Writing -30- on blood

[jayfurr]

I have probably donated my last unit of blood, ever.

Someone from the local Red Cross called and left a message Friday evening saying that if I wanted to try donating again on Saturday at a blood drive at the mall, I should ask to speak to Roger, their charge nurse, and he would personally handle me and make sure an accurate reading of my hemoglobin was taken. I took extra-extra-extra iron that night (more than is actually considered healthy), reasoning that if my hemoglobin was still vanishingly low after days of extra iron and a last-minute extra boost, it'd be a sign to just pack the whole donating-blood thing in for once and for all.

On Saturday, we showed up at the mall. The teenager on duty at the doorway to the vacant store they were using for the drive took one look at my blood donor ID card and immediately told a Red Cross employee that "Mr. Furr is here." It looks like I really stirred things up with my email last week. Roger turned out to be the extremely tall and affable white-coated guy I'd often seen lurking around at the donor center doing various things. It turned out that he'd read my email as well and was very understanding about my confusion and pique.

Unfortunately, even with the extra iron, I was still short. 11.8 grams/deciliter, far short of the 12.5 g/dcl that I needed but at least a bit better than the 11.5 I'd gotten a week earlier. If the extra iron I've taken this week only boosted me from 11.5 to 11.8, I can't imagine what'd it'd take to get me to 12.5.

So that's all she wrote, as it were. I'll try again in six months when I've been exercising a lot and in good health and eating lots of iron-rich foods and if I'm still wandering around in the mid-11s, I'll just shrug and find some other philanthropy to obsess about. :(

Comments

[jhvilas.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- I know it's important to you, and it would be nice if you could do it, but there are so many other things you could worry about, and so many ways to make up for this missed opportunity at helping others.... Is there some way you could help the Red Cross more directly? You know, like volunteer to help at local blood drives or something? I gave up on donating blood a long time ago, when it seemed like explaining all the things that were wrong with me and drugs I was on just wasn't worth the effort.

[jayfurr.livejournal.com]

If I didn't travel, I'd probably be a regular Red Cross volunteer.

But if I didn't travel my life would be different in more ways than I can count. I could take classes, have hobbies, you name it. :)

[jhvilas.livejournal.com]

Crap -- I kinda forgot about that work thing. D'oh.