The best donation experience I’ve had was when I was in the army in Monterey CA. They actually gave me a little shot of lidocaine which made the entire experience completely pain free. I’ve donated with the red cross although not very often and I’ve never had them hound me.
I’m AB+ and I don’t really care if my RBCs get tossed, my body can make plenty of them! (given a good diet, etc.) I have my 5 gallon pin from the Red Cross and have given blood through Blood Assurance, too ( not too close in time, I promise!) I have seen patients come back from the brink of death with a transfusion and go home an live for many relatively happy years after a tranfusion. I am proud to have been a teeny-tiny part of that.
Red blood cells are not the only component of blood, there are also platelets and plasma. Those ABs whose RBC’s may not get as much use as other blood types… Well, ask about plasma or platelet apheresis, where they take the blood, centrifuge it, and only keep the parts they want (plasma and/or platelets). The rest is returned to the donor.
It takes longer, but can be done more frequently.
Do they still have the rhogam shot? Do you give that if you have to give positive blood to a negative person?
Depends on the circumstances. I’ve personally never seen it happen, but we had a protocol in place to suggest it, when we gave a Rh-pos unit to an Rh-neg woman of childbearing age. That’s because the anti-D she makes in response to a Rh-pos unit may affect any pregnancies she has afterwards. But when we gave 75-year-old men Opos units because we didn’t have enough Oneg to keep them alive, we didn’t bother.
What did happen more regularly is a Rhogam shot given to an Rh negative young woman who received Rh positive platelets. Platelets don’t have the RhD antigen on them, but the process of platelet collection always leaves behind a small amount of red cells. Because platelets are often so hard to come by, due to their short shelf life (5 days) we gave positive units to negative patients much more often than with units of red cells.
Ah, makes sense that they want my platelets much more than my whole blood (A-). Well, that and the fact that I have lots of platelets, apparently.
I donate to LifeSource; however, LifeSource and the Red Cross have set things up like a cartel, since they aren’t really ‘in competition’ - they’ve divided up things, pretty much. Here in Chicagoland, LifeSource is more-or-less the only choice. Some places, the Red Cross may be the only choice.
Google your location and blood donations.
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the underlying issue of the OP is certainly one of the most intriguing questions to show up here.
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Years ago, I was fired from donating blood when they discovered that I had antibodies for Hep B in my blood. They said that I must have come in contact with it at some point. I don’t have antigens. I have no evidence of the virus. But they wouldn’t take my blood. Has anything changed? Can I go back to donating?
No, it’s not correct. The Rh factors (which are actually a whole complex of antigens; the one you’re referring to is technically known as D) are membrane-bound proteins, and are an integral part of the red cell. You can’t remove them.
Precisely! There’s no such thing as a single “universal blood donor,” despite the fact that people bring it up in these sorts of threads all the time. Type O red cells can be given to anyone (with rare exceptions), but type O plasma can ONLY be given to people with type O blood. The opposite is true for type AB: AB red cells can only be give to AB recipients, but type AB plasma can be given to anyone (again, with rare exceptions).
Doesn’t matter what blood type you have: if you can donate, do so. SOME part of what comes out of your veins will be useful!
I don’t think anything has changed (at least not as far as I could fine with a quick Google search). As of right now, you’re still permanently deferred. It doesn’t hurt to keep checking every few years, though, just in case the policy is revised some day.
That was a fascinating quote, but I bet that that isn’t the only way it can happen. Genetics is more complicated than most of us are aware of. Incidentally, it suggests it could happen with AB as well as just A. I still bet on mistyping–or the milkman.
Again, the milkman isn’t a possibility. An AB person must have one A parent and one B parent. If the mother is O, then it isn’t possible that the AB son is biologically hers, regardless of who the father is. Ditto for the father: he can’t be the biological father. If everyone’s blood type was recorded correctly, then pretty much the only possibility is that the AB son was adopted.
It was mentioned very early in the thread- the*** incredibly*** remote possibility that the mother is, say, all of A except 1 enzyme and the father all of B except one enzyme, and they also produce the complementary for each other… Assuming that one chromosome can be both *A-short *and B-complementary, aand vice versa.
My odds are on quiet adoption, or possibly switched at birth.