Another O-negative-universal-donor-who-can’t-donate here: the double hit of three months in the UK and five cumulative years in Europe (18 years for me). It makes me so mad sometimes, but I guess I understand why they’re careful… (Their money is better spent convincing more of the millions of eligible donors to donate, instead of on developing a test for us few weird Europeans.)
I donate $ instead, but it doesn’t feel the same. I’ve signed up for bone marrow registery, but haven’t been asked to donate yet.
Did you read my mind, Mark?
Let’s blood identify, shall we?
The card at the bottom is the hokum you refer too? Because I know the Japanese have some weird not just personality type but straight up borderline racism when it comes to blood types. The card at the bottom seems to imply some other supposed health type information related to blood-types which I’ve heard of before that all seemed extremely dubious if not outright bullshit.
Where are the little circles for the Auberger (Au), Bg, Cartwright, CDE, Chido-Rodgers, Colton, Cromer, Diego, Dombrock, Duffy, Gerbich, High-frequency, I, Indian, Kell, Kidd, Knops, Xk, Landsteiner-Wiener, Lewis, Le, Low-frequency, Lutheran, MNSs, P, Scianna, Sutter, Vel, Wright, XG, and YT blood groups? People would have a ball assigning personalities to those! Or maybe I shouldn’t suggest it . . .
Here’s my blood-typing kit:
Step 1) If you’ve never given blood, go give some, get a Donor Card.
or
Other Step 1) Pull your Donor Card out of your wallet.
Step 2) Read the front of the Donor Card, note the section where it says “Blood Type”.
Unless:
We didn’t have Red Cross blood donation cards, because we aren’t eligible to donate blood: Carla doesn’t weigh enough, Jane is too young, and I “lived a cumulative time of 3 months or more in the United Kingdom” back in the 1980s (I have mad cow prions ready to erupt in my brain any day now, I guess).
And yeah I once asked a doctor about my blood type and she suggested I register as a blood donor.
Yeah, speaking as a donor, there are a lot of things that can disqualify you here in Canada. Certain illegal drug use, sex work or sleeping with someone who has been a sex worker, prison time, travel to certain countries, birth country, certain medications or medical conditions, height and weight, and, controversially, men who’ve had sex with men recently (I think a year?).
Not as many people are giving blood as they should, but a lot of people can’t. Neither of my parents could, due to the medicines they were on.
My blood is yours…
So I needed to know my blood type when Mrs. Nothingfuture was having our first kid. She’s A-, so if I was RH positive she would have to get an extra shot.
Anyway, I sign up to be a donner. I give a pint, get my card, and find out I’m O-.
Then: the phone calls start. Every six weeks the phone starts ringing saying I’m due to donate again. If I can’t donate- I’m sick or too busy or whatever, they just keep calling.
Look- I know blood donations are important and all that, but it just got to be too much. I finally had to have them pull my name from the call list.
I’d like to get back to it sometimes, but I’d rather not get harassing phone calls again.
What type was it again?
Yeah, I have the GiveBlood app installed, and I had to turn off the notifications, because it kept pestering me to make an appointment, even though I’ve already made an appointment.
Plus, the notifications came up using my phone’s ringtone, not its notification tone, so I would be trying to answer the call that wasn’t actually coming in.
So yeah, I hear you about them being nags.
I was disqualified once due to catastrophic high blood pressure. I had no idea, but I was in imminent danger of death. Thanks, Red Cross!
I’ve had sex with another man. Therefore I’m ineligible to donate. Soooo, there’s that.
Quite frankly, it’s some real bullshit. They could get a safety window for MSMs who are occasional by just asking the last time you had sex with another man and your last HIV test.
And anyway, it’s not like being HIV positive is a death sentence anymore. It’s now much more of a chronic disease you can manage effectively with medication.
Yeah, that sucks.
Here it’s five years, but they’re apparently in the process of lowering it to one year.
IIRC, they lowered it in the US from “ever have had sex with another man” to “had sex with another man since 1975” (not sure on the exact year, but it was before I was born)
77 is the year of reference here.
That is true for the otherwise well person. However consider who/why the person is receiving blood. Will the person recovering from a bone marrow transplant, the chemotherapy patient or with sickle cell/thalasaemia do as well with already impaired red cell production?
Good point. And I agree.
Perhaps the nature of modern medicine has made HIV screening of donated blood more difficult?
I get tested annually, and my gray-sexualness means I haven’t had any kind of risky business in like 8 years, I’m pretty sure I don’t have HIV, and my blood is as clean as anyone else’s.
The funny thing is, I agree it’s bunkum, but the A profile fits me rather well!
Also can’t donate due to living in Britain in the 1980s, and sometimes I do wonder (when my memory seems particularly bad on a given day) whether or not that time bomb will go off sometime soon. It is about time, in general, to see how many people start showing symptoms.
