A while ago, I wrote a post about donat­ing blood while breast­feed­ing.  Recently, I real­ized that it had again been a bit too long between dona­tions, and when I men­tioned that fact to a friend, she said that it was okay, because I have an excuse (mean­ing my two boys).  Yes, I do have an excuse for not donat­ing every 8 weeks, and some­times I use it, but I really don’t feel good about doing that.

When I was 18, I went to a blood drive and wanted to donate.  I had low iron, and I wasn’t able to donate.  I was actu­ally very upset.  I tried again a cou­ple months later, and I had my first suc­cess­ful dona­tion.  When I went off to col­lege, I decided to give it another try.  I found the blood bank at our local hos­pi­tal, and I made an appoint­ment.  Again, I had low iron and was turned away.  I worked hard to main­tain my iron count, and I tried again.  After that point, I was able to donate each time I had an appoint­ment.  In Jan­u­ary of 2000, I decided that I wanted to get my naval pierced (yes, this really does relate ).  The rea­son this was a big deal to me at the time was because after a pierc­ing, I was under the impres­sion that I would not be allowed to donate blood for 12 months.  Although, look­ing at the Red Cross’ web­site for eli­gi­bil­ity, it appears that is not always the case.  I’m not sure whether this is a recent change or if it’s always been this way.  This is actu­ally news to me.  So, get­ting back to my story, I decided to make one last appoint­ment to donate blood before I got the pierc­ing and had to take a year off.

The day after my dona­tion, I was sit­ting in the university’s din­ing hall with some friends and acquain­tances.  I was wear­ing my new blood dona­tion t-shirt I had received the day before, and out of (seem­ingly) nowhere, this guy I didn’t know very well at all says to me, “Thank you.”  I asked him, “What?  Thanks for what?”  He said, “Thank you for sav­ing lives.  Sav­ing lives like mine.”  Still con­fused, I just looked at him.  He said, “I see you have a blood bank shirt on, and you have a nee­dle mark on your arm.  You just donated blood, didn’t you?”  I answered that I had.  He showed me the back of his hand.  It was marked with sev­eral scars.  He then told me that he had a health con­di­tion that required him to get numer­ous blood trans­fu­sions to save his life.  I was really taken aback.  I donated blood, because I knew it was a good thing to do, but I had never known any­one to actu­ally need blood in an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion.  He said, “So, any­way, I just wanted you to know that it’s peo­ple like you who save my life when I need blood.”  It was a very pow­er­ful expe­ri­ence espe­cially since the day that hap­pened was the day I had intended to get my naval pierced.  I chose not to do it that day.  I did, how­ever, do it a year later.  Reread­ing the story, I feel more than a lit­tle bad that that expe­ri­ence affected me only enough to delay my plans for a year.

I con­tin­ued to donate blood periodically/semi-regularly over the years.  In 2005, I got preg­nant, and I again stopped donat­ing blood.  After hav­ing K, I was nurs­ing and assumed, instead of check­ing, that I would con­tinue to be unable to donate.  I got preg­nant with A in 2006, and after he was born, I started to do a lit­tle research.  The research was prompted by a cou­ple things.  One, I had been a reg­u­lar dona­tor before my preg­nancy and nurs­ing days and I was anx­ious to get back to it.  The other thing was that a friend of mine had a baby just a month before A was born, and after her baby was born, she had a retained pla­centa.  Because of this, she lost a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of her blood, she had sev­eral trans­fu­sions, she had surgery, and she nearly died.  (Recently, another friend went through this same sit­u­a­tion but to a less sig­nif­i­cant degree.)  Again, hear­ing the story of some­one who had needed donated blood brought to my mind the impor­tance of donating.

I know that not every­one can or should donate blood.  That isn’t the rea­son for my post.  I don’t want any­one to feel guilty or pushed into doing some­thing that is not healthy for them.  How­ever, if donat­ing blood is some­thing you’ve been inter­ested in doing or some­thing you’ve done in the past but haven’t done for a while, I’d like to think that maybe this post is the lit­tle bit of incen­tive you’ve been wait­ing for.  As I said before, I’m past due for my dona­tion.  Jason and I had been using blood dona­tion time as a date, but we haven’t been able to work out (grand­par­ent) child­care to do it for a while.  I may have to just get over wait­ing for the per­fect sit­u­a­tion to present itself and make it happen.