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Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton
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2008-12-31Give Blood: Get Cookies
I’m a regular blood donor. I made my sixth whole-blood donation of 2008 on December 26th. This afternoon, I was enjoying “vegetable pie” from the cook book that the local blood center created and gave to those of us who donated twice in the Summer of 2008. Right now, the local blood supply has dwindled because of the holidays, the poor weather, and the cancellation of many blood-mobile appointments because of travel difficulties and business snow days. Brad Wong provides an account of the local situation in his 2008-12-28 Seattle Post-Intelligencer article, “Donations urgently needed at blood center” (hat tips to Ron Sims and nephew Eric Walrod). There may be similar shortages in other areas of the country that have been experiencing extreme weather conditions atop an ordinary decrease attributable to school and work holidays. The Puget Sound Blood Center encourages donors to bring a buddy along. I didn’t think to do that. You can, if you’re eligible to donate. If you have never donated, you can be a buddy of a friend who donates. It’s important. I never donated until I was in my 50’s. I’d been squeamish and managed to avoid it until I moved to Silicon Valley in 1992 and learned of the regular bloodmobile visits at Xerox PARC. It probably helped that I had recently participated in the Landmark Forum when I nerved-up to volunteer in 1993. After learning that it didn’t hurt me at all, I became an occasional donor. After retirement in 1998 I began to visit the Stanford Medical Center blood-donation location on my own. One Wednesday there was a shortage of type-O blood according to the sign in front of the center. I knew I was an O-type but I asked the technician which one I was. She replied that I was O-positive (the second-most universally usable type) and also CNV-negative. I didn’t know what CNV was. She explained that CNV is a virus that many of us have in our blood streams to no particular adverse effect, with normal recipients perhaps having a brief case of the sniffles. But CNV is not good for recipients having suppressed immune systems. I thought of AIDS patients, but she added that this also applied to newborns, especially as there are now many more procedures for saving the lives of infants and where transfusions are needed. After learning that, why would I not donate? After moving to Seattle at the end of 1999, it took a while to find my way around to donation points. I’ve become quite consistent as an every-8-weeks whole-blood donor. I’m amazed that it remains easy to do and that, as I approach my 70th birthday, there is no age limit for blood donation. I’m grateful that I finally took this on, and that I can make a difference for someone, somewhere, by this routine that I’ve created in my life. Labels: Golden Geek Comments: Post a Comment |
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