Last week I received an unexpected greetings card. It wasn’t
because someone pranked me and changed my birthday on Facebook and neither was
it from that creepy library guy from uni with the high pitched voice and bare
feet (oh god). It was because, since I was 17, I have given blood ten times. Ten
times I have voluntarily had someone stick a needle in my arm and drain me like
a vampire. And at the risk of verging into Twilight territory, it isn’t as bad
as you might think. There are all sorts of horror stories and misconceptions
about blood donation that are, for the most part, completely unfounded.
Firstly, there is the rumour that when you give blood, you
are more than likely to feel faint, vomit and pass out in dramatic, damsel in distress
fashion. I can tell you from personal experience that this is pretty unlikely to
happen. In all of my ten trips to the donation station, I have only seen this
happen to two people, both of whom were very small people, who were probably on
the verge of the 50kg weight limit and hadn’t had enough to eat and drink prior
to arrival. I say this because there are certain questions and precautions that
the nurses take when you arrive to ensure that you are fit and healthy to
donate. In all likelihood, if you are over 55kg and in good health, you should
be just fine. Luckily I am tall and strong as ox so I’ve always been ok, although
I wouldn’t recommend vigorous yoga (it’s totally a thing) the next morning as
it may cause you to almost pass out in the down dog position. It's all about initiative guys. In an effort to completely contradict myself, one time when I
was feeling particularly zealous and initiative-free, I challenged my dad to a race to see who could
give a pint the fastest, because why not. I won the race, because I am a pro.
A second glaring alarm bell for some people is the thought
of the needle. Now this is one which I cannot dispel as I know that for a lot of people, needles scare the bejesus out of you, much like clowns, feet and
standing on three consecutive drains does to me. And I totally get that one measly blog post from me is unlikely to be the catalyst for your decision
to embrace the needle (in fairness that’s not something I would recommend – it’s
pretty sharp). But what I can say is this. It really doesn’t hurt. It’s not
like when you stand on Lego or give yourself a paper-cut. All it is is a small
scratch and you don’t even have to look. It actually hurts more removing the
super-glue plaster they make you put on afterwards that rips all of your arm hair
out and leaves a week-long sticky residue in its wake. If ever there was an excuse to not
give blood it’s that devil plaster (you should probably do something about
that, NHS – it’s putting people off).
A third and final reason that I have heard people give and I
have certainly done this is that you can’t fit it into your life. Now this is
something I can completely relate to. In our busy lives, it can be difficult to
fit in such a trivial thing such as giving blood. But what I have realised is
that it’s really not such a big deal. You can only do it once every 16 weeks as
a woman and every 12 weeks as a man and it takes about an hour of your time. That’s
maximum five hours per year. I spend more time than that watching How I Met
Your Mother in one sitting. And if I or one of my family members were in a car
accident or god forbid got a spot of the Big C, I would be pretty thankful for the
time someone dragged themselves away from Netflix.
I’m really sorry if this came over at all preachy, because that
was not my aim at all, but I really am passionate about how important this is. It’s pretty scary
that in the last year, the numbers of new people going out and giving blood fell
by 40%. In total less than 4% of us give up some of our red stuff for the 1 in 4
people that will need it at some point in our lives.
Go on, you know you want to. They’ll even give you free biscuits
and crisps afterwards which, I’m not sure if you know, don’t contain any
calories. If that isn’t incentive enough to go, I don’t know what is.
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