Cancer survivor, Red Cross volunteer advises disaster preparedness

At a recent Red Cross event, Saundra Blankenship showed off the pin she'd received for serving as a Red Cross volunteer with Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

The small, nondescript pin symbolized more than recognition for this 41-year-old woman who once was diagnosed with cancer and dealt with her brother's drowning.

The token marked the turning point where she decided to live to help others.

She'd seen the hurricane coverage, which drove her to report to the American Red Cross Katrina Shelter at Charleston Baptist Association Camp in Benton, Mo., where she served for more than seven weeks. Within three days she was working as a volunteer. When she was asked to assume the position as manager, she accepted.

Blankenship describes the duties as being similar to those of running a household.

"You have to hook up with resources and then prioritize the need," she said. "Some of the people that came had run out of money or hadn't eaten or needed medical care. Then there were those who were traumatized and the fear had been passed onto their children. We had to act fast to restore their lives to normalcy."

Blankenship was prepared to go to New Orleans but instead ended up serving people in the town she lived in. It took 55 volunteers daily to meet the many needs of 40 distraught families. With limitations of her own due to health issues, she learned to use her talents as efficiently as possible. The result: hundreds of friendships.

This expanded her Christmas this year, with 60 more Christmas cards mailed, nine or 10 phone calls daily from new friends and even the gift of a horse.

Before the Katrina Shelter, Blankenship said, she was uninformed about what the Red Cross does.

Now she is committed to two more years as a volunteer to the COAD SEMO Long Term Recovery Committee as case manager for the Katrina victims. The most important thing she realized through all of this, she said, was that life is most important.

Blankenship's personal trauma began more than five years ago with acute pancreatitis.

Prompted by repeatedly locking her keys in the car, continually forgetting things and sheer exhaustion, she decided at Thanksgiving in 1999 to take a break from the computer business she and her friend had owned. She'd been driving herself hard. But she knew it was more than exhaustion before she went for a diagnosis.

In 1999, she was given two years to live, even with treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma. After the diagnosis, she realized her misfortune was not about her as much as it was about her survivors -- her daughter, husband and family members.

Priorities have changed since then.

"We've decided not to owe anyone anything," she said. "We don't chase after the material things. Instead we give a lot," she said. That means time and the resources it takes to provide for other people's needs.

And then one of her family members died.

Her brother, Richard Wright, 41, of Cape Girardeau, drowned in a boating accident in July 2000.

The news was overwhelming. Blankenship stopped treatments. She began thinking no one could give her a death sentence.

"In November 2000 I got saved in the spirit. By 2001 I quit chemo, got off disability and emptied the contents of the 13 medication bottles into a bowl, recited that in Jesus' name I was saved and threw it all in the trash," she said.

Blankenship realigned her priorities and will continue to work as a Red Cross volunteer advocating the organization whenever she can.

Blankenship urges disaster preparedness for everyone. She drives around with a disaster preparedness kit because she's learned emergencies and disasters can strike quickly and without warning.

"All those people wish they were more prepared," she said.

For more information, call the American Red Cross at 335-9471.

cpagano@semissourian.com

335-6611, exension 133