there right in front of me was somebody who was a recipient of something that I have the ability to give. That was sort of my light bulb moment saying maybe you should go back in two weeks when you're eligible and do it again. So I did and I started, that's kind of what started my, now I call it my grateful habit. It's a habit now. Welcome to An Army of Normal Folks, I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband. I'm a father. I'm an entrepreneur and I've been a football coach in inner city, Memphis and the last part somehow led to an Oscar for the film

They made about our football team. It's called undefeated I believe our country's problems will never be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Vox, but rather by an army of normal folks. Guys, that's us, just you and me deciding, hey, maybe I can help. That's what John Norman, the voice you 160 times, which is helping to save lives while sitting in a chair for 90 minutes. Something almost all of us can do. I can't wait for you to meet John right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. The American West with Dan Flores is the latest show from the MeatEater Podcast Network hosted by me, writer and historian Dan Flores, and brought to you by

Velvet Buck. This podcast looks at a West available nowhere else. Each episode, I'll be diving into some of the lesser known histories of the West. I'll then be joined in conversation by guests such as Western historian Dr. Randall Williams and bestselling author and meat eater founder Stephen Rinella. I'll correct my kids now and then where they'll say when cave people were here. And I'll say, it seems like the ice age people that were here didn't have a real affinity for caves. So join me starting Tuesday, May 6th, where we'll delve into stories of the West

and come to understand how it helps inform the ways in which we experience the region today. Listen to The American West with Dan Flores on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Hanrahan, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Away Days is my new project, reporting on countercultures on the fringes of society all across the world. Live from the underground you'll discover no rules fighting, Japanese street racing, Brazilian favela life and much more. All real, completely uncensored.

This is Unique Access with straight forward on the ground reporting. We're taking you deep into the dirt without the usual airs and graces of legacy media. A way that showcases what the mainstream cannot access. Real underground reporting with real people, no excuses. For the past decade I've been going to places I shouldn't be, meeting people I shouldn't know. Now you can come along too. Listen to the Awadey's podcast, Reporting reporting from the underbelly on the iHeart

radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One,

Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st, and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in

an AI-fuelled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Levittown, New York.

But reporting this series took us through the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deepfake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Margie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carville. This is Levertown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts,

Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levertown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. On this week's episode of Math and Magic, I'm sitting down with the one and only Bobby Bones. We're exploring the power of audio. The word on the street then was, he's too country for pop. But then once I got to country, it was, he's too pop for country.

So I kind of never really had a place to fit in, but that's exactly how and why I fit. I just embraced that. Like yeah, I don't fit into one specific hole. I think that is what endeared me to listeners. That's why I'm here now because I talk to people that grew up like me, have sensibilities like me, and have loyalties like me. Listen to Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. John Norman from Port Washington, Wisconsin. Where in the world is that? Just north of Milwaukee, about 15, 20 miles. Does that make you a Brewers fan? And a Packers fan. Packers fan for sure, yeah.

And a Brewers fan. I don't watch a lot of baseball, but it's a fun game. I got it. Bucks? Basketball? Bucks for sure. Bucks and six, although not the last couple years. We just got knocked out.

Well, you got a superstar up there. It sounds like he's not real happy to be up there anymore. They've got their things going on. I also don't pay much attention to the bucks unless they're, unless they're winning, I'm not a fair weather fan, but I grew up in Colorado and we did not. At the time have a, we had a basketball team. We didn't have a baseball team, so I never got into baseball. Right.

And I was born in New Mexico and went to Alaska and no baseball teams there either. So baseball was not a, not a thing for me. I'm going to throw one on you. A Denver basketball friend. One of my favorite players was Kiki VandeWay. You remember that name at all? That sounds familiar. Oh wow. He was, that was eighties. He was, he was a really good shooter. Anyway, not why you're here, John, but thanks for, thanks for flying down from Port Washington and visiting with us.

Alex, how do we find John? He found us. I know. Tell us about it. Alex, the producer, will tell us how we found John. He emailed us one day. Yes. His email wasn't boring. His email wasn't boring. So we responded to him. Actually, you should say what was in the email, John. It's better coming from you. I do remember sending this email because I'd kind of discovered you guys and I was donating

platelets one day and I'm like, this is pretty much a normal person kind of thing to do and anybody can do it. Almost anybody. So I sent you a quick email just saying, just part of your, part of your army, our army, I don't know if you remember that part, but I put the Y in parentheses. And yeah, I just wanted to call out that, that donating blood and platelets is an important thing to do. And it's something that I thought at the time was this is just enough information for a shop talk. Never thought I'd be called here to come and do an actual interview,

but there was more that came with it later on, I guess. Well, there's more to your story too, which I can't wait to get into. And it's cool that we are now organically getting a lot of our guests, which is why I wanna tell a story because before we even start, I want to remind everybody that at the end of all of these things, we beg folks to send us ideas for shop dogs,

beg folks to send us stories of people they know, and you're living proof that we're serious about that. And it is just cool that we're getting organic guests from the show, who listen to the show, tell stories, and you're emblematic of that. Something else I think you're emblematic of is that we really want to challenge people to think beyond massive 501c3s and beyond huge organizations that an army of normal folks can exact a great measure of change just doing what they can and their neck of

the woods, seeing their areas and eat and filling them. And John, I mean, that's what you do. I'm excited to be here. I I'm excited to be part of that army and doing one thing at a time. Well, you are, but first, I think I gave you the actual email. Didn't I, Bill? What's that? Isn't the email in your prep email Email the email that John sent us originally.

Well, I don't know. Maybe I think I don't think it is. Really? Yeah. You didn't do your job this time. Alex. I mean, I always brag on how good a job you do prepping me. Now I will say that I watched the whole YouTube video.

So that was really nice that you spent the 10 seconds to attach that thank you okay so John sorry Alex is just sit in your corner hey Cassius could we get like a curtain like at the Wizard of Oz and just pull it across his area so I don't have to deal with him. Thanks. Appreciate it. We'll install that maybe next week. Awesome. I know that, you know, you're giving back because you were, I guess, I'm gonna use a word, I don't even know if it's right, a scout master maybe,

or what you were like in charge of your son. You volunteered doing stuff with your sons and Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and that means you're engaged with a bunch of other kids too, I assume. And all of that. But a normal life. And then one day, your work hosted a blood drive.

What was that about? So I worked at a life science company at the time in Milwaukee. And- What's a life science? I don't know what that is. So this company at the time, this is the part that I was involved in.

They worked with pharmaceutical companies and helped them with things like their helpline. If you got a drug and you got questions about it, you can call up and learn more about it. We had people on staff there that were trained to answer those questions and at least triage them and if they didn't know the answer, could send them to somebody that knew more. And I was only working there because it was an IT job that I could do.

They offered a blood drive for the entire company. They said, we're gonna bring in the Blood Center of Wisconsin and set up in our lobby, and you're welcome to take time off of your day and donate blood. So I thought, this is an easy one. It's literally right down the hall. And I had not given blood since maybe a couple times when we were with the Boy Scouts,

we were at some place where they offered it. Right. Go get blood, probably. No, I was the adult forcing our kids to go get it. Oh, okay, but somebody was forcing somebody to get blood. I'm like, I'll go if you go. But that was years before, and before that, maybe in high school, I had donated once or twice.

So I went, and it was, it took 20 minutes, and I was back at work and, and a week later I got a phone call from the blood center and they said, you know, you've got a really high platelet count and your blood type is one that we would normally lead you in this direction. Would you be, would you consider donating platelets? And I said, what's the difference? I mean, how you do that? Fair question.

They said, well, it takes a little bit longer. We'll explain it to you when you get here. Just plan on a couple hours instead of 20 minutes. I'm like, all right, that's cool. So when can I do this? How early can it? Because I need to come to work afterwards. So I set up an appointment to go into the blood center.

I had to wait a while because I had given blood. And you have to wait eight weeks after giving whole blood. So I went in. I set up an appointment at 6 o'clock in the morning and I walked in and I'm signing into their sheet. And one of the questions on the sign in sheet was, have you donated before? And I answered no. And the person behind the counter said, boy, did you just check the no box? I said, well,

I've never donated platelets before. This is a new thing for me. You said you'd explain it when I got here. I came from scouting and one of the 12 things has to be something to do with honesty. I think that was probably one of the ones I missed. That a boy, okay, go ahead. Actually, I don't think honesty is in there. It's kind of implied.

Before you drop this line, I wanna divert real quick. You're there signing in and they're like, why are you checking and you check no? We'll pick up back there in just a moment. I had a guest on that gave me some demographics or some data, not demographics, some data around blood donors. And it made Alex go give blood. I gave it was John. What's that? It was John. and it made Alex go give blood. I gave. It was John.

What's that? It was John. That was. Is that from a shop talk? The data was from John. I pulled the data online. You pulled the data. After John's emailed us.

Okay, so it was you pulled the data. Yeah. All right. The data to me is what was so eye-opening. And we're gonna get to it because I think there's gonna be some data about the next thing we're gonna talk about. But I wanna remind our listeners what that data is.

And I'm gonna screw it up, so correct me. All right, but I'm gonna go for it. You probably know better than I do, or Alex should remember. He can fill in any details we missed. Please quit referring to the man in the corner. So the data, I think that is right is that only 3% of the population donates blood. And okay, I'm sure there are low percentages

of people in the population that do lots of stuff that should be done. But here's where it really kind of was eye opening to me. If you're in a car wreck and go to the ER, you need blood. If you're a cancer patient, you need blood. If you have any kind of surgery, you need blood. It's almost inconceivable that throughout life, you or someone in your immediate family that you love, or both, will not need blood

more than one time in your life. So, here's the data that I siphon from that. 100% of every single person walking around in our country today will need blood for themselves or someone in their immediate, not a distant friend, their immediate family that they love, at least once and probably two or three times before they reach death.

For sure. 100 and only three. So there's three out of one hundred people in the world are supporting the entire medical community. And it's actually less than, well, I'm going to back up on that a little bit. It might be less than that because only 65% of the population are eligible to donate. Because what if you already had cancer? Or if you've got some blood disease?

Or your high blood pressure? Got a heart condition. So only two out of every three people can. Right. And then only 3% of who can does. I don't know if that 3% was of that 65. It might be more like two. Yeah, it might be a lot less.

Either way, it's a really small number. All right, let me move the sheet back just a second. Okay, Alex, you can speak now. Is that data about right? Is that what you're- I think it's 3% of the adult population is the way they- That's fair. 3% of the adult population.

But still, it's nothing. It's nothing. And when Alex did the data and we were talking to you on the shop talk and your information, I think you went and gave blood like the next week, didn't you? Alex? I mean, it was almost a providence, providential thing. My church just happened to be donated here having a mobile, you know, thing in the next week. So it's honestly, I can't

give myself too much credit. Like it literally was in my backyard in the next week. Really? Yeah, well, it was easy, wasn't it?'t it? Yeah it was. Yeah and and I gave blood about two and a half weeks ago because I said I was going to. Wait did you? Yes. Oh you didn't tell me that. Nice. No big deal. All right. And now a few messages from our generous sponsors, but first our next live interview in Memphis will be on June 12th with Father Mark Hanna. Father Mark and a team of four other civilians saved over 50 lives on 9-11 and the rest of his team died while trying to save more people. After 9-11, Mark became a Coptic priest

and hence the Father title. It's part of our Lunch and Listen series that we've been doing at Crosstown Concourse's Memphis Listening Lab. And you can learn more and RSVP at fathermark.eventbrite.com. We hope to see you there. We'll be right back.

The American West with Dan Flores is the latest show from the Meat Eater podcast network hosted by me, writer and historian Dan Flores, and brought to you by Velvet Buck. I'll be joined in conversation by guests such as Western historian Dr. Randall Williams, and bestselling author and meat eater founder, Stephen Rinella. I'll correct my kids now and then where they'll say when cave people were here. And I'll say, it seems like the author of the book is a very famous writer and historian. And I'll say, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that.

I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'll correct my kids now and then where they'll say when cave people were here. And I'll say, it seems like the Ice Age people that were here didn't have a real affinity for caves. So join me starting Tuesday, May 6th, where we'll delve into stories of the West and come to understand how it helps inform the ways in which we experience the region today. I'm Jake Hanrahan, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Away Days is my new project, reporting on countercultures on the fringes of society all across the world.

Live from the underground you'll discover no rules fighting, Japanese street racing, resilient favela life and much more. All real, completely uncensored. This is Unique Access with straight forward on the ground reporting. We're taking you deep into the dirt without the usual airs and graces of legacy media. Awadey showcases what the mainstream cannot access. Real underground reporting with real people, no excuses. For the past decade I've been going to places I shouldn't be, meeting people I shouldn't

know. Now you can come along too. Listen to the Awadey's podcast, Reporting from the underbelly on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio really bad. In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly

like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting this series took us through the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deepfake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide.

I'm Margie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carville. This is Levertown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levertown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Bob Pippman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. On this week's episode of Math and Magic, I'm sitting down with the one and only Bobby Bones. We're exploring the power of audio.

The word on the street then was, he's too country for pop. But then once I got to country, it was, he's too pop for country. So I kind of never really had a place to fit in, but that's exactly how and why I fit. I just embraced that. Like, yeah, I don't fit into one specific hole. I think that is what endeared me to listeners. That's why I'm here now, because I talk to people that grew up like me, have sensibilities like me and have loyalties like me. Listen to math & Magic,

stories from the frontiers of marketing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, first, to everybody listening right now, when we talk about being an army of normal folks and you can see an area needing fill it and you don't have to, I mean, be part of any big organization, go give blood.

It takes 20 minutes. 20 minutes. 20 minutes. Maybe half an hour tops. And to be honest with you, I felt great after I gave blood. I don't know, I was like lost weight or something. I know that sounds stupid, but that's exactly, I felt great after I gave blood. I don't know, I was like lost weight or something. I know that sounds stupid, but that's exactly how I felt.

With blood, they take it. They don't give it back to you. So you're missing a pint of stuff, right? And your body feels it and your dependence is reacting to it. Does it energize your body? Start doing more? I don't know why it feels good afterwards, but I really feel good. Not like emotionally good. Maybe it's because you did a good good. No, physically actually felt lighter. It was weird. I don't know. I think so.

Well, if you probably felt lightheaded, I mean, you're missing out. I don't know what I felt, but it was great. And I'm going to continue to do it. And Alex is too. I think I heard somebody else on your podcast, to your podcast that you had, the woman from Box, she was saying that she had donated and she said, it's also kind of a health thing because you lose calories when

When you donate in blood, yeah, there you go. So Everybody listen if you're thinking and what can I hold it just one second Cassius. Have you given blood? Yeah Alex Cassius is not given blood. He didn't hear our shop talk episode Well, you heard it now, Alex. Cassius. I mean, Cassius, what you going to do? Cassius.

Yeah, Cassius is going to give blood. Everybody, it's a challenge. This is a 20 minute thing. And honestly, this is how I reconciled it with me. I or someone in my family is going to need blood and my father-in-law's had open someone in my family is going to need blood and my father-in-law's had open or surgery he had that blood. My son Max coded after a football accident his spleen blew up and they put seven units in him.

Seven. Seven. He bled out. He'd be dead if somebody had negative blood. How selfish would I be to be able to give blood and people need blood and have had two very close family members survive because of that blood and not return the favor? We need to give blood. So, okay, off soap box, you checked no. I checked no. Yep, I've never been here to give playlists. Nope, why'd you check that box? I've never been here. So, and again, I'm like, you guys were gonna explain this

to me when I got here, so I'm just trying to follow the rules here too. And they're like, but you've donated before. I said, no, I never have. And then 10, 15 seconds later, my twin brother walked in the door. He also had a six o'clock in the morning, Friday morning, six o'clock appointment

to donate platelets that day. And he had started a few months before I did and probably for the same kind of reason. I don't know if we ever talked about it. It was just kind of a freaky twin thing that happened that day. And I thought, yeah, I think maybe I'm supposed to be here. This is good.

That's pretty crazy. That's very cool. And the same kind of reason was you gave blood. They said your platelet count was high and they looked good. Sure, he's got the same blood type I do. And your blood type is only what? 9% of the people in the world have your blood type. That's what I understand. Be positive is about 9%.

And so yours is pretty valuable. And so he did it and you do it. You bounce it to each other and you're both given platelets. Now that's an interesting thing. That was cool. So it kind of freaked, there's actually a phlebotomist there who, when we were both there, she had an aversion, not an aversion, but an unconscious fear of twins. And whenever we were there, she left. Are you kidding? Yeah, she's like, no.

There's a phobia, there's a twin phobia? Apparently, apparently. Is there really? Yeah, she was super nice, and whenever it was just me, no problem. That is so weird that a vampire has a phobia. Some kind of vampire with a phobia. That's weird.

Okay, so let's talk about platelets. Because I didn't know anything about them until I did a little research after knowing I was going to meet with you. But blood can be stored. I think blood can even be frozen, can't it? I know it can be stored probably. It can be stored very cold

for a fairly significant period of time. Platelets can't. No. And I'll let you explain it before we go any further so that people understand what the world platelets is and why it takes two hours instead of 20 minutes. But just ninth grade biology. I remember that platelets are what helps your blood, I think it's coagulate. Is that right? So why don't you just, before we go any further,

let's talk about why platelets are different than blood, why they're so valuable, what they do, and then what the process is giving them and why it's different. Yeah, so you hit the high point of platelets. Platelets are the part of your blood that coagulate and heal your wounds if you get a scratch or a cut. That's what helps stop the bleeding at that point.

And that's- Yeah, because if you don't coagulate, you just keep bleeding. You just keep bleeding. Yeah. Right? So it's super important. And like you said, if you're in surgery, then it's blood. If you are a cancer patient, you're going through chemo or radiation, that'll knock down your blood counts,

but it'll also knock down your platelet counts. And that puts you at risk of bleeding out or having issues with that. So platelets are... So if you're going through chemo and, God forbid, you get a car wreck or something else happens where you need some kind of surgery. If the chemo knocks down your platelet count, they can't even do the surgery on you because you will bleed out. Or if you've got cancer, and I hope I don't say this wrong because I haven't, I don't really know all the answers to this, but if you're getting this treatment, it'll knock your platelet counts down to the point where they won't be able to give you other treatments

because your body can't recover. So the platelets for cancer patients are really, really important. I mean, blood is too. Most cancer patients will need both. Some cancer, depending on the treatment, you might not need platelets as a cancer patient, but most of them do.

And the ones that I end up running into because I'm donating platelets and telling stories about them, those are the people that I've connected with. But it's super important for that. But platelets are just one part of your blood product. And, but it's not easy. You can't just sit there for 20 minutes and drop it in a bag.

It's something that takes a little bit longer. Tell me about the process. So the process, it's very similar to giving blood. You sit in a chair and they put a needle in your arm. This needle though is a little different. It's hooked up to a machine called an apheresis machine that will draw the blood out of your arm. And it runs it through, I'll just call it to simplify it.

Just a centrifuge or a series of centrifuges that depending on how it's set up, it knows, all right, I'm going to put the platelets over here. I'm going to keep everything else. And after it's processed that, then it returns the rest of your blood back to your body. That's interesting. Yeah. I thought that was the coolest thing. It's sifting the platelets out. Yeah. And then giving you the blood back. That's weird. Got a bunch of little chipmunks in there going, there's one.

It's like a magnet for platelets of something like that. So it's collecting platelets and how's it doing? Why don't they just take the blood out of you? You know, why do they do that? So they used to do that. They used to use the machine, they would take the blood out and then they would separate it into their number, there's plasma and there's blood cells and platelets. And they used to separate it out all in one shot. And in fact, if you look at some of the pictures, you'll see

multiple bags hanging from the from the rack while I'm donating. Now, the only two bags get filled with the platelets, but they used to also pull plasma and blood at the same time. The technology's just gotten better. They'll do whole blood, a double red is very similar where they'll hook you up to a machine

and through the technical process, they'll pull out more red blood cells. So if you donate double reds, you'll have a 12 or 16 week waiting process until you can donate again. It takes your body more time to build new blood cells than it does to do platelets. Oh, well that makes sense.

So when they're putting the blood back in you, it allows you to give platelets more often because your body isn't going through as much trauma. Exactly, that's exactly it. Why does it take two hours? It's just the process of extracting it from your blood. Does it feel different? You mean when it comes back?

No, when you're sitting there, the two hours that you're sitting there, is the sensation any different? It does get a little different. Listen, we're challenging people to go give playlists. Well, a lot of people have a fear of, Needles. A reasonable fear of going and sitting in a chair

and talking to a vampire who has a twin phobia who's gonna jag you with him. I don't think most of them have that problem, just to be clear. What's that? I don't think most phlebotomists have that particular issue. They're just straight vampires.

Oh, are they just straight vampires? Okay. This is anyway, but they're going to do this. And, and I mean, if I'm considering giving playlists, I think it's valuable to know what the process is and how it feels. Absolutely. It does feel different. And it so that you're going to get a little bit of pain when the needle goes in. And it's, it's weird. You can feel the blood being drawn out because it's under pressure. In fact, there's a little, there's a little screen where you can, you can kind of see the pressure as it draws the blood out. And then the phlebotomist, the vampire will stay there with you until the first time it gets returned.

of a vampire will stay there with you until the first time it gets returned. Because that's just as important. If the needle gets put in the wrong spot and maybe, maybe goes through the vein. That's maybe not such a problem if you're just donating and the blood's flowing out and it's not coming back. But if it, if it comes back and the needle has, has punctured, the vein is in muscle. It's really painful. And, and, but, but I can But I just have to put that out. I don't ever

want somebody to stop donating platelets. That's happened to me a few times. It hurts. They take care of you. It heals. It's not life threatening. But I have to point out, you might run into that, but suck it up, buttercup? You're about to save up to three lives. So, oh, that's a little needle stick. And a little bit of your time. That's a really important point that we're going to get to. But, so go ahead. If you want to know what it feels like, just pinch your arm for a couple of seconds.

It was either on a video or maybe in the prep. You said sometimes you can feel your lips getting numb. Yeah, they put some sort of, I don't know if it's a starch or some sort of material in the return just to help keep things flowing well. That's how I understand it anyway. I don't know whether it's like a, but that will give your lips sort of a tingly feeling. Some people get that metallic taste in their mouth and that's why some people say, I just can't do it. I can't stand that. But again, and that's personal, right? But yeah, it feels a little different and sitting there for two hours, isn't it? It's two hours total. It's usually maybe an hour and a half for me.

I have a friend though. It totally depends on your body weight, your, your heart rate and other things he's done in an hour. For me, it takes an hour. Okay. But, yeah, it's different. What do you feel like when it's over? I mean, do you need to do anything? No, well, I use this to my advantage.

They tell you not to overexert yourself during the day and like lift weights and lift heavy things and stuff like that. So you're happy to go sit on the couch. I do, and on Friday, and my wife will say that I'm worthless on Friday nights. Because do on a Friday and my wife will say that I'm worthless on Friday nights. Cause I totally use this as my excuse to just,

I don't need platelets today. I saved three lives. So I'm just going to sit and relax. And they told me not to exert myself. Something else about platelets are, is that they can't, it's not like blood. They only last what three, four, five days? Five days.

Five days. So you gotta use it when you got them. And if you need them, you need them. So that makes platelets even more important to donate because you can't store them and just keep them on the shelf for a while. I think about St. Jude Children's Research Hospital here in Memphis and all those children that have cancer and research. I gotta believe they're constantly back in the playbooks with a hospital full of children. I would think so. I would think so. I know our blood center provides, they've got a five-state system, but

all the blood essentially goes local. It's really a need that's near enough they can get to. We kind of have to have a good organization to logistically handle getting all that stuff around. So it's cool. But there's this weird synergy that happened in your world is you get playlets and then a face gets put on your giving.

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We're exploring the power of audio. The word on the street then was, he's too country for pop. But then once I got to country, it was he's too pop for country. So I kind of never really had a place to fit in, but that's exactly how and why I fit. I just embraced that.

Like, yeah, I don't fit into one specific hole. I think that is what endeared me to listeners. That's why I'm here now because I talk to people that grew up like me, have sensibilities like me, and have loyalties like me. Listen to math and magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So that I think is interesting. How a name gets, a face gets put to your, I mean, look, you're giving platelets, you're giving blood.

Clearly your brother's doing it. That's awesome. But something happens that kind of changes it. So that was the first time that I donated platelets when I ran into my brother there. At work, my project manager, Katrina, she and I, when we would run into a problem that we needed to solve or just we would run into a problem that we needed to solve or just kind of run into a roadblock mentally for something I was working on, I

would say, I'm going for a walk. And she would come with me every once in a while, we'd go get a cup of coffee or whatever, but in our office literally took up a city block. So sometimes it was just walking around the block a few times. Right. She and I were walking this time along the Milwaukee River, which is very close to where we were. And I was telling her about my platelet donation. I said, you know, they called me up and I went in and I was just telling her, I thought it was really

cool that they took the blood out and grabbed the platelets and put it back. And it was, and it took a while, but it was, it was really kind of a neat experience. And she stopped. She looked at me and she says, you know, if it wasn't for blood products and platelets, I probably wouldn't have survived childhood leukemia and I wouldn't be here. And I'd been working with her for a while. I cared about her quite a bit. And I, so there right in front of me was somebody who was a recipient of something that I have the ability to give.

That was sort of my light bulb moment, saying maybe you should go back in two weeks when you're eligible and do it again. So I did, and I started, that's kind of what started my, now I call it my grateful habit, because it's a habit now. I think, well, Alex has very lately provided something

that I think is very interesting. Every two seconds, someone in the US needs blood and or platelets. Approximately 29,000 units of red blood cells are needed every day. Every day. 29,000. And only 3% of our population is providing it.

And I do know that in a mass casualty event, they almost always run out of blood and the last folks in the hospital die because they don't have blood. Just think about that. Next time we have to endure a school shooting or some Jack doing something horrible, but these mass casualty events, they run out of blood. Yeah, and you can only have so much on hand. Well, and what if only 4% of people gave blood?

3%! Might have enough. Nearly 5,000 units of platelets and 6,500 units of plasma are needed every day. When they pull it out of you, how many units is that? Do you know how many units you give per time? So when I donate, generally they'll call it a triple. And so to me, I think that's three units.

It can be used by three different people. It's enough to be used by three people. That means if 5,000 units of platelets are needed for use a triple, that means we need about 1,700 donors a day just to meet current demand. That's a lot. That's a lot. A single car accident victim can require

as many as a hundred units of blood. Blood and platelets cannot be manufactured. They can only come from donors. That's stark. If you really think about that and understand that you or someone you love will be in that position one day. So it puts a face to giving platelets and so you go back and you start giving platelets a lot.

Interestingly, your undergraduate degree, in an odd way, starts to have a place in this whole platelet thing for you, kind of, because you spent four years learning about storytelling and at some point you decided storytelling could be part of this journey for you. Yeah, and that kind of got, I would say, re-triggered. That's why we got these books on the table. I don't know whether, I think it was early on in my platelet donating process.

This is before COVID that I started, but just poking around, and I don't know what it was that made me see it, just stumbled upon this on a Facebook page or something. This woman, Gracelyn in California and her aunt, Melody, were working on a photo project. Her aunt, Melody, had survived childhood leukemia too, And they were building a photo project of, they wanted to get 100 people who had survived cancer. And that's where this book came from, Beyond Remission. And it's-

Is it her book? Yes, this is their book that they published. It was just a photo project at the time. And then they turned it, this was the first thing that they published and melody. Lomboy melody, Lomboy low and Graceland Bateman. Yep. And it's words of advice for thriving and it's lots of stories, small

stories, small stories with big pictures of cancer survivors. Right. Yep. Exactly. And this is, these are just people in their neighborhood. I mean, around where they live in California. So? So I thought it was a cool idea.

Then I also read. What is the purpose behind that book? Behind that book? The purpose behind that book is like, if you're going through cancer, it's gonna change your life. You're not alone. It's gonna change your life, you're not alone. That's exactly it. And it's worth celebrating that you're going through cancer, it's gonna change your life. It's gonna change your life. You're not alone. That's exactly it.

And it's worth celebrating that you're in remission. Not everybody gets to that point, or maybe they do and cancer comes back. You should celebrate that you're at that point. But it's okay to hurt too. You're not alone. Other people are going through the same thing that you are. So you thought it was a cool idea?

I thought it was a cool idea. It just, it was just a little trigger saying, maybe I could tell some stories too. But it was really, it kind of started more going in initially. I'm like, okay, somebody else is out there that's going to need this stuff. And I started trying to find a specific person that I could sit there in the chair, pray about, think about, and focus on the fact that they might need what I've got to give, knowing that I can't dedicate it directly to them.

We never know that, because it's all, because of privacy rules and stuff, but somebody- Is this while you're sitting there? While I'm sitting there, so now while you're giving platelets, I'm using one hand to type my story. I should have thought about that. I think about maybe somebody you're focusing on actually who you might could be helping exactly.

It's my motive, motivation and reminder to keep going in. Sometimes I go in though, and I got to tell you, it's hard sometimes because I might not have the energy, but that's why I'm glad it's a habit too. And you'll see if you read through my posts, every once in a while, you'll find one that's like, you know what? I don't have a story today, but I'm still here because somebody needs these things. But over time, I started to get connected to people that I knew that were directly people I worked with, but also through people like Graceland and Elodie, who I've never met personally,

but we're connected and still chat a lot. They connected me to other people who had cancer. I mean, there's a bunch of people in here. Some of the people in this book, I've told a story about or shared their experience as part of donating my platelets. And I've kind of got, there's several goals. One, life saving, right? That's, who wouldn't want to save a life?

I'm not qualified to be an EMT or a doctor or a firefighter or anything like that, but I can sit there in a chair and have blood taken. Another thing that I wanna do is honor the person that is going through that cancer journey. I watched my dad and my mother and I'll go through it. And I don't know that I fully appreciated at the time the amount of work that was for them and for my mom

and for Michelle's dad. Um, and these people and their families, it completely changes your life. And I, I want to spend a little Instagram limits, the number of characters you can put in, right? So I can spend a little bit of time honoring their journey at the time while still being there in the chair and trying to do something worthwhile. Are you, is it to go ahead? I'm sorry. I was just going to say my other goal though,

is to use that story to maybe have somebody say, wow, I'm going through that too. Or I know somebody who's going through cancer. But the main goal is, or the end goal is maybe I should try and donate to give it a try. Like you guys, you've tried the first time now, right? After finding out about it. I'm hoping that there's a whole bunch of people out there who said, I'll do that. I can do that. So do you talk to people first and hear about their stories and then just say, I give platelets, my father died of cancer, my father-in-law died of cancer. I have very close friends who had childhood leukemia that survived cancer.

And I want to respectfully put your story out there to encourage other people to both fight through cancer and those who don't have cancer to give. That's pretty much it. I don't one thing that I consciously don't do is try and put myself in the I know what you're going through mode because I don't know what you're going through mode, because I don't know what they're going through. But I always, I never share somebody's story without talking to them first or messaging or whatever. So do you have this community now?

I do now. I think I'm up to maybe it's been eight years and I've counted somewhere 90 to 100 different people that I've connected to because of these stories. All over the country? All over the world. You know, people in New Zealand and England and other places that talk back to me and we share messages.

Some, it may have been a story and then I never heard from them again or I didn't reach back out to them. And I feel guilty about that as I was going through, I always, I try to type it up and I've got a Google doc that I use for it. So reading back through those, I'm like, oh, I wonder how Steve's doing. And I look back and Steve died two years ago. And it made me cry because I don't, I wish I could keep track of and keep in contact with everyone. Some I'm, I'm really super close to and spend a lot of time messaging back and forth, sometimes late at night, which, which Michelle's like, just go to bed. But it's so yeah, it's like a second family to me. And I've connected with some, some really amazing people who are inspiring the way that they handle this. And the followers of family and all of that creates kind of this thing you've got online.

Yeah, I think so too. It's organic. I haven't gone out shouting to the world or anything, look what I'm doing. I just try and share it and try to make it about them and not me. It ends up being about me just by default because I'm sharing my age. But that's not what I wanted to be about them and about the need for people to come in and do this. And that concludes part one of my conversation with John Norman. And you don't want to miss part two

that's now available to listen to. Together guys, we can change this country. But it starts with you. I'll see you in part two. I'm Jake Hanrahan, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Away Days is my new project, reporting on countercultures on the fringes of society all across the world. Live from the underground, you'll discover no rules fighting, Japanese street racing, Brazilian favela life and much more. All real, completely uncensored. Listen to the Away Days podcast, reporting from the underbelly, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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