Cordele —
CORDELE — Crisp County’s next blood drive Tuesday, Sept. 14 will be sponsored by the Dixie Riders Motorcycle Club in honor of two local men, Michael Sangster and Chris Chappell.
Both men are facing serious health issues, but each one says he will try to attend the blood drive. This month’s drive will be held from 1 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Cordele Community Clubhouse.
Dixie Riders members encourage everyone who is able to show their support of these two men who serve the community by donating a unit of blood.
Sangster, a Crisp County sheriff’s deputy, learned in April that a mole on his back was a melanoma. He has undergone several surgeries since then, he says, and had to have all the lymph nodes in his right arm removed.
He has completed radiation treatments for now and is taking chemotherapy. He says he has been able to return to work on a part-time basis and has felt pretty good for the past several days.
Chappell is waiting on a heart transplant, but in the meantime, he has been implanted with a device that literally is keeping him alive until a heart is available.
Information technology is his field of expertise, but right now, he is unable to work. He also serves as scout master for the Cordele Boy Scout troop, but he said his assistant has stepped in and is running the troop in his absence.
Chappell’s problem dates back 16 years when at the age of 23 he was in the Marine Corps and suffered through a bout of congestive heart failure. It’s likely, he says, that a viral infection attacked the muscles of his heart at that time and caused permanent damage.
Until about three months ago, he says, “I lived with a heart valve problem, but I was stable, then I began getting progressively worse.”
He wound up in St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta where he spent about two months. “My cardiologists say I’m a miracle, that I really shouldn’t still be living.
“I’m pretty excited about getting a second chance.” In spite of the bad days, Chappell says he feels fortunate to be doing as well as he is. “I saw so many other heart patients in worse shape,” he said.
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