 At Audiology Associates of Prestonsburg, you can live your life the way you want and find the freedom of better hearing with 40 years of being in the hearing care industry. You'll experience patient care that is specific to you with exceptional follow-up care that ensures your hearing and balance needs are being met. Audiology Associates at 1428 Northlake Drive in Prestonsburg. As winter quickly approaches, the need for blood is on the rise. During the holidays and winter months, blood donations decline, but the need for blood products continues. We spoke to Eric Lindsey with Kentucky Blood Center about the importance of donation. We know we're going to run into some historic difficulties that are going to rise. The first thing that will pop up is just being the holidays. People are going to be busier. In addition to that, as we enter wintertime, there are going to be unforeseen days where snow may come in, sleet, whatever it may be, that are going to unfortunately inevitably inhibit our ability to collect blood. It often leads to mobile blood drive cancellations, especially in rural parts of Kentucky, but it also affects our donor centers sometimes. So all those things are factoring in that make it a difficult time of the year, so our plea to folks is that, hey, knowing that those things are going to happen, knowing that we're going to run into some difficulties, do your part to be intentional about coming out and donating blood. One donation can save up to three lives and only takes around 45 minutes. One in four people will need a blood transfusion in their lifetime and someone in the U.S. needs blood products every two seconds. So it is a constant everyday need. It can range from anything from what most people think of, you know, traumas, car accidents, unfortunately, gunshot wounds, things like that, that use a tremendous amount of blood, but there's a lot more, a lot more tooth than just that. Cancer patients, it is critical for. It helps with premature births. It helps in routine surgeries, organ transplants, people with anemia, things like sickle cell disease. There's just so many uses for it in our medical facilities that I think we take for granted that blood is an everyday constant need. So yeah, there's a lot of things that it's used for. For more information on how to become a donor, go to kybloodcenter.org. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Brianna Robinson.