Saw a sign the other day outside St. Joseph Hospital that there was going to be a blood donor clinic this past friday. Since I had to pass there to trek up the mountain anyway, I figured I’d stop in on the way.
(kind of off topic, but goddamn there are a lot of obese people working at hospitals. Nurses especially. Two really overweight women (their photo tags giving them away as employees) were turned away because their blood pressure was through the roof. Another one complained about needing hip surgery. I imagine carrying around dozens, hundreds of pounds of excess weight on a daily basis for years, decades will really screw your joints up. A very rotund male employee came in panting and out of breath, and something tells me that he hadn’t run to get there. Damn. Shouldn’t people who work in a hospital be ambassadors for healthier living, and strive to set a good example for the patients?)
Went through the whole tedious rigmarole of whether I’m on a first name basis with my pharmacist or whether I’ve had sex with African prostitutes or shared needles with South American junkies. Checked my blood pressure and temperature, which were fine.
Another weird aspect of the whole process is that they give you a little sticker that states “Yes, use my blood” or “No, don’t use my blood”. The person processing you leaves the room for a minute, you apply the sticker you feel pertains to you and you throw the sheet the sticker came from in the garbage. I always found this a little puzzling. You’re there of your own volition, no one is forcing you to donate your blood. Someone told me that because a lot of organizations organize blood drives, some people feel compelled to go. Not wanting to admit publicly that they lead very licentious lifestyles that put them at risk for all sorts of communicable diseases, they go to look like a team player, and then this allows them to back out while saving face. They still donate a pint, but when the barcode is scanned it gets rejected. Weird, but okay.
That out of the way I sat my self down in a chair and the process began.
I actually really like giving blood. Besides the altruistic aspect of it, there is also a health benefit to it, in that it boosts your immune system.
But I hear every excuse under the sun for why people don’t donate. The biggest one being “I don’t like needles.” Oh suck it up you whiners! It’s a sting that lasts a second, and then it’s over. You want the blood to be there when you or your loved ones need it, somebody has to replenish the supply. May as well be you.
You can have one of these nice cards too if you live in Canada. They give them away free and they give you treats when you use it.
My blood must have the consistency of water, since it always takes less than five minutes for the process to go from start to finish. Some people are in the chair when I walk in, and when I walk out after drinking and eating something, they’re still sitting in the chair. Suckers.
I guess this is the way they collect a sample to test for nastiness now. Every time I go there is some tweak to the process. In past they filled up two or three test tubes from a by pass in the tube, but it appears this is the new method.
And there it is. A bit of my O+ to benefit someone else.
After that they make sit for a while and drink some juice and have some cookies. When I was working at King and University in Toronto, there was a clinic right across the street, and when I was done they offered really great coffee and black forest cake from Dufflet.
“Would you like another slice? We’ve got lots.”
“Uhm...yeah, I’m feeling a little weak actually.” :-)
That’s the kind of service every blood donor clinic needs to be offering. No more Peek Freans cookies and shitty coffee, more Dufflet pastries and gourmet coffee.
Go donate blood.
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