Christmas 2016 Blood Donation

Christmas 2016, laying down, hooked up to a machine that keeps beeping, needle in my arm, nurse buzzing in regularly—with a smile on my face. I’m not ill. I’m so well, in fact that I’m sat here quite peacefully, helping the medics of our country to save lives. Blood donation isn’t selfless (does altruism even exist?), blood donation is satisfying, and for the girl lying next to me it seemed quite esteem boosting as she eagerly told me it was her 28^th donation! I’m not saying that you should give blood to make yourself feel better; you probably don’t feel guilty NOT donating, so you wouldn’t be making yourself feel better by donating. Well I know why I do—if that first sentence didn’t end with a smile and I was waiting for a blood transfusion, or platelets that never came, would I make it to Christmas? I’m also not going to throw an advert at you with a dying teenage lad and ask if you’d expect a liver, or a pint of blood if you were him. But poorly people always need blood. Christmas, summer, your birthday; every day 6,000 blood donations save lives. And you can look at that figure and say “well plenty of people give blood, if there aren’t mad statistics on the lunchtime news about a lack of donors why do I need to start donating?” Well think about how many people die each year, some of them donors, some in need of donation. Our population is on a nice ‘rinse and repeat’ cycle. One in, one out so-to-speak.

200,000 new blood donors are needed every year to fill the perpetually revolving places of ex-donors, whether they have died, become unwell themselves, or are no longer allowed to donate. You could wait until you’re a little older, but what if you became unwell yourself in a few years and were no longer able to give blood?

*Other forms of blood donation like platelet donation can be more beneficial and donated more often. The process is just as safe as, if not more than, whole blood donation, for more info look at the last paragraph (it's asterisked because it's boring if you don't care).

I wondered what it must be like at the donor centre for the nurses and phlebotomists, working with non-patients; you train at uni or med school, have placements in hospitals and GP surgeries and then land yourself a job working at the opposite end of medicine; working with healthy people, helping you help others to treat patients back in those hospitals. I suppose it would be like a teacher running training on an inset day; how do you teach a teacher? How do you ‘treat’ a non-patient who isn't ill?

Lastly I wanted to say that I’m not going to cut ties in our friendship if you don’t give blood; it is up to you! It’s not for everyone; my grandad tried to donate, he gave one pint then passed out. My sister came with me to my appointment today, but she’s scared of needles, and whilst she did incredibly well asking questions about the size of the needle and if you’re hooked up to a bag or machine, she’s a far way off wanting to try donating herself. Two of my very close friends have both wanted to give blood for a long time, but they both are unable to donate due to frequent trips out of the country. However, if you’re not scared of needles, don’t have a medical history that prevents you from donating and haven't been out of the country in the last 3-6 months (regional differences), I would ask you at least to look into the donating process and see if it might be something you could do or simply just raise awareness for others to have a look or take some interest in. If you do want to go but are nervous I will happily accompany you (unless you're reading this from another country, sorry!), or talk about donation if you had any questions you'd like to ask a real human rather than an FAQ on the donor website (another great place to find out more).

Merry Christmas—give a gift that keeps on giving.

*Not only is blood always needed, but platelets (small cell fragments found in blood, very important in blood clotting) are also needed. If you donate whole blood-- hooked up to a bag like I was today-- you can only donate every 4 months if you're female or 3 months if you're male, this process, start to finish including health check before and snack afterwards, takes about an hour. However, if you donate platelets (which takes 90 minutes - 2 hours) you can donate much more often as the body doesn't have to work anyway near as hard to replace what was taken, you can donate every 14 days. In addition, each donation collects enough platelets for 2-3 adult transfusions or up to 12 children's transfusions, compared with 1 pint three times a year with whole blood. This means if you donate every 14 days for a year you will be helping anywhere between 42-252 people. Platelet donation isn't taking a pint of blood; you have a needle in your arm just like with blood donation, but blood is taken from you, 50ml at a time, run through a machine which separates the platelets out, then given back to you without the platelets which are put into a bag (they look gross). Platelets are important for people with cancer, specifically blood and bone cancers like a leukemia or Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Also children with blood disorders, a condition called ITP (Immune Thrombocytopenia), infections during bone marrow transplants, or a condition called purpura which my brother actually had, which eats through platelets like no one's business and causes bleeds under the skin looking like monstrous bruises. I actually went today with the intention of in a few weeks' time giving platelets, but currently the B&T team are only recruiting for blood group A+ and A- donors; I am O+ so they don't want my mushy yellow clotting blobs at the moment. In the meantime, you could go along to a donor centre near you and see if you're eligible to give platelets, or blood!