Don’t think I didn’t consider that! I’m sure you’re firmly among the crapload of awardees. 
3 Likes
American Red Cross e-mailed me this “special digital badge”:
While I don’t even really care about the badge itself, and I like being silly about other badges here in the Forum, I’m dropping it here just because it gives me another opportunity to promote blood and blood products donation. 
2 Likes
I support all that.
But I hate giving blood/plasma myself. It seems I get sick, etc if I do. Especially since I was hypo-glycemic (I used to have to eat constantly or get low blood sugar sickness that lasted for a day… Though that went away recently when my metabolism dropped in my 40’s).
I used to have a great excuse not to feel guilty about not giving blood though.
They used to not even ALLOW me to give blood/plasma because I’ve been to Haiti before. They told me I’d be banned for life because of that. So I had a great excuse to clear my own conscience. Then I heard they dropped the rule to just banned for 10 years. Then I heard they got rid of the rule entirely. Now my favorite excuses are gone.
So now all my good excuses to myself are gone. My metabolism sucks now that I’m in my 40s and they no longer care that I lived in Haiti. I’m just a…{appropriate word censored for community guidelines} wimp. I remember how bad it was for me trying to do it in the past, and still avoid it now when I have no more restrictions… But I really respect and support other people doing it. I guess if we had a critical emergency and desperate urgent demand above normal I’d go do it again.
1 Like
I used to just do whole blood, which is fairly quick and easy—just hook up and bleed into a bag—and can be done every 56 days.
Then I got into a habit of doing “Power Red”, where they hook you up to an apheresis machine, withdraw some quantity of whole blood, process it through the machine to separate components, then return most of the plasma and other stuff while retaining the concentrated red cells. In my experience, this usually takes a couple of complete cycles and part of a third, and then they end up with a double-unit of concentrated red cells. After that, you have to wait 112 days to do it again.
These days I mostly do double-needle platelets, so I’m going in every two weeks and getting a needle in each arm, then watching movies or TV or listening to podcasts for a couple of hours with my arms straight. Whole blood is withdrawn through one needle, processed by an apheresis machine, and then returned sans platelets with most of my other blood products plus some IV fluid. Using two needles allows for continuous apheresis during the donation, and they usually get 2-3 units of platelets, plus every few donations they also keep a unit of plasma. It’s possible to go back sooner than two weeks, but I like the regularity of this schedule.
I understand that not everyone is able to do this for various reasons, and I’m not trying to do any sort of self promotion because of it. I like that I’m able to help others by giving stuff that I’m making anyway (without any special effort on my part), even if the donor center canteen is no longer staffed with old lady volunteers serving sloppy joes: “Do you want pickles?” 
1 Like
I know lots of people do it for money too, and I still respect that a lot.
Lots of my female friends in college donated plasma for money too help fund their needs. One of them still does it even though her household makes a lot of money now. I’m totally good with that since it’s a win-win for everyone.
1 Like
I appreciate the message, so thank you; however, I have different ideas about what heroes do. I just sit in a funky recliner and squeeze a ball for a few hours every couple of weeks so that the friendly phlebotomists can harvest cellular goodies from my precious bodily fluids.
A guy I’ve known since second grade told me years later that he sold some of his other precious bodily fluids for a while during college until it occurred to him that some time in the future he might possibly be walking down a street somewhere and encounter a child he never knew he’d “fathered”. He decided that was too weird and then stopped doing that. I understand that decision. I’m okay with selling plasma, though.
1 Like
@Seapup, that’s appropriate, because it was one of your posts! 
2 Likes
I’m blessed with 
to bestow. 
1 Like
2 Likes
3 Likes
Just trying to be a good “citizen” 
3 Likes