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Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Bustamante: The modern Dracula
By Bibs M. Bustamante
In contemplation
MYTH has it that vampires are mentally unstable persons who snarl and flash their teeth. They bite others to help them feel better. They are photosensitive that in certain cases their skins are prone to blistering and burning in the sunlight. They appear pale since it is normal in their conditions to have skin discolorations or loss of pigmentation, and generally they have low amount of blood in their body.
Medical science has actually considered the above persons to suffer a genetic and hereditary disease called porphyria. This very rare disease, which is also called "Vampire" or "Dracula Disease," cannot be caught by blood or other fluid transfers, hence, according to research published in http://www.angelfire.com/tn/vampires, the notion that when a person bitten by vampires can also become a vampire, is simply not true.
Despite medical explanations, the vampire scare cannot easily disappear over time. Vampire myths went back over thousands of years and encompassing every culture around the world. The victims then were scared of being bitten and sucked of their blood and becoming vampires themselves. Damned the bloodsuckers, people always said.
Today's victims are willing and voluntary donors of their own blood. They cannot be killed in the process but in fact they save lives. The vampires are not necessarily the eerie-looking Dracula displaying their fangs. They are the professional medical technologists manning the local clinics of the Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC), who are volunteers themselves.
In myths and folklores, the people grouped themselves to hunt the vampires and stake them on their hearts by pointed woods. Now, the people suffering from dengue fever, liver and kidney disease, traumatic accidents and those due for major operations seek the help of the modern draculas to provide them with the needed blood, either whole blood, packed red blood cells, fresh plasma, platelet concentrate, washed red blood cells, cryoprecipitate or fresh frozen plasma.
The usual biting area of the vampire is the side of the neck of the victim where the external carotid artery is located. It is easy to get blood from this artery since by anatomic design it carries much blood. PNRC personnel has just to stick injection needles connected from tubes and blood bags to the median cubital vein located on the elbow`s inner side or stick to the ulner artery in the wrist, to extract blood from the donor.
Vampires have sensitive noses that can smell whether their prospective victims have fresh, clean and delicious blood worthy as their drinks. Unlike the vampires, PNRC has to determine first whether the donors have kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, epilepsy, filariasis, recent malaria, rheumatic fever, allergies, HIV, STD, TB, diabetes, cancer, hepatitis B, and other diseases before their donated blood can be administered to the patients.
The mythical Dracula sucks his victims dry. Modern Draculas bleed each donor up to 450 cc (or about 1 glass) of his blood at any one time. According to a PNRC flyer: "When a person donates blood, his bone marrow is stimulated to produce new red blood cells. This will make our blood forming organs function more effectively. And the new young cells generated will remain more effective and active cells. This is equivalent to change oil in a car. In the same way that a car works well after change oil, donating blood will make a person feel better. A healthy person can donate blood every three months with no ill effects."
Vampires have different kinds just like the modern Dracula has today. A vicious kind of modern Dracula is the one sitting and calling himself, a public official, but a corrupt one, sucking the taxes paid by the people dry. They have to be staked on their hearts and burned to ashes. Well, this method is folkloric, so people wishing to eliminate this kind of vicious Dracula may just have to be creative to do the job effectively.
bibsbust@yahoo.com
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (November 16, 2005 issue)
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