I gave blood today

[Pushkin]

I manage surprisingly well at donations given how easily my Dad and I faint (mental note, next donation is due!) What gets me always is the removal of the needle at the end, anything other than a quick clean removal makes me queasy, seems a bit silly having given a whole bag of the stuff to go pale at that stage :rolleyes:

[One_And_Only_Wanderers]

@jsc1953

I never get a chance to forget to donate – the Red Cross calls me 8 weeks to the day after my last donation.

Then, when I suggest a date/time for an appointment, they tell me that they’re all booked at that time. Hmmm…can’t need my blood too bad, then, can ya?

If they have 10 beds, and they all happen to be booked at 2pm on 28th of July or whatever, why would that mean they don’t need your blood?

[coop]

A couple of weeks ago, I gave my 50th donation of whole blood.
As a sort of reward to myself (and a slight mid-life crisis thingy…) I went and got myself a tattoo on Wednesday. This means that I can’t donate for a whole year now, but…
Anyway, I’ll still do over 100 by the time I’ve finished.

[Eleanor_of_Aquitaine]

@Eliphalet

I wish I’d had a phlebotomist like Svetlana. When i gave a couple weeks ago, i got a gent named Kassam, who took 7 TRIES to find the vein, and then had to have another gent actually get the needle in the vein enough to finish the draw.

Typically it takes me ~6 minutes for a pint. It took 28 MINUTES to fill the pint this time.

And I got a bruise the bigger than a silver dollar.

Stoopid arm.

And in 45 days, i’ll do it again…

Eli

I used to give blood despite having this kind of experience regularly. I’m hard to stick.

I’m not allowed to donate anymore, and I have to admit that I’m relieved to be able to bypass the bloodmobile without feeling guilty.

[WOOKINPANUB]

For years I donated regularly. Of course, that was when I worked for an employer that cared about such things, and had the bloodmobile visit our location every 8 weeks or whatever it was. Made it well past the gallon club too! Imagine my surprise and humiliation when I had to give blood at the doctor last week. They couldn’t get enough out of one arm so they stuck the other. No biggie; I’ve done this dozens of times. No fuss, no muss. Nurse lady is bandaging up the arm that was successful. As she’s bandaging up the other one, she starts telling me how I’m gonna have a big bruise because the blood leaked into the tissue rather than into the needle…I don’t know exactly what she said because that’s when I passed right the hell out. Something about hearing her explain that squicked me like I’ve rarely been squicked before. I still don’t understand it

[appleciders]

@Johnny L.A.

Even if it was shown to be a false positive? Is there something else that would cause a false positive that would disqualify him?

My understanding, which is based entirely on what my friend was told, is that if you ever have a positive HIV test, you can’t ever donate blood again- they’re too worried that the second test might have been a false negative. I can’t find a cite either way about that, but Wikipedia cites HIV transmission rates for blood transfusions at about 90%, so if they are paranoid, there’s some justification.

[grimpixie]

Man - I haven’t been able to donate for years now, I really miss it!!

I have chronic Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia Purpura which means that my platelet counts tend to be low and in spite of never having had any symptoms such as bruising or bleeding(even when it was as low as 16 - normal is around 120 - when I was diagnosed!!), they won’t let me donate.

Or perhaps my blood is no good without the normal level of platelets…

Anyway - I wish I still could…

Grim