Erial Resident to Host Blood Drive in Honor of Grandson

It's May, when most children are outside playing, enjoying the warmer weather.

Dylan Parsons and his family instead sit in the Ronald McDonald House at Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, in Delaware.

Dylan has just concluded his pre-op testing and is waiting to undergo the sixth open-heart surgery in his young life. The family gets a call. It’s someone from over at the hospital, and the Parsons are told to go home. There's a shortage of blood on standby and the surgery cannot go on as a result.

Dylan is 2 years old at the time.

“We knew he would be OK, but what about other kids?” Erial resident Meredee Parsons, Dylan's grandmother, told Patch last week. 

On Friday, Aug. 17, from 2 to 7 p.m., Meredee Parsons will host her third American Red Cross blood drive, at the Erial Fire Department station house, in honor of her grandson, who is getting on just fine these days. 

Dylan Parsons was born with tricuspid atresia, a congenital heart defect that stems from improper development in the tricuspid valve. Even with stints in some of his arteries, Dylan has only two working chambers in his heart. However, after seven surgeries, Dylan is finished treatment and, according to his grandmother, is a very active 2-year-old.   

Her relationship with the American Red Cross started when turned away from the Delaware children's hospital in May. She wrote a post on Facebook about the family's experience at duPont. Not long after, a friend responded to her post—she had just started a job at the American Red Cross and offered to guide Parsons through hosting her own blood drive.

“Anybody can do it,” said Parsons, whose last blood drive was held just a few weeks ago in Delran. 

With a quota of 60 donors, turnout for Parsons' Delran blood drive exceeded expectations, coming closer to 85 people in all.

Delran was relatively easy to pull together, though; she knows a lot of people and a lot of people know her grandson there.

Parsons fears motivating people to come out to the Erial fire hall may prove to be more difficult.

Parsons still needs volunteers who will come out and donate their time. With a quota of 85 donors this time, only a few people have expressed interest so far. Without knowing too many people in Erial, despite having called the community home for nearly 16 years, recruiting has yielded only a few sign-ups.

Recruiting volunteers and donors has been but one of the obstacles Parsons has faced along the way. 

“The biggest challenge is finding a place to host it,” she said.

Often, she said, it is difficult for organizers to find venues willing to host blood drives, as most businesses and agencies view the drives as a liability even though the American Red Cross provides liability insurance for the day.

After members of the Erial Fire Department came together to talk about opening their doors to the American Red Cross, though, Parsons received a resounding “yes."

“They said that if they couldn’t use the hall for that, they couldn’t use it for anything,” she said. 

While unsure whether she will host another blood drive, Parsons will continue to use websites like Caring Bridge to continue to advocate for her grandson.

“Dylan has reached out to so many people and he has touched so many lives,” she said.

The Erial Fire Department station is located at 1946 Williamstown Erial Rd. Those interested in signing up can call Meredee Parsons at 856-309-0029 or go to www.redcrossblood.org. The sponsor code is 02215781.