Friday, July 28, 2006

Donating Blood


Lee & Diana just left for his appointment to donate blood. Lee has O+, and his blood is very much in demand. I don't remember what Diana's is. Mine is A+ (I only remember that because Carolyn told me I get an A+ in blood).

Diana will probably not donate. Lee wanted to bring her along today so she could see what it's all about. In the past she's been too light to donate, but over the last year, she's grown/filled out, so she meets the weight requirement now.

Lee donates every 3 months or so, I think. He started doing that when he began working at Dell. I haven't donated since I worked at First American, a long time ago.

One teacher in High School told us men just have that same blood cycling through over & over, unless they have some sort of bloody accident. Women get to replenish their blood supply every month. So he thought it was more important for men to donate blood regularly. I don't know how true that is, but it made sense to me.

I'm thinking Diana's do-good-deeds Girl Scouting background + free cookies won't be quite enough to offset the ick/pain factor involved with donating blood. If they could make it completely painless, maybe she'd do it. But I doubt she'll donate this time.

One other benefit of donating blood - they don't give you a donor card if there's something wrong with your blood (oh, say, like HIV). So it's also a test for your health that's free!

:)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I feel its important to do. Our red cross unit is fairly busy all the time.

I'm an 0+ and I am sensitive enough that the finger prick and the drawing needle nearly sends me through the roof.

Still it's a very human thing to do.

keeka said...

Sorry, but I still don't give blood. They don't like me much. I actually tried to give blood once when I worked for Disney, because the truck came and I finally was above the weight requirement. All I said was, "is there a cot where I can lie down? I will most likely faint". They basically said "Go away"