Giving A Little Back

A trio from work - myself, Chris the Infrequent Blogger and Jakub my cycling mentor - headed off to the Blood Donor clinic late this afternoon to have a few pints drained. This is something the three of us, sometimes joined by other bleeders, have been doing semi-regularly for a few years now. A recent alteration to the routine has been that I've been joining Jakub in his mode of transportation there and back: riding the bike! I didn't used to do that, even on the days that I would've otherwised biked to work, because I worried about the exertion of cycling home (approximately twice the distance of my normal one-way commute) so soon after giving blood. But eventually, sometime last year I think, I took the plunge and tried it. Jakub and I had a fantastic bike ride there, as it's a winding, scenic route that's mostly bike path with a little side-street action and one small stretch that feels like it's through someone's back yard! And I was thrilled to discover that I felt no action-effects of being down a pint on the ride home, so my worries were for naught. And in fact, after just one trip, I'd enjoyed the experience so much that I knew I'd never bother driving there again!

Today was my 49th blood donation (going back to sometime in the late 1980s). I decided awhile ago that I'd stop once I got to 50 donations. While I like doing it, because it feels like a good thing to do, I've gotten pretty tired of having to supply the same information (what prescription drugs I'm on, what trips I've taken outside North America, sexual history) every time I go there, like they've never heard of computers and couldn't... y'know.. record any of it and just ask me to confirm that nothing's change? I've mentioned this more than once in my visits there, but apparently there are rules, and requirements, and blah blah blah... So it is what it is. But I figure, when I've done it 50 times, I've probably more than fulfilled my responsibility in that area. From what the nurses there tell me, Canadians donate blood at around 1 - 2%, meaning that only about 1 or 2 out of every 100 Canadians ever donates blood. And yes, that's low, compared to other comparable countries. (The U.S., which used to pay for blood, I think has stopped doing that from what I heard.) It's surprising, and saddening, to me that we're not more responsible in this area, since I tend to think of us as being pretty good in that regard.

But I guess it's either squeamishness, (completely unfounded) fear of comtamination, or just plain laziness that keeps most people from at least trying it. I know some people have pretty low pain thresholds, but until you've tried it a couple times, you can't really say "it hurts too much." And I find that more often than not, it doesn't hurt much at all. Poor Vicki, having to remove a sliver from my foot last night, inflicted more pain on me - at my insistence! - than I felt during the entire 'transaction' this afternoon!

A few days ago I read an article about organ donation. The writer was promoting the idea that you should only qualify to receive an organ transplant if you've previously agreed to donate your own, upon death. I really like this, since I think anyone so selfish as to be unwilling to have their own organs help someone else shouldn't deserve to get that privilege themselves. And that got me thinking: wouldn't it be interesting if blood donation worked the same way...? You could only receive blood, in an emergency, if you'd at least tried to donate at some point in your life! That might up the number of donors! And it's just the sort of thing that appeals to my sense of fairness!