Calling all long standing blood donors

I think donation invitations should be sent under "plain cover". Who would want to advertise that they have such an unexciting lifestyle that they qualify as donors?

I have two wallet stickers. First is dated 1978, no yellow mark, letters CL after the date. I was 18 then so this must have been my first donation. Stuck on top of it is another one dated 1989 with my updated home address, the letters 'dc' in lower case, no yellow.

I stopped bringing it with me, and stopped getting the paper certificate added each donation, in 1998.

I often had the same problem with blood tests and I was given the advice to drink a couple of pints of water an hour or so before the needle was due to go in. This seems have significantly eased the problem and its been many years since I have had to use both arms to get a small sample :)

I started about 1976 but I don’t recall yellow stickers.

Not sure where my original little book thing is. They stopped the sticker things years ago - long before I was forced to stop donating ( after a stroke ) in 2006.

Senior Management still donates. She tells me they no long serve tea and biscuits. The first place I donated was in a Working Man’s Club, you got a voucher for a free pint. Of course back then, a pint cost about 12p.

I was given that advice last week, I need another blood test tomorrow, something odd with last week's results. so I'll do the water drinking first

That was to keep you there for a period of 10 minutes or so after giving blood. If someone is going to have a reaction to losing nearly an arm-full it will be in those first few minutes. When I last gave blood decades ago it seemed that the wait was only for those giving blood for the first time or if you had problems on the previous occasion(s). If someone reacted to giving blood the cure was to lie on your back, feet up, for 5 to 10 minutes whilst being observed.

When I had my covid jabs they also recommended sitting in the waiting area (or sitting in your car in the adjoining car park) for 10 minutes before leaving.

It's better to wait in the room. I know when I'm sitting in the recovery room, I'm watching the other patients for signs. That's because there isn't always a medical professional in the recovery room. They roll in and roll out again, and don't stay in the room. If your throat swells up, you want to alert someone right away. You can't afford to wait until your airway is cut off, because there might not be someone there to hit you with an Epipen, or to fit you with an esophageal airway. Even in a hospital, the skill at fitting an airway, isn't a given. Histamine reactions can be so bad, that you can't stop them, but a vaccine is unlikely to elicit something like that. They ask you questions about your allergy history, and it would be silly on your part, to not be honest about these things.

But that's in case you have a histamine reaction to the injection. For some reason, COVID (if say, made with an egg method), might have the same egg-reaction concern as the flu shots that are based on eggs. I think the flu shot was 10 or 15 minutes wait. Even the MRNA shots have a histamine concern, but it's because of trace materials in some of the first lots. Later on, they were less concerned, and I guess the statistics did not indicate much of a problem with the MRNA ones. But you will still find the policy varies from one vaccine campaign to another (the pharmacy makes you wait ten minutes).

Blood donation is more likely to be shock.

When I was 17-18, they had a blood donation clinic in the school. The nurses there, would tell the students not to do anything too demanding, during the waiting period after donating. They made you wait, might have had a sugary fruit juice as a beverage.

One young lad (could have been on our football team, I did not keep track of such things), was determined that he was a super-athlete and was made of sterner stuff. He was standing near the nurse, said he didn't have to listen to any of this... and proceeded to sprint down the school hallway (we were standing in a wide hallway). After about I would guess fifty feet of running, he passed out and hit the floor :-) Just about the best demo you could have, of the need for care after your donation, I would say. Good work, Mr.Athlete. I didn't stick around to see the look on his pasty white face, when he came to :-) I hope the nurse gave him a couple kicks in the bum for being a fool.

When you're young, you frequently have no idea what shock is. Later in life, you have enough experiences to be "calibrated" and you can tell from your symptoms, when it is "brace for impact" or "find a nice spot for a short sleep on the floor" :-) Once your systolic drops to about 90 or so, you don't have that many more feet to go before the crash landing. You can have as little as five seconds to make up your mind (this is in a case where the odds are good of shock happening, so shock does not come as a surprise to you, but the symptoms can still sneak up on you). Like the kid who ran down the hall.

The reason our football team was not "noteworthy", is they did not seem to be participating in any "league". And as such, I didn't care if you wore an outfit with a number on it, it didn't mean a lot if you weren't actively participating. You might as well be in the Chess Club :-) I don't remember the reason the team was not playing. But at least nominally, I suspect the individual was on the football team. Maybe that's why he felt defensive about his manhood, and being told he might be a pansy. Most of the other students thought his address to the nurse, was out of proportion to the situation. But the demo, was chefs kiss. Couldn't have trained better in acting class.

Paul