South Texas Blood & Tissue Center Featuring Jaxson Martinez’s “Give someone another fiesta” Story to Encourage Blood Donations
San Antonio, Texas (PRWEB) April 02, 2017 -- The remarkable story of a little boy who beat a big disease will help encourage South Texans to donate blood for the next several months.
The South Texas Blood & Tissue Center (STBTC) will be featuring the story of 5-year-old Jaxson Martinez, who is from Uvalde, Texas, in multiple formats, including a video, a story on the STBTC website and content on the Connect for Life social media accounts.
In 2014, Jaxson was diagnosed with stage 4 high-risk neuroblastoma – a rare condition that affects about 300 people a year in the United States. Scans found he had tumors in both his head and his abdomen.
Through the next 12 months, he underwent seven rounds of chemotherapy, a stem cell transplant, tumor removal surgery and 12 rounds of radiation treatment.
He also required more than 30 blood and platelet transfusions.
“Our son would not have lived long enough to fight cancer if it wasn’t for blood donors,” said Juan Martinez, Jaxson’s father. “I invite the community to visit a cancer center anywhere in the world and see how many lives blood and platelet donations save. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
The stories are part of the STBTC “Give someone another fiesta” theme, which includes patients whose lives were saved by blood donations.
Jaxson, now in his third year of remission, got to celebrate one of his goals – starting pre-K last year. He’s now in kindergarten at the Knippa School, and his story has been transformed into a video narrated by his father, and his story also will be posted at SouthTexasBlood.org.
The South Texas Blood & Tissue Center is a subsidiary of BioBridge Global, a San Antonio-based nonprofit organization that also includes QualTex Laboratories, GenCure and The Blood & Tissue Center Foundation.
About the South Texas Blood & Tissue Center: The South Texas Blood & Tissue Center (STBTC) is a nonprofit community blood center that provides blood, plasma, platelets and other blood components to more than 70 hospitals in 40 South Texas counties. It is the largest blood supplier in our region. STBTC has a proud 42-year history serving the South Texas community. The center operates under the auspices of BioBridge Global, a nonprofit organization comprising products and services for regenerative medicine and research including blood banking and resource management; cellular therapy; umbilical cord blood collection and storage; donated human tissue recovery and distribution for transplant; and testing of blood and plasma products to help patients in the United States and worldwide. STBTC has seven donor rooms in South Texas and conducts hundreds of mobile blood drives each year. The STBTC website is SouthTexasBlood.org.
Julie Ann Vera, South Texas Blood & Tissue Center, http://www.southtexasblood.org, +1 210-249-4449, [email protected]
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