The rules say that if you’re a male who’s had sex with another male at any time since 1978, you’re disqualified.
So, I’m disqualified.
It’s OK though - the nurses who do IV’s all the time can’t get them started the first time in my veins when I visit the hospital. (and before you ask why I visit the hospital if I’m healthy as a horse - I had several surgeries this year to install and remove hardware holding a broken ankle toghether - add to that things like radioisotope heart function tests and such and I’ve had my share of IV’s…)
The one time I did try to donate (back before they had the “no fags” rule) the above mentioned problem with IV type needles caused the donation nurses to make hamburger out of my arm - even if I was allowed to donate, I wouldn’t bother.
You can donate on anti-depressants. (At least on citalopram, prozac, and wellbutrin.)
I generally donate whenever the blood bank calls me to ask for an appointment, but I’ve been deferred over the last ehrr… 8 or so months for various reasons. Once I got a cold in the time between the phone call and the appointment. Once I had low blood pressure. Once I had a “fever” of 98.8. (That was West Nile paranoia there. The city had had a few cases. But 98.8? a FEVER?)
Does anyone know if the Red Cross passed the stricter rules for Mad Cow… right before 9/11 they were planning to shorten the “acceptible” time spent in the UK from 6 months to 3. If it’s 3 now, Red Cross might permanently defer me, since I have perhaps 4 days shy of 3 months worth of time spent in England. Despite the fact that I’m vegetarian and never consumed ANY beef, much less contaminated beef… :rolleyes:
In any case, the city blood bank has been sticking with 6 months so I’m fine until I move elsewhere.
I don’t give blood because I too am afraid to. Although, I have only been afraid to since the one time I gave blood…
Like a couple of other people in this thread, I have low blood pressure. It’s not a big deal, though I used to get dizzy more often when I was younger. Anyway, I decided to give blood when I was a senior in high school, and had a really bad experience. (but at least I wasn’t one of the half dozen or so people whose veins they collapsed.)
It seems that low blood pressure = slow blood flow, which upset the nurse who was taking my blood. She though she could speed it up by moving the needle around, while it was in my vein. Four or five times. :eek: I don’t think that you’re supposed to do that, because it hurt like hell every time she did it. And it didn’t make the blood flow any faster, obviously. All in all she spent about a half hour torturing me, before there was enough blood to use.
So chalk up my not giving blood to a mean nurse, a very sore arm, and a five-inch-long black and blue spot (with neat little darker spots where you could see where the tip of the needle punctured the vein while in my arm) to my being too afraid to give blood again.
I don’t give blood because then I’d have to go and buy regular ink for all my insane scribblings.
Er…yes, that and the fact that whenever I give blood I keel over like a wuss in a pink handbag.
It’s not the fear or the pain. Obviously my body feels that it doesn’t have any blood spare. Makes me feel like a bit of a git, not being able to give blood, but that seems to be the way I’ve been made.
When I was in North Africa in the military I had to take the malaria vaccination, which apparently means that I have “had malaria”. So I am therefore on the reject list.
I’ve had non-viral hepatitus. I’m also on quite a few medications which are not welcome in donated blood. Before all that, though, I donated regularly. I’m A+, which isn’t rare, but apparently they liked my blood, because the blood center would call me up to remind me when I was eligible again.
I used to do it as a challenge to myself, as I hate needles. It was also a way of remembering my first little sister, who died of leukemia about 43 years ago.
One of my co-workers has a son who is battling a tumor in his brain. After many surgeries, treatments, etc. he was starting to trun the corner and get better, the tumor was shrinking, things were looking up. Then he fell ill again, and they found out he had caught West Nile Virus from a blood transfusion. Knocked out the poor kid so bad the Dr’s were advising her to let him go. She refused, and he is slowly recovering, but this really set him back, and almost cost him his life.
I have an abject paranoid fear of needles. When I got this job (working in a drug rehab program at a psych hospital), I almost didn’t make it through the physical because they wanted to do a TB test. You know, the little tiny needle, and they inject a little bubble of stuff under your skin? I had to be restrained in order for the shot to be given. Otherwise I would have been outta here in a heartbeat and never looked back.
My dad, on the other hand, used to donate blood whenever he saw a Red Cross truck. He was up to 14 gallons before he had to stop. (He has to take blood thinners & pressure meds.)
I have various philosophical problems with the American Red Cross and the American Heart Association, and won’t donate to them, but I used to donate to the Armed Forces Blood Program on a regular basis. However, the post we are at now only holds ARC blood drives, and the nearest AFBP donor site is all the way down at Walter Reed.
I really hope the next base we go to runs AFBP drives.
I am under the 110 pound weight minimum. Which is too bad, because appearently I am a universal donor type. (I’ve no idea what blood type I am. But asupposedly I can donate to anyone.)
I’m also under 110 pounds…Plus I’m only eighteen, so it’s not like giving blood has been an option for very long. That is, when I was younger, giving blood was just a thing for older folks, and now that I still can’t…the idea of me giving blood just feels weird. Like something intended for “real” adults.
I also don’t really like needles- don’t have a phobia, but they do feel gross.
There’s a liver enzyme they check to see if you’ve got Hepatitis. UNFORTUNATLY, that enzyme is outta whack in me. Evidently, you can upset the bgalace if you’re sick, under stress, had two drinks the night before or the moon is in the Seventh house.
The first time it didn’t pass, they pitched my donation and put me on a one year hiatus.
I donated another pint successfully
Then the next pint ‘tested out’
Now I don’t bother. Why should I when the odds are it’ll just get pitched anyway?
