My Bloody Adventure

Penzer

Not quite as exciting as the subject might make it sound, but I went and donated blood for the first time today. The whole experience was quite painless, and I feel pretty decent about it and wanted to encourage others to do the same. They say that if you donate blood you save an average of 3 lives, each time you donate. The whole thing happened totally randomly, skytrains were messed up today so I told a friend he could get a ride home with me after work. He wanted me to drop him at the clinic for him to donate, and I just ended up donating too. He had an appointment for it, I didn't.

Anyway I don't normally do any charity/fundraiser/humanitarion things, other than being tech support for far too many friends of friends, so this was nice for a change.

Most awesome thing:
I found out I have an uber high level heart. I filled the whole bag in just 4 minutes 39 seconds, a record of champions I'm told.

Funniest thing:
On the form I had to fill out, one of the questions was "Has your carreer ever involved handling monkeys or their fluids?".... I'm dead serious, the form actually asked if I've ever handled a monkey - please fill in the yes or no box.


Anyway I just felt like throwing this out there since donating blood isn't something I really considered before today. Feel free to share stories or make monkey handling jokes :P

jbrophy

Good for you man. I give blood as often as I can. I did this new power blood thing that takes twice as much and puts the platlets and plasma back so you give twice as much red blood for the same volume; today as a matter of fact. I never really think of who it could help, it just seems like the right thing to do. I plan on doing it my whole life.

Ruz

I regularly sweat blood (and tears) for the companies I work for:)

Gav

I store bags of my own blood in my freezer....never know when I'll need it.

nkoste

Unfortunately I got kicked out because I started missing my appointments, but I still I managed to deliver almost a gallon before that happened. I'm thinking about doing it again, but my record's been wiped so I have to start over before I get a prize. You get a free bottle-opener after 25 donations which is about 12 litres of blood. Who can resist that!
I have a few stories to share, one of them quite erotic:

You get a small spungy thingy you have to massage in you hand to get the blood flowing and one time I massaged it really hard and when the nurse stuck the needle in I squirted blood about six meters across the room and the nurse was all Oh my!...

Second time I donated I hadn't had breakfast and when I got home at about 1 PM I slept for the remainder of the day.

Another day the receptionist looked at me funny in the check-in and after a minute or two she revealed to me that I tested positive for hepatitis C. Oh okay cool. Then she fetched a doctor and I had to wait for ten minutes. When the doctor finally came he said to me that a tested "possibly positive" which is a completely different thing. Turned out to be nothing, but no blood, besides a small test, was given that day.

aesir

If you can find a plasma donation center, there are some that pay you some decent cash to draw it out. Amount depends on the place. Pretty rare to find these places though. Theres only 1 in LA, and its in a shitty part of town. Still, you get paid decently. The downside is that it takes a LOT longer to draw plasma from someone than just blood, so bring a book or your homework. Then head over to the sperm donation bank and make a few more bucks over there.

Penzer

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Another day the receptionist looked at me funny in the check-in and after a minute or two she revealed to me that I tested positive for hepatitis C. Oh okay cool. Then she fetched a doctor and I had to wait for ten minutes. When the doctor finally came he said to me that a tested "possibly positive" which is a completely different thing. Turned out to be nothing, but no blood, besides a small test, was given that day.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ya they call that a false-positive here, the test erroneously determines you have hep-c or aids or some crazy shit and then the re-test proves that you don't. Here in Canada though, if you're a false-positive you're blacklisted and aren't allowed to donate ever again... Even though you didn't have anything, and it was an error on their part.

I was also surprised to learn that gay men can't give blood here. I wouldn't have thought they could actually get away with having that as a rule in this day and age. I would have expected to hear more controversy about this, but I guess nobody's rioting about not being allowed to donate.

Neo_God

I've given blood twice, and both times the same thing happened. They tried to put the needle in the one arm, but couldn't penetrate the vein for some reason, so they switched to the other arm, and the blood came out nice and fast. But the other arm was left bruised to hell because when they fail to get the needle in the vein the first time, they go back in several times and just sort of jam that thing around in there.

sonic

I've given blood a few times, but because of the last time I will never do it again. I went to go donate, and right about the time I was finishing the upper half of my body and I went paralyzed. Then it spread to the rest of my body, and I remained in horrible agony for about 20 minutes. They had about 8 people either massaging my muscles, helping me breathe, or prying my eyes open. The only way I can describe the pain is if you had a cramp in every muscle in your entire body at once. My hands, legs, and face were either curled up or sticking straight out, unable to move. They had to have my girlfriend drive to the gas station as fast as possible and bring me back some orange juice. They still to this day can't tell me exactly what caused it, but they said it just "happens" to certain people and it may have something to do with my chronic migraines.

Neo_God

Damn!Sounds like you were possessed for a moment, Sonic...