Contributed photo The Marshalltown LifeServe office is booked through April for blood donation appointments, but residents can call and schedule appointments for May.

April has been a strange time for all Americans. It’s an especially difficult time to be in the workforce, as plans shift and change with each passing hour.

For companies such as LifeServe Blood Bank in Marshalltown, it means the cancellation of nearly every blood drive in Marshall County the organization had on the schedule due to the coronavirus. It meant the end of walk-in appointments, as the company could not properly screen people or know where they had been recently before accepting their blood.

As Community Relations Director of LifeServe Claire DeRoin said, Iowans have been stepping up in the meantime.

“We’ve had an overwhelming number of volunteers,” DeRoin said. “So much so that some of our centers are booked for the next couple of weeks.”

For Mitchell Funeral Home, it means no big funerals with friends and extended family of the deceased, who could be traveling in from all across the country and potentially carrying the disease without knowing it. It means getting creative and thinking of any way possible to provide any possible form of closure for a grieving family.

Owner Marty Mitchell said he was in lockstep with the state on restrictions to his business.

“A funeral can be a very potential situation for an outbreak,” Mitchell said. “I can understand very much why the state mandated that we limit them.”  

Both companies have done what they can to continue providing service to their communities. LifeServe is still accepting scheduled appointments across the state, DeRoin said. But it has to be scheduled beforehand through phone or email.

One of the reasons the blood drives have been canceled by the hundreds is due to the close nature of mobile blood drive trucks. DeRoin said it was difficult to get half a foot away from someone in a mobile blood truck, much less the CDC-recommended minimum of 6 feet apart for social interactions.

The solution has been to limit the number of slots available to provide LifeServe employees less potential exposure and allow time to sanitize frequently, DeRoin said.

“We’ve also cut down the number of appointments,” DeRoin said. “So donors should not feel bad about having to wait or slots being full. We will be stable for as long as this pandemic lasts.”

As for Mitchell Funeral Home, it’s meant devising alternative ways of holding a funeral with less than 10 people present in the same room.

They came up with four options:

• A graveside service with less than 10 people in attendance.

• Embalming and refrigerating the body with respect until mandates are lifted and a full-size funeral can be held.

• A drive-in conference call funeral with only immediate family in the same building as the body and the rest outside in their cars listening in

• A live-streamed memorial via a Facebook link. The conference call option would also allow mourners to drive by the front doorway of the funeral home and pay their respects to the body of the deceased.

All of these options have been used by the public, Mitchell said, adding he’s willing to do whatever it takes to keep funerals alive during this time for those who need it.

“Last weekend we had a service where we had rotational viewing with family members,” Mitchell said. “I am very passionate about funeral service.”

DeRoin said it’s stunning how much people have been willing to donate, saying blood supplies in Iowa are as strong as they’ve been for a while.

LifeServe is also starting to ask for the convalescent plasma of those who have fully recovered from COVID-19.

Those who are proven to have recovered from the virus should call LifeServe, DeRoin said, who will then run antibody screenings to confirm their plasma can be taken.

“They go through an extensive pre-screening, and then give a plasma donation,” DeRoin said. “That then goes directly to local hospitals to fight the disease.”

LifeServe and Mitchell have seen gracious help from the community during a trying time, they said, allowing them to implement these solutions and still see some form of business.

DeRoin summed up the giving nature of Marshalltown and Iowa residents.

“That’s what happens when you ask for help in the Midwest.”