Blood shortage worries many area residents

By Mary Manning

Friday, Aug. 12, 2005 | 9:18 a.m.

As the blood shortage in Southern Nevada continues, 34-year-old Venice Jarmusz worries that her anemia will require her to have another transfusion.

"I don't absorb iron, I am severely anemic," Jarmusz said Thursday afternoon from her desk at Wireless Experts on Eastern Avenue.

She's had three blood transfusions since the surgery. Her red blood cells have been so low she had to be hospitalized the first time.

"I could have been brain-damaged or a vegetable," Jarmusz said.

Jarmusz said her brothers, Vinny Yaldo and Danny Isho, gave her a job at the communications store and promised to help pay for her transfusions that range from $1,500 to $2,500 apiece.

"I need blood sometimes," Jarmusz said.

Her blood type is B-positive, a rare type.

Jarmusz developed anemia after gastric bypass surgery in Troy, Mich., in July 2001, she said. At the time, she had a slight case of anemia, but she learned later that the surgery should never have been performed because of the anemia, a condition that disrupts the ability of red blood cells to carry oxygen to vital organs.

With Southern Nevada short of O-negative, the blood type that can be given to anyone, people like Jarmusz could have a medical emergency, said Dan Perlstein, spokesman for the United Blood Services, which supplies blood to the Las Vegas Valley.

All blood types are needed, he said.

"It's been slow," Perlstein said of the response to the blood shortage. People away on vacations and others not hearing about the shortage have kept numbers down, he said.

Gov. Kenny Guinn on Wednesday issued a statewide Emergency Blood Shortage Alert, meaning blood banks throughout Nevada have barely a one-day supply of the nation's most common blood type.

There's an added incentive for those donating blood, Jarmusz said. Her brothers are offering anyone who donates blood and who shows a donation card can have a break on a car charger or leather phone case for $5, instead to paying the full price of $25 at Wireless Experts stores, she said.