Married 47 Years, and Still Competing... Over Platelet Donations
By Emma C. Fermo, Red Cross writer For the last decade, John and Christine Burke have arrived at the American Red Cross donor center in Portland, Maine together. They compare schedules at the kitchen table, pick up Saturday or Sunday, and settle into their chairs side by side for the two-to-three-hour platelet donation. It is a routine for the Burkes. It is also, in their telling, a competition. The competition has stakes now. Christine, recently diagnosed with breast cancer, is temporarily ineligible to donate. “After you’ve been married for 47 years, everything becomes a competition,” Christine Burke says, “He can’t surpass me in number of units, that's not going to happen.” John and Christine Burke The Burkes, who live in Scarborough, did not arrive at platelet donation in a single moment. Their decision to donate, a staggering 400 units collective so far, has surfaced through a multitude of family connections that have quietly accumulated over the years. John, a semiretired ph...
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