HUDSON â When Gloria Bordencaâs daughter was being treated for leukemia at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, she needed many blood products that were stored frozen and were still cold when given to patients.
Bordenca had been sewing warming bags full of corn that could be heated in a microwave as gifts for family members and friends, and her daughter asked if she could make one for her to use to keep her arm warm when receiving blood products.
The bags worked well, and are now a part of patient care at Dana Farber and other hospitals.
They are also used in the Kraft Family Blood Donor Center at Dana Farber to warm the arms of donors to help make veins more accessible for blood donation.
Bordenca enlisted friends and made more than 450 corn-filled bags for use at local cancer care centers.
Dana Farber had a commercial supplier of the corn-filled bags, but the supplier stopped manufacturing them. They now are dependent on donors to supply them with the much needed warming bags.
Bordenca was recently contacted by a family member who discovered that there was a shortage of the warming bags when he was donating blood at the center. He asked her to recruit people to sew a new supply of the bags.
Bordenca now lives in Hudson, and was told about the Drop-in Stitchers group that meets at Rodgers Memorial Library each week.![]()
↧