I understand why some of you are put off by the screening process. It can be a pain in the butt. However, they've got to design a screening questionnaire that will catch many of the issues that ultimately lead to blood rejection BEFORE wasting the donor's time.

I first donated in March 1990 and hit 25 gallons sometime around 2019 or so. Coincidently in mid 2019, my wife had an auto-immune issue where her body attacked itself. An otherwise healthy 47 year old lost weight, lost muscle mass, and was too weak to lift herself out of bed, off a chair, or off the toilet. He legs buckled when she stepped off a curb in San Fran (fortunately she didn't land in a pile of excrement). In a matter of 8 weeks, she had lost most of her strength and began to aspirate. Once hospitalized, she was given a serious does of IVIG and slowly turned the corner. For over 2 years now, she gets IVIG every 4 weeks at home. Five hours on an IV drip.

I paid little attention to all those years of blood donations that I gave at blood drives, college, church, work and at blood banks. I had no personal connection to anyone benefiting from regular blood donors....until my wife took ill.

I continue to donate on a regular schedule. If you can tolerate the donations and don't mind the 56 annoying questions about gay sex, tattoos or juvenile lock up, please consider donating regularly.

Russ

And for folks to understand, it takes between 3K-10k people's donations to prepare a single unit of IVIG.

And about 6 people's donations for a single unit of platelets.

I had approximately 20 units of IVIG and about 100 units of platelets over the course of 8 months.

And consider the numbers for Russ's wife.

That is an awful lot of folks that I may never know, and I try to smile at everyone I encounter, cus I never know if I am looking at someone that helped me.

quote:

Originally posted by rburg:
A while back, folks, medical ones, wanted me to donate blood. That no longer happens, I just telll them some of the stupid medicines doctors have me taking. They don't want it. Not sure why it doesn't kill me, but pretty sure it will kill their patients.

I used to donate blood regularly, but eventually as I aged I was taking more and more medicines and some of them were ones that the blood banks didn't want in their blood, so I stopped trying.

flashguy