{"id":560045811,"date":"2019-09-11T11:48:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-11T16:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.winnipegfreepress.com\/our-communities\/herald\/2019\/09\/11\/blood-drive-a-success-in-esp"},"modified":"2019-09-11T11:50:41","modified_gmt":"2019-09-11T16:50:41","slug":"blood-drive-a-success-in-esp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.winnipegfreepress.com\/our-communities\/herald\/2019\/09\/11\/blood-drive-a-success-in-esp","title":{"rendered":"Blood drive a success in ESP"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 16-year-old cancer survivor has helped open the eyes of his home community to childhood cancer.<\/div>\n
In January 2017, at the age of 14, Nat Shewchuk was diagnosed with leukemia. Along with chemotherapy, numerous medications, surgery, and a bone marrow transplant, he required numerous blood products during his fight with cancer. <\/div>\n
“After what we’ve been through we want to do what we can for Canadian Blood Services,” Nat’s father, Calvin, said. <\/div>\n
According to Canadian Blood Services, it can take up to five blood donors to help one child undergoing cancer treatment. It can take up to eight donors a week to help a child with leukemia. Since he was first diagnosed in January 2017, Nat Shewchuk received over 100 blood products including blood, plasma, and platelets.<\/div>\n
Today, Nat is cancer-free, and should graduate in June from River East Collegiate.<\/div>\n
“He’s doing really well,” Shewchuk said of his son. “He missed a lot of time, but he caught up doing courses in the hospital. He’s on track to graduate in June with his peers.”<\/div>\n
On Sept. 6, Nat’s mom Kendra Nixon and Canadian Blood Services organized a blood donation drive in East St. Paul in support of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, after organizing a similar drive last fall. <\/div>\n
“It was touching for me to say thank you to them,” Shewchuk said of the event, at which 90 donations were made, including eight from first-time donors.<\/div>\n
“Not everyone does that,” Shewchuk said. “We’ve had great support from our community throughout the whole ordeal.”<\/div>\n
Shewchuk said that while Nixon was a longtime blood donor, he had never donated until their son’s illness. Now, he is all about spreading the word.<\/div>\n
“We let all our friends know,” he said. “We’ll definitely always be a part of helping.”<\/div>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":287660301,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"_classifai_error":"","_classifai_text_to_speech_error":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"education-subject":[],"media-literacy-topic":[],"post_topic":[],"content_type":[24],"class_list":["post-560045811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-herald"],"acf":{"short_title":"","seo_title":"","deck":"Second annual event in support of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month","story_tag":"","byline":"Sheldon Birnie","updates":null},"apple_news_notices":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","canonical_url":"https:\/\/winnipegfreepress.com\/our-communities\/herald\/2019\/09\/11\/blood-drive-a-success-in-esp","smart_links":{"inbound":0,"outbound":0},"traffic_boost_suggestions_count":0,"meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Blood drive a success in ESP","url":"http:\/\/www.winnipegfreepress.com\/our-communities\/herald\/2019\/09\/11\/blood-drive-a-success-in-esp","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.winnipegfreepress.com\/our-communities\/herald\/2019\/09\/11\/blood-drive-a-success-in-esp"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.winnipegfreepress.com\/our-communities\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2022\/04\/sb-BloodDrive-Nat-supplied-Sept18.jpg?w=150&h=150&crop=1","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/www.winnipegfreepress.com\/our-communities\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2022\/04\/sb-BloodDrive-Nat-supplied-Sept18.jpg"},"articleSection":"The Herald","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"feedloaderapi"}],"creator":["feedloaderapi"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Our Communities","logo":""},"keywords":[],"dateCreated":"2019-09-11T16:48:00Z","datePublished":"2019-09-11T16:48:00Z","dateModified":"2019-09-11T16:50:41Z"},"rendered":"